March 30, 2024
Momentum is growing for guaranteed income
A legislator in Illinois, USA, has proposed giving certain categories of people $1,000 monthly on a continuing basis. That is the boldest plan for guaranteed income in the U.S. since 2020 presidential candidate Andrew Yang’s idea to give everyone $1K each month. [more inside]
Python found to be the most efficient form of livestock ever studied
Python found to be the most efficient form of livestock ever studied.
Farmed pythons grow fast on a diet of waste and produce a sustainable meat that a researcher says tastes a bit like chicken. Dr Natusch, from Macquarie University's School of Natural Sciences, said the reptiles were an efficient source of protein because of the way they processed food. "Warm-blooded animals waste about 80 to 90 per cent of the energy they get from their food in heat production," he said.
"Cold-blooded animals such as pythons don't have that constraint — they're able to allocate far more of the energy they get from their food into things like growth."
You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone
When a hurricane struck Florida in 2018, Christina’s neighborhood lost electricity, cell service and internet. For four weeks her family was cut off from the world, their days dictated by the rising and setting sun. But Christina did have a vast collection of movies on DVD and Blu-ray, and a portable player that could be charged from an emergency generator. Word got around. The family’s library of physical films and books became a kind of currency. Neighbors offered bottled water or jars of peanut butter for access. The 1989 Tom Hanks comedy The ’Burbs was an inexplicably valuable commodity, as were movies that could captivate restless and anxious children. “I don’t think 99% of people in America would ever stop to think, ‘What would I do if I woke up tomorrow and all access to digital media disappeared?’ But we know,” Christina told me. “We’ve lived it. We’ll never give up our collection. Ever. And maybe, one day, you’ll be the one to come and barter a loaf of bread for our DVD of Casino.”The film fans who refuse to surrender to streaming: As more movies vanish from streaming services, cinephiles are rallying to physical media. Can they save a seemingly dying format?
"If that offends them, so be it."
"Our Trump reporting upsets some readers, but there aren’t two sides to facts" A letter from The Plain Dealer (Cleveland, OH) editor Chris Quinn
Hallucination attack
"During our research [we] encountered an interesting python hallucinated package called “huggingface-cli”... In three months the fake and empty package got more than 30k authentic downloads! (and still counting)... Our findings revealed that several large companies either use or recommend this package in their repositories..." [via The Register]
Tar Trap Caught
A sophisticated backdoor in Linux's xz compression tool, apparently inserted by a long time contributor, was fortunately discovered yesterday in the latest unstable distribution of Debian, before it could be spread more widely.
A computer that could expand with the addition of modular components
An Infamous Anime Genre Comes To English
As part of their regular updates to the English lexicon, the Oxford English Dictionary has added a number of Japanese loan words, most notably the term for a notorious genre of anime and manga - isekai, or "portal fantasy". [more inside]
Grocery shopping with Sidney Poitier
A visit to a supermarket with Sidney Poitier in 1965, a short clip from A Patch Of Blue. So many cans! [more inside]
ThE WoRlD NeEdS MoRe gAdGeTs lIkE LG’s bRiEfCaSe tV
THE GOOD: "Unique and surprisingly fun." THE BAD: "It’s damn heavy." "Unimpressive display specs for the price." "Battery life can be an issue." "No water resistance." You can purchase one for $1197 on Amazon. It weighs 28 pounds. It can lay flat for touchscreen games like chess or when playing music. The Verge reviewer Chris Welch adds, "But it’s… it’s unique as hell." [more inside]
The molehill that became a mountain ...
He wasn't always a minor character, a glorified extra. Earlier today, on another forum, I made a (lame) joke about Lobot, the silent assistant to Lando Calrissian. I always thought he was a just an extra, but instead he was a proto-meme, before there was internet. Also, there's a huge backstory in his bio. The list of things Lobot did in his lifetime is quite impressive. [more inside]
From Young Billionaire To ‘Clown In The Valley’
Ten days after Bolt announced its Series E in January 2022, Breslow tweeted a flurry of insults at investors Sequoia Capital and Y Combinator, who he called the “Mob Bosses of Silicon Valley” and accused of colluding with payments competitor Stripe. Representatives of both firms rejected the claims on Twitter, with Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire calling them a “steaming pile of [poop emoji].” Six days later, Breslow abruptly stepped down as Bolt’s CEO to become its executive chairman, telling CNBC the decision was his own and had come to him while meditating. (Breslow’s title is now chairman, according to the company.) from The Billion-Dollar Unraveling Of The 'King' Of Silicon Valley [Forbes, ungated]
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