Week 26

H2 View: "Salzgitter eyes over 100,000 tonnes of hydrogen for steel production.. Salzgitter AG has launched a tender for at least 100,000 tonnes of low-carbon hydrogen to be used at its green steel production facility in Salzgitter, Germany"

Military Aerospace: "Sirius Aviation and BMW unveil new hydrogen-powered jets"

"Rolls-Royce collaborates with technology partners on highly efficient hydrogen engine for stationary power generation.. Rolls-Royce has started, with a consortium of five companies and research institutes, to develop the necessary technologies for a highly efficient first-of-a-kind hydrogen combustion engine to drive combined heat and power (CHP) systems... 

[F]unded by the German Government, the consortium aims to generate the same electrical and thermal energy (power density and efficiency) as currently available through natural gas CHP units in the higher power range of up to 2.5 MW. When fuelled by green hydrogen, this next generation stationary energy plant will be able to run in a completely carbon neutral manner"

Mongabay: "A new report by shows how investors and agribusiness are taking control of water in Latin America by purchasing rights to land or water to secure access and grow water-intensive crops, such as avocados"

Browser built-in translator thinks Javascript code is "Norwegian" it is asking if I want it translated to English.

"@HackerNewsBot@pirateradio.social

Windows 11 is now enabling OneDrive folder backup without asking permission"

CNBC: "EU charges Microsoft with 'abusive' bundling of Teams and Office, breaching antitrust rules"

dZihan & Kamien - Sliding #music

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"@antijingoist@hackers.town

Apple, fucking useless, only my kid wakes up with a tornado warning, no one else's devices go off, and I have to look stuff up manually to see if we should go back to sleep or start praying"

"@Vivaldi@vivaldi.net

You should be free to install whatever apps you want on your own device, or use open web apps as you choose! At Vivaldi, we’re pleased to see the EU looking at Apple’s artificial restrictions of the open web on iOS and iPads"

WRMEA: "[2022/11] AIPAC Election Role Raises Question of Foreign Agent Registration.. For the first time, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) formed two [PACs] which have set records in their contributions to candidates in primary election campaigns this year...

AIPAC also launched a super PAC [UDP].. which initially did not include any mention of Israel in its 'About Us' statement. As a super PAC, UDP can accept unlimited donations, but it must disclose its donors. It cannot fund candidates directly, but it can spend unlimited amounts advocating for or against candidates. UDP was the biggest spending political action committee during the primaries and dispensed more than $24.2 million in support of its favored candidates. Out of eight candidates backed by UDP, six won their primaries..

Going back to the 1950s, the Eisenhower administration repeatedly insisted that the American Zionist Council (AZC) register as 'agents of a foreign government'..

[In his book Grant F. Smith] writes: 'Not until the early 1960s would the Senate begin to investigate whether U.S. aid sent overseas and other funds were being secretly laundered back into the U.S. to obtain political influence and additional foreign aid. In 1963, a close analysis of [AZC official] I. L. Kenen’s financing revealed that this was indeed happening'.. The Senate hearings documented the fact that in the early 1960s, Israel funneled $5 million (more than 35 million in today’s dollars) into U.S. propaganda and lobbying operations"

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WION: "Russia approves draft logistics agreement with India.. A logistics pact, such as the one proposed, facilitates mutual logistical support between countries during various military operations, including peacekeeping missions, humanitarian assistance, and joint military exercises. The support usually involves critical services like refuelling, maintenance, and supply provisions, and increases interoperability"

Massive push visible NE of Robotyne, looks like a dagger, gains NW Volodymyrivka, around Krasnohorivka and Karlivka. Only UA pushback I see is in Kharkiv, but is that front another meat grinder?

#Frontline #RU #UA 06/20 - 06/27

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Doctorow: "After 40 years of expanded copyright, we have a creative industry that's larger and more profitable than ever, and yet the share of income going to creative workers has been in steady decline over that entire period. Every year, the share of creative income that creative workers can lay claim to declines, both proportionally and in real terms..

As with the mystery of Spotify's payments, this isn't a mystery at all. You just need to understand that when creators are stuck bargaining with a tiny, powerful cartel of movie, TV, music, publishing, streaming, games or app companies, it doesn't matter how much copyright they have to bargain with. Giving a creative worker more copyright is like giving a bullied schoolkid more lunch-money. There's no amount of money that will satisfy the bullies and leave enough left over for the kid to buy lunch. They just take everything"

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"@TechExplorer@flipboard.social

Switzerland-based aerospace company has unveiled the world’s first hydrogen-powered luxury VTOL aircraft SiriusJet. The aircraft is claimed to be cost-efficient as the total cost for a full fuel tank refill, covering the maximum travel distance, is a mere $500"

"@FediThing@chinwag.org

The worst kind of tech hype is when something is portrayed as inevitable and unstoppable, with criticism or doubt blithely dismissed as 'they don't get it'"

Pic 1, Pic 2, Pic 3, Pic 4

"Tesla Model Y plummets to 18th place in European charts last month, sales fell by 49 percent"

1945, Davis: "[2022] For 15 consecutive years, Putin has been signaling that NATO on his border in Georgia and Ukraine are red lines for which he would use force if crossed. Beginning in February 2007, Putin strongly signaled at the Munich Security Conference that he considered NATO expansion eastward to his border to be “a serious provocationThe next year, following NATO’s Bucharest Conference in which NATO officially announced the future entrance of Georgia and Ukraine, Putin warned that expanding NATO to Ukraine or Georgia would constitute a 'direct threat' to his security. Four months later, he demonstrated he was willing to use limited military force to prevent NATO’s accession to his border with the attack on Georgia..”

A lot of those donors are also Clinton donors fyi

#Uniparty #Corporatocracy

Mediate: "Journalist Pablo Manriquez.. shared the contents of a folder 'full of briefing documents' on [Ted] Cruz’s donors after it was left unattended, presumably by a staffer, in the Senate dining room. The posts – which detailed Cruz’s purported wine and dine schedule with donors in Washington, D.C. and New York, and featured individual biographies of each of the donors – received thousands of likes before they were removed by X, formerly known as Twitter, on Tuesday evening".

"@SrRochardBunson@universeodon.com

'Dammit I'm mad' spelled backwards is 'Dammit I'm mad'"

"@molly0xfff@hachyderm.io

.. John Curtis defeated Trent Staggs in the Republican Utah Senate primary, with the help of $5 million in crypto industry funding"

Crypto bros also spent $2 million against Bowman. The democracy-for-sale aspect of it all smells pretty bad, not to mention the optics of placing the interests of a foreign power ahead of your own in the case of AIPAC.

Rolling Stone: "Jamaal Bowman Loses Seat in Face of Pro-Israel Lobby Spending Spree"

NYT: "Middle East Crisis: Half a Million in Gaza Face Starvation, Report Says"

SCMP: "Green hydrogen: is this Australia’s breakout moment amid US$127 billion boom down under?.. Located 400km north of Alice Springs in central Australia, phase one of the proposed Green Springs project, targeted for completion by 2030, will feature 10 gigawatts (GW) of solar panels, enough to meet the requirements of more than 3 million households.

If the project, spread over 200 square kilometres, gets the go ahead and is successfully financed, the solar farms will power 2,150 modules of 'electrolysers', each with a capacity of 5 megawatts (MW). They will use the abundant power generated to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen"

"@stevestreza@indieweb.social

This is the framing Apple wants to sell for their decision to withhold features from the EU, and blogs are parroting it.

In reality, Apple is purposefully withholding these features from the EU, either because Apple are being retaliatory against EU customers for the existence of the DMA, or because Apple (with full knowledge of the DMA for years) refused to build these features in compliance with it.

Apple chose to harm their products in the EU. The DMA didn't. This framing is marketing"

Pic 1, Pic 2, Pic 3, Pic 4

"@fuck_cars_bot@botsin.space

'Go play outside!'"

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AJC Politics: "[Georgia Gov] Kemp says hydrogen could fuel next wave of Georgia-Korea economic ties.. At a visit to a Hyundai Motor Group track, they tested a zero-emission hydrogen engine that could disrupt the electric vehicle market. And in sit-downs with Korean leaders, including the president, they discussed how emerging technologies could reshape the industry"

But of course I cannot find simple web based file browser app that supports multi-select, copy, move, delete, so I have to build it. We are going to Funkytown.

New Atlas: "Green hydrogen breakthrough swaps in water for iridium.. ICFO researchers created an anode catalyst made from.. common elements: cobalt and tungsten. But to protect the anode from the predicted degradation from the electrolysis process, they took a unique turn by impregnating a cobalt-tungsten oxide with water – the very substance in which it is made to operate"

NYT: "Fire at Lithium Battery Plant in South Korea Kills 22.. It took only 15 seconds for the floor to be filled with smoke and flames, said a senior fire official.. After trying in vain to put out the blaze with fire extinguishers, he said, the workers rushed to an area of the floor where there was no exit...

Workers who fled the fire said it started when a single battery cell caught fire, triggering a series of explosions among some of the 35,000 lithium battery cells stored on the factory’s second floor.. Fires can occur in lithium batteries when the inside layers are compressed, causing a short circuit. The layers can become compressed by a sudden impact, such as during a vehicle collision, or by gradual swelling of the batteries through regular use... Lithium battery fires have been a growing problem in the United States and elsewhere, and fires are an industrywide concern for battery manufacturers...

The blaze was the deadliest in South Korea since a fire at a construction site southeast of Seoul killed 38 people in 2020"

DB won't steal attention, has exec experience, a Pence 2.0?

WSJ: "Why Little-Known Doug Burgum Is in Trump's VP Mix.. The presumptive Republican nominee likes North Dakota's governor—and his rich friends"

Newsweek: "Nassim Taleb.. weighed in on the situation in Afghanistan, describing it as 'largely a wealth transfer from U.S. taxpayers to military contractors.'.. The comment adds to those from other observers who have zeroed in on the role of military contractors. Saqib Qureshi, a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics, wrote a recent Newsweek op-ed entitled 'Taliban Didn't Win in Afghanistan, the Defense Contractors Did'"

Newsweek: "[2021] Wikileaks founder Julian Assange said years ago the goal in Afghanistan 'is to have an endless war not a successful war,' in order to 'wash money out of the tax bases of the United States...into the hands of the transnational security elite'"

Comparing Snowden and Assange, IMO the latter suffered more bcz Snowden's revelations were more about the US government itself than the larger military-industrial private complex which Assange's Wikileaks threatened more directly. That's why they brought the hammer down much harder on him.

"@mondoweiss@social.mondoweiss.net

It is unconscionable for Israel to participate in the 2024 Paris Olympics. Israel should be suspended from international sports organizations and events until it ends its grave violations of international law"

"@quarkrotto@mastodon.bida.im

Julian Assange freed from the UK’s high-security Belmarsh prison on Monday and taken to the airport whre he flew out of the country. Assange will appear at a court in Saipan, a US Pacific territory at 9am on Wednesday (23:00 GMT on Tuesday) where he will be sentenced to 62 months already served" via Al-Jazeera

👍 👍 👏 👏 Kudos to all involved.. it was about time

NBC News: "Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free"

Truthdig: "I.. [read] peer-reviewed publications arguing.. addiction with opioid prescriptions never really happens. My medical school years (2005-2009) saw a blizzard of such academic papers, all claiming that we could relax and start slinging product. Hundreds of those papers — 439, to be exact— cited for their evidence one mysterious paper, published in the New England Journal of Medicine... [That paper enjoyed] glowing write-ups in mainstream media. TIME magazine called it a 'landmark study,' one that showed fears of opioid addiction had been 'exaggerated,' and were 'basically unwarranted.' Scientific American said Porter & Jick’s 'extensive study' was evidence for a new modern understanding that 'morphine taken for pain is not addictive.'....

The letter’s authors were Jane Porter, a grad student, and Hershel Jick, a physician. Porter and Jick reported reviewing 11,000 patients in 'our current files' at a Boston hospital who got treated with an opioid and finding only four cases of 'reasonably well-documented addiction', whatever any of that means. As evidence goes, it’s so low-quality for decision-making purposes that it borders on useless... Many years later, unscrupulous pharmaceutical companies dusted off this [paper].. Their marketing departments had come up with a clever use for it. They would claim that addiction happens far less than 1% of the time (four cases out of 11,000 would be 0.036%). They would cite The New England Journal of Medicine. Then they would grin slyly, because no one ever reads the footnotes"

"@burgerdrome@aus.social

ME: Hello computer! Please show me what I was doing recently

COMPUTER IN THE 1980's: l cease to exist when I am powered off. Please start whatever you were doing from scratch

COMPUTER IN THE 2000's: Yep here you go champ

COMPUTER IN THE 2020's: I stored 10,000 identical copies of what you were doing in 500 different global datacentres at a carbon footprint equivalent to leaving a semi-trailer idling 24/7... Let me know which one you want and I'll do my best to figure it out. By the way here are 10 things which are similar to what you were doing and 9 of them are ads. Do you like this? Please select 'I love this very much' or 'I'll be in love with this later' to continue"

A major problem with the electricity infrastructure is its production and consumption must be in perfect sync. If 100 is produced, 80 is needed, 20 goes to waste (or never produced to begin with). This is cumbersome tech, impractical. Energy production and consumption needs to be decoupled, excess can be stored using green methods via clean fuels.

CleanTechnica: "Green Hydrogen To Rescue 'Stranded' Offshore Wind Resources.. [It is possible] excess electricity from offshore wind turbines is shunted to electrolyzer systems primarily at night, when wind speeds pick up but electricity demand slows down.. The hydrogen produced from offshore electrolyzers would be transported to shore by pipeline or by ship...

'Wind Europe have identified that a considerable portion of the low-cost offshore wind resource in Europe is located within the North Sea, much of which is at a significant distance from shore and from existing electrical infrastructure.. This configuration presents a significant opportunity for the production and storage of hydrogen at the source of electricity production offshore, leveraging existing infrastructure in the region' [Net Zero org explains]"

"@arstechnica@mastodon.social

Internet Archive forced to remove 500,000 books after publishers’ court win.. fans beg publishers to stop emptying the open library"

"A French fueling systems company claims it has speed-tested its internal-combustion engine, burning hydrogen fuel in a 656-mile (1,056-km) endurance run over a period of 12 hours.. The company, Phinia, says one of its hydrogen ICE (H2ICE) vans was tested fully loaded in temperatures as low as -4C (25F). It claims this test illustrates the potential of hydrogen as a practical alternative fuel for ICE-powered vehicles with particular focus on high-intensity applications in the trucking and light-commercial-vehicle transportation industries"

Citizen complains "I am going bankrupt due to medical bills", "monopoly suffocating my choices". The centrist response is "fuck you". Who thinks like that? This has been normie politics of the past 40 years.

Nicolai Petro is right.. far-left, far-right traditionally had extreme positions, center was safety, the middle position. But recently center is extremist - they expanded NATO, hawkishly provoked Ukraine's big neighbor, brushed off any peace attempt / negotiation while risking WW III. Now the so called far-left and right are promoting a sane solution (oddly called "extremist" bcz of it). Lest we forget the neo-lib, globalist, ultra-free market ideology of today's center was always an extremist approach historically. Thanks to decades of propaganda people forgot how off-kilter these muckers truly are, in worldview, solutions, and default positions.

The Guardian: "UK children shorter, fatter and sicker amid poor diet and poverty, report finds.. Food Foundation says height of five-year-olds falling, child obesity up by a third and type 2 diabetes by a fifth"

"@GossiTheDog@cyberplace.social

Probably the funniest thing there is, despite having an NPU, you need an internet connection to use it in Paint.

MS accidentally published a new version of Recall.. (that’s why the Windows canary builds got withdrawn). Obviously, I haven’t used it yet - but I am in a chat channel with a bunch of security and privacy researchers, and: oh boy, there will be a lot to talk about if that feature actually launches like that"

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NYT: "Putin Came to Asia to Disrupt, and He Succeeded"

Reuters: "The European Commission has signed off on about 3 billion euros ($3.2 billion) of planned German state aid for building a system of hydrogen pipelines known as the Hydrogen Core Network (HCN). Berlin plans to give financial guarantees to allow companies that build and run the 20 billion euro network to obtain more favourable loans to cover initial losses during the ramp-up phase from 2025. Encouraging the uptake of hydrogen outweighs any distortion to EU competition and trade from the scheme, the Commission said on Friday"

Emerging Technology News: "HTEC plans to deploy 100 H2 fuel-cell e- trucks in Canada"

The American Conservative: "A Vision for a New NATO.. Expansion was a misstep, but the situation is not unsalvageable—history offers clues to a better way...

On an unusually cloudy July day in London in 1990, the heads of state and government at the annual NATO summit declared with sunny optimism that a new era beckoned in central and eastern Europe. The declaration itself was banal bureaucratese: invitations to initiate diplomatic contacts, plans to prepare a force structure that would move away from 'forward defense' towards 'flexible response.'..

Secretary of State James Baker had personally assured Gorbachev in February that NATO would move 'not one inch' eastward. This pledge was repeated in some form or other by NATO Secretary-General Manfred Wörner, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, Margaret Thatcher, Francois Mitterrand, and President George H. W. Bush. British Prime Minister John Major, when asked by Soviet Marshal Dmitri Yazov about East European leaders’ interest in NATO membership, reassured him that 'nothing of the sort will happen.'..

[A] careful study of Russian reactions to various phases of NATO enlargement gives the impression of a rational power originally determined to be a friend if not an ally of the West... The surprise in Moscow was therefore palpable when the NATO enlargement study was launched in 1995, leading Boris Yeltsin to declare that the Cold War was slowly being replaced with a 'Cold Peace.' The pro-Western democrats in Russia naturally felt betrayed, rightly recognizing NATO expansion as a threat to their domestic influence"

Gjovik's office, while she worked at Apple, was on an EPA Superfund site (a place marked as extremely toxic), Apple fired her for complaining to the government about it.

"@ashleygjovik@mastodon.social

My latest civil amended complaint is now filed!"

"The richest men on Earth own most of Hawaii while most of us don't 'own' a single acre of our US-illegally occupied home, that hasn't yet been bombed into a toxic waste dump by the US military"

"@ben@werd.social

Earning a decent, reliable income as a social-media creator is a slog—and it’s getting harder. Platforms are doling out less money for popular posts and brands are being pickier about what they want out of sponsorship deals"

Stoller: "Josh Hawley and Matt Gaetz.. saw big business as an existential threat, arguing that large firms were simply too powerful to co-exist with an elected government, as Trump had said in 2016 about media conglomerates. Others, like House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan and House GOP leader Steve Scalise, retreated to what they knew, which was to treat big business as part of the Republican political machine, but needing a little wayward discipline"

Stoller: "Northrop-Orbital merger.. placed one corporation in charge of our nuclear arsenal"

@GossiTheDog@cyberplace.social

Quora: "[W]hen the [French] PM is from an opposite group (this situation is called cohabitation) his/her powers become clearer. This happens when the majority in the national assembly changes during presidential office, the President has to choose a PM from the new majority (not legally but strategically, and this has happened 3 times since the beginning of the 5th Republic in 1958). There the PM has democratic legitimacy because the change in majority means that the citizens are unsatisfied with the President's party's policy, so it becomes politically dangerous for the President to oppose the PM's actions, especially the choice of the ministers, and refusing to sign the decrees implementing new laws (it happens though). As you can guess cohabitation periods are complicated, with many tensions and more or less difficulties to govern considering the actors' ability to find compromises and to cooperate with each other"

ABC News: "Far-right leader Bardella backpedals on taking France out of NATO strategic military command.. The far-right leader angling to become France’s prime minister after the country’s upcoming parliamentary election has backtracked on the party’s previous promise to pull out of NATO’s strategic military command"

It was a good call, both for him and FR; otherwise prez had to govern under a suspicion of legitimacy there'd a bizarre lull. By calling for snap elections u throw down the gauntlet to the electorate, "you voted for the oppo for EU, do you want them to govern the country as well?" Now people will either back centrists out of the usual fear of far-right, or the opposition gets a mandate and finally have a seat in governance. Either way the lull is resolved.

F24: "[Macron] stunned the nation by calling the polls for June 30 and July 7 after the far-right National Rally (RN) trounced his centrist alliance in EU elections earlier this month... But the president hit back on Tuesday, saying dissolving the National Assembly was 'the heaviest, the most serious, but the most responsible solution' after the EU election debacle"

QNS: "Salvation Army activates cooling centers around Queens amid heat wave"

Biden net approval hovers around -17%, he still has the advantage taking other parameters into account (incumbency, a non-crashing economy). But let's not count out Trump. An "Alpha Team" usually does not run during unfavorable times, for '24-like races it's been beta types that run, historically, think Hillary '16, or Mitt '12.

Arab News: "UK PM Sunak’s Conservatives set for heavy election defeat, polls forecast"

NYT: "More than eight months of fighting between Israel and Hamas has destroyed buildings and infrastructure across the Gaza Strip, leaving more than 39 million tons of debris and exacerbating an already dire health crisis there, according to [UN]"