Ars Technica – The Hubble Space Telescope has lost a majority of its gyroscopes

Jun 052024
 

Enlarge / Hubble Space Telescope above Earth, photographed during STS-125, Servicing Mission 4, May 2009. (credit: NASA)
The venerable Hubble Space Telescope is running out of gyroscopes, and when none are left, the instrument will cease to conduct meaningful science.
To preserve the telescope, which has been operating in space for nearly three and a half decades, NASA announced Tuesday that it will reduce the Hubble’s operations such that it will function on just a single gyroscope. This will limit some scientific operations, and it will take longer to point the telescope to new objects and lock onto them.
But in a conference call with space reporters, Hubble officials stressed that the beloved scientific instrument…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://arstechnica.com/?p=2029000

 2024-06-05  Comments Off on Ars Technica – The Hubble Space Telescope has lost a majority of its gyroscopes

Ballot Access News – North Carolina Likely to Have Seven Parties on the Ballot, The Most Ever

Jun 052024
 

It appears that North Carolina will have seven parties on the ballot this year, the most ever.  The previous record was in 1980, when there were six parties on the ballot in North Carolina.  See this story.
The seven are:  Republican, Democratic, Libertarian, Green, Constitution, We the People, and Justice for All.  The latter two were formed by independent presidential candidates.  We the People will nominate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.; Justice for All will nominate Cornel West.
No Labels is also a qualified party in North Carolina, but it won’t appear on the ballot because it isn’t running anyone.  In North Carolina, new parties nominate by convention, and state officials of No Labels will obey the No Labels’…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://ballot-access.org/2024/06/04/north-carolina-likely-to-have-seven-parties-on-the-ballot-the-most-ever/

 2024-06-05  Comments Off on Ballot Access News – North Carolina Likely to Have Seven Parties on the Ballot, The Most Ever

Deeplinks – Car Makers Shouldn’t Be Selling Our Driving History to Data Brokers and Insurance Companies

Jun 052024
 

You accelerated multiple times on your way to Yosemite for the weekend. You braked when driving to a doctor appointment. If your car has internet capabilities, GPS tracking or OnStar, your car knows your driving history.
And now we know: your car insurance carrier might know it, too.
In a recent New York Times article, Kashmir Hill reported how everyday moments in your car like these create a data footprint of your driving habits and routine that is, in some cases, being sold to insurance companies. Collection often happens through so-called “safe driving” programs pre-installed in your vehicle through an internet-connected service on your car or a connected car app. Real-time location tracking often starts when you download…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/06/car-makers-shouldnt-be-selling-our-driving-history-data-brokers-and-insurance

 2024-06-05  Comments Off on Deeplinks – Car Makers Shouldn’t Be Selling Our Driving History to Data Brokers and Insurance Companies

Techdirt. – State Court Says There’s A Reasonable Expectation Of Privacy In Conversations With Non-Cops In Interrogation Rooms

Jun 042024
 

Kind of an odd bit of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence here, given all the factors. (h/t FourthAmendment.com)
Obviously, some conversations have an expectation of privacy, even when they’re held in police interrogation rooms. Those would be ones between the suspect and their legal representation. But that’s not really a Fourth Amendment issue as it is about privileged communications. The government isn’t allowed to eavesdrop on suspects as they work on a legal defense and/or make statements to their lawyer.
Then there’s the assumption that pretty much everything a cop would like to listen to is recorded, starting with anything said in interrogation rooms (minus attorney-client communications) and ending with phone calls placed from jail phones. (On the other hand,…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.techdirt.com/2024/06/03/state-court-says-theres-a-reasonable-expectation-of-privacy-in-conversations-with-non-cops-in-interrogation-rooms/

 2024-06-04  Comments Off on Techdirt. – State Court Says There’s A Reasonable Expectation Of Privacy In Conversations With Non-Cops In Interrogation Rooms

LWN.net – LyX 2.4.0 Released

Jun 042024
 

Version 2.4.0 of the LyX
document processor has been released. LyX is a “What You See Is What You
Mean” (WYSIWYM) application that offers GUI editing of LaTeX
documents with import and export to PDF, HTML, OpenDocument, Word, and
other formats. LyX 2.4.0 is the first major release in six years, and
brings support for EPUB, DocBook 5, improved
table styles, and now uses Unicode (utf8) as its default encoding. See
the full list of new
features on the LyX wiki, and release
notes for information on known issues and caveats for those
upgrading from earlier versions of LyX.

External feed Read More at the Source: https://lwn.net/Articles/976826/

 2024-06-04  Comments Off on LWN.net – LyX 2.4.0 Released

Monthly Review – June 2024 (Volume 76, Number 2)

Jun 012024
 

In this month’s “Notes from the Editors,” the editors confront the myth of Marx’s purported early Prometheanism and later rejection of the growth of productive forces altogether, favoring a “no-growth path to communism.” This ahistorical interpretation has engendered further critique of ecosocialism and degrowth on the part of self-identified productivist writers, who attempt incorrectly to paint degrowth as a Malthusian project, rather than a realistic effort to live within Earth’s planetary capacities. | more…

Source

External feed Read More at the Source: https://monthlyreview.org/2024/06/01/mr-076-02-2024-06_0/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=mr-076-02-2024-06_0

 2024-06-01  Comments Off on Monthly Review – June 2024 (Volume 76, Number 2)

World Socialist Web Site (en) – Biden gives go-ahead for NATO attacks on Russia: A new stage in the escalating imperialist world war

May 312024
 

The American and European imperialist powers are recklessly escalating the war with nuclear-armed Russia towards a global conflagration, which can be halted only through the political mobilisation of the international working class in opposition to imperialist war.

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/05/31/hfed-m31.html

 2024-05-31  Comments Off on World Socialist Web Site (en) – Biden gives go-ahead for NATO attacks on Russia: A new stage in the escalating imperialist world war

jwz – DNA Lounge: Wherein DOJ finally has the knives out for multinational superpredator Live Nation / Ticketmaster.

May 302024
 

404 Media has a good article explaining the new DOJ suit: The Justice Department’s antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation/Ticketmaster isn’t really about high ticket prices, or ticket scalpers, or any individual offense. It is about a systematic vertical integration of the entire live music business, which has led to the company’s dominance over tickets, yes, but also over live music venues, artists’ tour booking, and concert promotion. […] In simple terms, Live Nation, which owns Ticketmaster, is not just selling fans tickets on Ticketmaster.com. It owns, operates, or has exclusive contracts with the vast majority of midsized and large concert venues, and a supermajority of all outdoor pavilions and amphitheaters. And it has a…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2024/05/30.html

 2024-05-30  Comments Off on jwz – DNA Lounge: Wherein DOJ finally has the knives out for multinational superpredator Live Nation / Ticketmaster.

Deeplinks – EFF Urges Supreme Court to Reject Texas’ Speech-Chilling Age Verification Law

May 212024
 

A Texas age verification law will rob people of anonymity online, chill access to speech for privacy- and security-minded internet users, and entirely block some adults from accessing constitutionally protected online content, EFF argued in a brief filed with the Supreme Court last week.
EFF joined the Woodhull Freedom Foundation in filing a friend-of-the-court brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to grant review of—and ultimately overturn—the Fifth Circuit’s decision upholding the Texas law.
Last year, the state of Texas passed HB 1181 in a misguided attempt to shield minors from certain online content. The law requires all Texas internet users, including adults, to complete invasive “age verification” procedures on every website the state deems to be at least…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/05/eff-urges-supreme-court-reject-texas-speech-chilling-age-verification-law

 2024-05-21  Comments Off on Deeplinks – EFF Urges Supreme Court to Reject Texas’ Speech-Chilling Age Verification Law

Richard Stallman’s Political Notes – US Mail system as degradable

May 182024
 

Laying out
DeJoy’s
plans to make US mail less reliable and frequently but unpredictably slower.

The anticipated slowdowns will interfere with postal voting. Many ballots will
arrive late due to USPS delays and then will not be counted.

External feed Read More at the Source: https://stallman.org/archives/2024-mar-jun.html#17_May_2024_(US_Mail_system_as_degradable)

 2024-05-18  Comments Off on Richard Stallman’s Political Notes – US Mail system as degradable

Ars Technica – Slack users horrified to discover messages used for AI training

May 172024
 

Enlarge (credit: Tim Robberts | DigitalVision)
After launching Slack AI in February, Slack appears to be digging its heels in, defending its vague policy that by default sucks up customers’ data—including messages, content, and files—to train Slack’s global AI models.
According to Slack engineer Aaron Maurer, Slack has explained in a blog that the Salesforce-owned chat service does not train its large language models (LLMs) on customer data. But Slack’s policy may need updating “to explain more carefully how these privacy principles play with Slack AI,” Maurer wrote on Threads, partly because the policy “was originally written about the search/recommendation work we’ve been doing for years prior to Slack AI.”
Maurer was responding to a…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://arstechnica.com/?p=2025179

 2024-05-17  Comments Off on Ars Technica – Slack users horrified to discover messages used for AI training

Techdirt. – Flock Safety Customers Continue To Act As Government Contractors, Only Without All That Pesky Paperwork

May 142024
 

Flock Safety wants in on the law enforcement surveillance action. It began making inroads by appealing to the next best fascists: homeowners associations. Pitching its ALPRs (automatic license plate readers) to gated communities, Flock promises a crime-free future its pseudo-research can’t back up.
Not that any of that mattered to any of these suburban authoritarians. All they knew is they had cameras capable of surveilling unwanted “intruders,” even if these were just lost drivers, people passing through their “exclusive” neighborhoods on the way to their own less-exclusive neighborhoods, or just kind of “brown.”
Since the rich and the (predominately) white consider law enforcement to be little more than a customer service department, pitching to HOAs meant drawing in…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.techdirt.com/2024/05/14/flock-safety-customers-continue-to-act-as-government-contractors-only-without-all-that-pesky-paperwork/

 2024-05-14  Comments Off on Techdirt. – Flock Safety Customers Continue To Act As Government Contractors, Only Without All That Pesky Paperwork

Phoronix – KDE Making Good Progress On HDR, Better Gamescope Integration

May 112024
 

KDE developer Xaver Hugl has written a third blog post outlining some of the latest HDR and color management improvements that have been readied for KDE’s KWin compositor as well as ongoing improvements to Valve’s Gamescope compositor…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.phoronix.com/news/KDE-HDR-Colors-Part-3

 2024-05-11  Comments Off on Phoronix – KDE Making Good Progress On HDR, Better Gamescope Integration

Hackaday – Gather ‘Round This Unique 4-Player Arcade Cabinet

May 112024
 

Usually when we see arcade cabinet builds, they’re your standard single-player stand up variety. Even one of them takes up quite a bit of room, so as appealing as it might be to link up two or more cabinets together for the occasional multiplayer session, the space required makes it a non-starter for most of us.
But this cleverly designed 4-player cocktail cabinet from [OgrishGadgeteer] goes a long way towards solving that problem. The circular design of the cabinet gives each player a clear view of their respective display in a much smaller footprint than would otherwise be possible, and the glass top allows the whole thing to double as an actual cocktail table when it’s not…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://hackaday.com/2024/05/11/gather-round-this-unique-4-player-arcade-cabinet/

 2024-05-11  Comments Off on Hackaday – Gather ‘Round This Unique 4-Player Arcade Cabinet

The Intercept – October 7 Survivors Sue Campus Protesters, Say Students Are “Hamas’s Propaganda Division”

May 112024
 

Survivors of the October 7 attacks filed a lawsuit in U.S. federal court last week alleging links between Hamas and the pro-Palestinian student groups leading nationwide protests against Israel’s war on Gaza. The survivors claim the student groups are liable for monetary damages because of the purported terrorism links. “When someone tells you they are aiding and abetting terrorists — believe them.” That’s the opening line the suit filed Wednesday against the Palestinian advocacy groups American Muslims for Palestine and National Students for Justice in Palestine, the umbrella group supporting student organizers for Palestine, which supports more than 350 Palestine solidarity groups, including more than 200 campus organizations across the country. The lawsuit is part of…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://theintercept.com/2024/05/10/october-7-survivors-lawsuit-palestine-hamas-sjp-protests/

 2024-05-11  Comments Off on The Intercept – October 7 Survivors Sue Campus Protesters, Say Students Are “Hamas’s Propaganda Division”

New on MIT Technology Review – The way whales communicate is closer to human language than we realized

May 072024
 

Sperm whales are fascinating creatures. They possess the biggest brain of any species, six times larger than a human’s, which scientists believe may have evolved to support intelligent, rational behavior. They’re highly social, capable of making decisions as a group, and they exhibit complex foraging behavior.   But there’s also a lot we don’t know about them, including what they may be trying to say to one another when they communicate using a system of short bursts of clicks, known as codas. Now, new research published in Nature Communications today suggests that sperm whales’ communication is actually much more expressive and complicated than was previously thought.  A team of researchers led by Pratyusha Sharma at MIT’s Computer…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/05/07/1092127/the-way-whales-communicate-is-closer-to-human-language-than-we-realized/

 2024-05-07  Comments Off on New on MIT Technology Review – The way whales communicate is closer to human language than we realized

CounterPunch.org – Presidential Candidate Jill Stein Attacked in St. Louis

May 012024
 

Kelly Merrill, Jill Stein, Jason Call with arrest charges. April 28, 2024. Photo by Barbara Chicherio.
After attacking Dr. Jill Stein, St. Louis police charged her with assaulting them.  Stein is the presumptive Presidential candidate of the Green Party.  On April 27 she spoke at a program of the Green Party of St. Louis and then went to support student protesters at Washington University.  There, she was arrested along with Green Party campaign managers Jason Call and Kelly Merrill with about 100 others.
As students peacefully gathered in tents and on the lawn, they were soon confronted by police from four departments: University City, Richmond Heights, St. Louis City and St. Louis County.  When Stein arrived at the…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/04/30/presidential-candidate-jill-stein-attacked-in-st-louis/

 2024-05-01  Comments Off on CounterPunch.org – Presidential Candidate Jill Stein Attacked in St. Louis

The Onion – What Biden Can Do To Win Over Gen Z

May 012024
 

Although the youth vote was integral in his victory against Donald Trump in the 2020 election, Joe Biden’s approval ratings have tanked amongst 18-to-27-year-olds. If President Biden is interested in winning back Gen Z voters, he’ll have to do the following things.

Read more…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.theonion.com/what-biden-can-do-to-win-over-gen-z-1851427528

 2024-05-01  Comments Off on The Onion – What Biden Can Do To Win Over Gen Z

AnandTech – Report: Seagate, Western Digital Hike HDD Prices Amid Surge In Demand

Apr 242024
 

Seagate Technology has reportedly notified its customers abouts its plans to raise prices on new hard drive orders and for demands that exceed prior agreements, echoing a similar move by Western Digital, which increased its prices earlier this month. These changes come in response to a surge in demand for high-capacity HDDs and constraints in supply due to decreased production capabilities of both Seagate and Western Digital, reports TrendForce. According to industry insights reported by TechNews, the sector anticipates that the scarcity of high-capacity HDD products will persist throughout the current quarter and possibly extend over the entire year. It is forecasted that HDD prices will rise by 5% to 10% in Q2 2024 alone and…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.anandtech.com/show/21368/report-seagate-western-digital-hike-hdd-prices

 2024-04-24  Comments Off on AnandTech – Report: Seagate, Western Digital Hike HDD Prices Amid Surge In Demand

Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow – Pluralistic: The specific process by which Google enshittified its search (24 Apr 2024)

Apr 242024
 

Today’s links

The specific process by which Google enshittified its search: Ed Zitron has Prabhakar Raghavan bang to rights.

Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.

This day in history: 2009, 2014, 2019, 2024

Upcoming appearances: Where to find me.

Recent appearances: Where I’ve been.

Latest books: You keep readin’ em, I’ll keep writin’ ’em.

Upcoming books: Like I said, I’ll keep writin’ ’em.

Colophon: All the rest.

The specific process by which Google enshittified its search (permalink)
All digital businesses have the technical capacity to enshittify: the ability to change the underlying functions of the business from moment to moment and user to user, allowing for the rapid transfer of value between business customers, end users and shareholders:

Twiddler


If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/

 2024-04-24  Comments Off on Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow – Pluralistic: The specific process by which Google enshittified its search (24 Apr 2024)
 Older Entries  Newer Entries