Week 9

Some reports suggest Apple is working its own SE, will make that the default engine. Google rev can take a major hit possibly >20%?

Forbes: "[2021] Google Estimated To Be Paying $15 Billion To Remain Default Search Engine On [Apple's] Safari"

Link

😆 😆 😆 So The West Wing.. Constant drama. Were there aides, passing papers to each other in the hallway?

WaPo: "[The honorary chairman of the U.S. bid for the 2022 tournament] Bill Clinton reportedly smashed a mirror after hearing Qatar won the 2022 World Cup bid [in 2010]'

But Al Jazeera is a good channel, a good source for info most of the time. Just saying these are some of the things that go through my mind when docus like that show up.

I guess FIFA/Qatar tried to make the best of it by trying to organize a good Cup, and making sure (!) Argentina got the Prize (that penalty in the last game.. shady).

Aahh the 2010s.. Qatar was on the move, on the rise, helping "topple dictators" Kaddafi, Mubarak, stirring shit up along with US all over the globe.. Woo hooo! We have arrived baby! Winning the rights to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup was part of that rise. We know the rest of the story - the Arab Spring turned sour (along with Qatar's claim for the top spot), the allegation of bribery of FIFA officials became so rampant it destroyed the careers of all involved, including then chief S. Blatter.

See docu - Qatar, Hillary Clinton, Sarkozy all get an honorable mention

"How Western Propaganda Destroyed Libya (and Got Away with it)"

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Hah. Al Jazeera docu defends their involvement in the Arab Spring as siding with "democracy". That's not exactly true, especially thinking AJ's money source, Qatar. Why would Qatar, an emirate care about democracy? They cared more about spreading their own influence in the region, and to supplant Saudi Arabia as a power center.

#JohnOliver #AI

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Vision is not a fully solved problem, let alone driving using it. Neural networks won't help, the tech is half-baked, too immitative lacks fundamentals.

Futurism: "[2022] Experts Alarmed by Videos of Tesla Full Self-Driving Totally Screwing Up.. A panel of experts assembled by The Washington Post have reviewed and verified footage of Teslas equipped with the company's beta Full Self-Diving (FSD) malfunctioning in terrifying ways"

"[2022] Tesla Removes Ultrasonic Sensors, Favoring.. Vision And Neural Networks"

Janes: "The US Department of State (DoS) has approved a possible [sale] of Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided Missiles-Extended Range (AARGM-ERs) to Australia"

Latest from Morning Consult. Lula, Meloni, Albanese, AMLO doing well. Modi still #1; and this is in a country with over a billion people.

u.global_leader_approval().head(8)

Out[1]: 
                                   name   net
0                 Narendra Modi (India)   +60
1  Andrés Manuel López Obrador (Mexico)   +26
2          Anthony Albanese (Australia)   +26
3            Alain Berset (Switzerland)   +21
4    Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Brazil)   +17
5                Giorgia Meloni (Italy)   +13
6           Alexander De Croo (Belgium)    -9
7             Joe Biden (United States)    -9

TFI Global: "The American strategy in the Ukraine conflict is aimed solely at severing ties between Europe and Russia, and the West has made desperate attempts to do so. However, in the end, their efforts may be in vain...

Despite the harsh sanctions imposed on Moscow since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly a year ago, a paper published by.. [DE] economy ministry claimed that trade data showed a 'considerable amount' of sanctioned products were being exported from the EU and Germany to certain third countries and then exported further from there to Russia""

H2 Fuel News: "Largest green hydrogen project on the planet breaks ground in China.. The green hydrogen and oxygen produced by this project will be transported via pipeline"

H2 Fuel News: "The first BMW iX5 hydrogen vehicles are rolling out onto roads"

H2 Fuel News: "Hydrogen fuel shipping project secures multi-million-pound UK government grant"

"@mastodonmigration@mastodon.online

TechCrunch: Mozilla leads Mastodon app Mammoth’s pre-seed funding.. its leading pre-seed investor is Mozilla, a proponent of the open web, which invested in the company’s first general round alongside others, including Long Journey Ventures and Salesforce’s Marc Benioff"

"@atomicpoet@mastodon.social

📰 CONFIRMED 📰

@mammoth iOS client for Mastodon has received VC funding."

GasWorld: "bp sets aside up to €2bn for new green hydrogen plant in Spain"

"@inquiline@union.place

Why did it make sense to planners to confine the LA River in cement & destroy acres of #wetlands? One reason is to make land support freight movement"

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"@EPPGroup@respublicae.eu

Natural gas generates 20% of EU electricity and 40% of EU heating.

A new package of gas-related EU laws aims to speed the shift to #hydrogen and other renewables"

Reuters: "A ‘doomsday’ Arctic seed vault on Norway’s Spitsbergen island is set to receive its most diverse batch of seed donations yet as efforts to secure the world’s food supplies ramp up amid rising climate concerns"

All things considered, has the US been a "force for good" in the world?

The report card is spotty. Just the other day I read about "Sam the Banana Man" Zemurray, a US businessman, when his banana business was threatened in Honduras, he personally organized a coup, created a small civilian army put them on a ship sent them over to Honduras to fight the government, contributed to the overthrow of a democratically elected president (USG mostly stood by and in the end helped him). That's not all, the newly installed president paid him for the trouble using Honduras' taxpayer money. How is that for money well spent?

Dyhdrating never ceases to amaze - dry a whole bunch of mongold, crush dried pieces, shrinks down to standard spice shaker size.

The Lincoln Lawyer, fantastic

I chose the movie on the strength of its title alone

Die Hart - I watched it and it was ok

"@technomancy@icosahedron.website

it's over folks"

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Don't care much about that monkey AI business using bloated "deep" neural networks; But HPC is useful.

Good to hear HPC and Linux news from MS.

"Microsoft's CBL-Mariner Linux Shows Increasing HPC Interest.. Microsoft's in-house Linux distribution CBL-Mariner has been public now for about two years.. Coming just a week after the previous CBL-Mariner 2.0 update is one where they are adding four new packages [.. including] OpenMPI"

The Guardian: "Weather tracker: record-breaking heat in Australia"

Deming: “Without data, you're just another person with an opinion.”

Nikkei Asia: "Panasonic to sell pure hydrogen fuel cell generators in China.. Panasonic will begin selling zero-emission pure hydrogen fuel cell generators in China from April, hoping to develop global demand for the 24-hour alternative to solar panels for factories and offices"

The Future of Flipboard Is Federated

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Engadget: "Flipboard is leaning into Mastodon — and away from Twitter.. The news reading app is going all in on the Fediverse"

Public support for peace.. ppl can be sold war, easily; During Clinton years rabid inverventionism was official policy, and the public was just fine with it.

Fox News: "WaPo fact-checker says Trump-era policies 'can't be blamed' for Ohio train derailment"

CNBC: "BMW launches demonstration fleet of hydrogen cars that use fuel cells from Toyota"

"@Hypx@mastodon.social

Indian Railways set to float tender for 35 hydrogen trains"

Marlena Shaw - California Soul #music

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Even scare scenarios that are trotted out are there to establish the tech is that awesome. This is a bullshit industry built on lies.

"@emilymbender@dair-community.social

[To Altman blowing smoke on AI] Your system isn't AGI, it isn't a step towards AGI, and yet you're dropping that in as if the reader is just suppose to nod along"

F24: "UK PM Sunak and EU chief strike deal on post-Brexit trade for Northern Ireland.. Von der Leyen said the European Court of Justice would have the final say on European Union law and single market issues"

Those bloody pesticides kill more than the intended target IMO. Fully isolated environments could do away with them.

"Each year, 119 billion pounds of food is wasted in the United States. That equates to 130 billion meals and more than $408 billion in food thrown away each year. Shockingly, nearly 40% of all food in America is wasted"

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"Can we produce enough food?" Much of the food production is currently wasted.

Besides the GHG issue, farming takes up too much space and is likely bad for the environment. A new system could discourage it all. Limit ownership of land enough for shelter, non-farm production, the rest becomes public land, only automated, vertical farming is encouraged, meat production through lab-based methods.

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"@yogthos@mas.to

American journalist discovers a train"

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F24: "France must demonstrate 'profound humility' toward Africa, Macron says ahead of four-nation trip"

Arab News: "Macron bound for Africa to counter waning French influence... Macron will visit three African nations around the Congo basin as well as Angola, with the focus of the trip being ostensibly away from France’s troubled former colonies in the Sahel, where anti-French sentiment is on the rise"

5.2.. That's nothing

df = u.eq_at(lat=38,lon=39,radius=200,ago=30)
df = df[df.mag > 5.0]
df[['mag','ago','lat','lon']].tail(3)

                     mag  ago      lat      lon
date                                           
2023-02-08 14:11:52  5.4   20  37.9368  37.6607
2023-02-08 17:20:25  5.1   20  37.9629  37.4580
2023-02-27 12:04:51  5.2    1  38.2289  38.2828

Another EQ?

Haaretz: "CIA Chief: No Evidence Iran Has Made Decision to Weaponize Nuclear Program.. These comments come after senior Israeli officials issuing explicit threats over Iran's nuclear program, most notably from Mossad chief David Barnea"

Reuters: "G20 fails to reach consensus on Russia-Ukraine war"

RU is a few kilometers away from full encirclement

Euronews: "Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin claimed that his fighters captured Yahidne, 2 kilometres north of Bakhmut"

TASS: "Russian army controls roads to [Bakhmut], supplies to Ukrainian forces stopped"

#aljazeera #marclamonthill

Daniel Ellsberg: "[If] Julian Assange.. is extradited and prosecuted and convicted here [in US] we will have had the first instance of an actual journalist having been imprisoned for putting out the truth... No journalist has ever been put on trial thanks to our First Amendment freedom of the press and freedom of speech which most countries don't have as a law. [That clause] will be essentially rescinded if Julian Assange is successfully prosecuted"

The Atlantic: "[China covid death] estimates range from about 1 million to 1.5 million deaths, suggesting that, in absolute terms, China may have suffered more fatalities from COVID in two months than the U.S. did in three years"

Bloomberg: "First time in 52 years, world’s longest skating rink [The Rideau Canal Skateway] to close due to global warming"

H2 View: "ArcelorMittal to receive €55m in funding for German hydrogen-based steel production"

They should've played up the mystery little more.. story ended too quickly. They can learn from the Americans. You do "is it, or isn't it" for days then send in the attack submarine.

NYT: "Mystery Sphere on Japanese Beach Was Just a Buoy, Experts Say"

Bloomberg: "Germany, India to Boost Cooperation in Renewables, Defense.. Germany and India agreed to partner on technology to make a transition to renewable energy easier... The two sides also agreed to step up cooperation on green hydrogen 'to achieve a socially just, economically sustainable secure and affordable energy supply,' according to a joint statement after the meeting"

H2 Central: "[Central Queensland, Oz] Palaszczuk Government Locks in $1 Billion Fitzroy to Gladstone Pipeline, Unlocks Jobs In Renewable Hydrogen and Manufacturing"

When did Erin F-ing Brokovich get involved in this? EB, as in the 2000 movie? Julia Roberts played her? She was on Tucker's show reporting on the situation. Bad optics.

While Biden was in Ukraine, Trump was in the disaster area in Ohio, distributing food, listening to people. During the 1992 campaign the slogan "America needs a president who cares as much about the 'Middle West as the Middle East'" was a good seller; a variation of that can be in effect for 2024.