Tuesday Trash Roundup

Hey, we’re on time this week. Welcome to our weekly (more or less) attempt to clear out our saved browser bookmarks. It’s Herculean. Er, maybe Sisyphean. Hmm. Upon reflection, I’ve got the wrong legends. For the purposes, I think we need Cloacina on the case. Cloacina was the patroness of the Roman sewers. Only the goddess of filth can take on the whole internet.

Dramatic Drop in Marijuana Use Among U.S. Youth Over a Decade

The study, published in the journal Pediatric Reports, reveals that one of the most striking results from the analysis is the significant decrease in the percentage of adolescents reporting current marijuana use. In 2011, 23.1% of adolescents indicated they were current users, but by 2021, this figure had dropped to 15.8%. Additionally, the percentage of adolescents trying marijuana for the first time before age 13 also saw a notable decline, from 8.1% in 2011 to 4.9% in 2021.

Hmm. Asking teenagers if they smoke dope. If my experience is any guide, half the respondents will lie and say they don’t smoke doobies, and the other half will lie and say they do smoke doobies.

License Plate Readers Are Creating a US-Wide Database of More Than Just Cars

These images were generated by AI-powered cameras mounted on cars and trucks, initially designed to capture license plates, but which are now photographing political lawn signs outside private homes, individuals wearing T-shirts with text, and vehicles displaying pro-abortion bumper stickers—all while recording the precise locations of these observations. Newly obtained data reviewed by WIRED shows how a tool originally intended for traffic enforcement has evolved into a system capable of monitoring speech protected by the US Constitution.

Do people still wave at the Google war-driving car? Everyone used to. Dystopia, apparently, is not a top-down idea.

Researchers say an AI-powered transcription tool used in hospitals invents things no one ever said

The full extent of the problem is difficult to discern, but researchers and engineers said they frequently have come across Whisper’s hallucinations in their work. A University of Michigan researcher conducting a study of public meetings, for example, said he found hallucinations in eight out of every 10 audio transcriptions he inspected, before he started trying to improve the model.

A machine learning engineer said he initially discovered hallucinations in about half of the over 100 hours of Whisper transcriptions he analyzed. A third developer said he found hallucinations in nearly every one of the 26,000 transcripts he created with Whisper.

I hope no one is playing the Operation game in a nearby waiting room while I’m being examined and recorded like this. I’d hate to be unconscious on an operating table while the doctor looks at his assistant, and says, “It says here we’re supposed to take out his wrenched ankle.”

The Great Exhibition unveils the world’s only office roller coaster in Stockholm

The roller coaster, which took over a year to design and build, features three metres of elevation and is constructed from four tons of red-lacquered steel. While some questioned the practicality of having a roller coaster in the office, Kukacka reflects, “In the end, everyone agreed that the benefits outweighed the challenges. Building this roller coaster taught us that almost anything is possible if you have a clear idea and stick to it.”

I told my sons that offices used to be well-organized, serious places where important work got done as efficiently as possible by people who wanted to project a certain amount of dignity in their comportment and dress. Sure, dad, and you rode a dinosaur to work, I’ll bet.

Your Doctor Won’t See You Now—or Ever Again

Their reasons for not pursuing the kind of generalist care they trained for? Morros says they don’t want to have to run a business. If family doctors’ compensation is going to be the lowest of all physicians’, they at least want to rein in their hours and responsibilities. And they want to be able to take a vacation. Morros frames this as “moral injury.” Residents tell her that if they can’t get time away from their patients when they need to, then they’d rather not take on regular patients.

I don’t go to the doctor much. The clerks pester me endlessly to name my primary physician. They fall back to asking the name of any doctor I’ve ever seen. They’re flummoxed when I can’t name anybody. Once, after a particularly energetic hectoring from the clerk, I answered truthfully: Dr. Erwin Pastorello. They looked him up, and said to me, “But it says here he died in 1974.” Yup. That’s the last doctor who knew my name. And he gave me a lollipop.

Bret Taylor’s customer service AI startup just raised $175M

Sierra, launched by Taylor and longtime Google exec Clay Bavor, focuses on selling AI-powered customer service chatbots to brands like WeightWatchers and Sirius XM. There’s an “agent” component, as well. The platform connects to other enterprise systems to undertake tasks on behalf of the customer without humans being involved.

I’m sorry, but I only recognize customer service information if it’s delivered in a thick, Punjabi accent, with an upsell offer tacked on. And, why yes, I have tried turning it off and on again.

The Battery Revolution Is Finally Here

After a lot more experimentation, the industry determined that solid electrolytes were probably the best way to prevent making rechargeable bombs. In other words, SSBs were more or less conceptualized and developed as a result of chasing an ideal anode. Most solid-state cells in development today from Factorial, QuantumScape and others like Solid Power, have lithium metal anodes.

I’m looking forward to the day when your electric car battery can only electrocute you, not electrocute you and set you on fire.

Google accused of shadow campaigns redirecting antitrust scrutiny to Microsoft

In the blog, Microsoft lawyer Rima Alaily alleged that an astroturf group called the Open Cloud Coalition will launch this week and will appear to be led by “a handful of European cloud providers.” In actuality, however, those smaller companies were secretly recruited by Google, which allegedly pays them “to serve as the public face” and “obfuscate” Google’s involvement, Microsoft’s blog said. In return, Google likely offered the cloud providers cash or discounts to join, Alaily alleged.

Hey, Rima, I’m not a lawyer, and I don’t even play one on teevee, but even I know real, adult lawyers don’t blog about tortious interference, or whatever law-talking guys call it when regulators are involved. They sue and stuff like that. Otherwise, MS is paying lawyer rates for whining. You can get that for free on Reddit, generally.

The truth behind Lee Sklar’s custom ‘producer’s switch’

Nowadays the world and its sales rep want Sklar to endorse their products, including German-based manufacturer Warwick, who built him one of their Star Basses, but with a one-off custom switch. “I call it my producer’s switch,” explains Lee. “If I’m on a session and the producer asks me to get a different sound, I make sure he sees me flip this switch and then I just change my hand position a bit. There are no wires of anything that go to this switch. It’s a placebo, but it’s saved me a lot of grief in the studio.”

Gandalf the bass player is a genius for that one. Of course, the practice has a long pedigree. Office managers have been disabling the thermostat, but leaving it on the wall for girls to fiddle with, for many years.

Ford CEO says new mid-size electric pickup will match the cost of Chinese EVs like BYD

With new low-cost Chinese flooding global markets, Ford CEO Jim Farley vows its new mid-size electric pickup is a “game changer.” Ford’s leader took a jab at BYD, vowing the company’s new electric pickup will match the costs of Chinese automakers building in Mexico.

Kinda hilarious. They’re touting hybrids. The all-electric range is 62 miles. And they want over $50,000 for it. As I’ve pointed out before, you can buy a gas-powered pickup in Mexico for twenty grand.

Have a nice Tuesday everyone. Thanks for reading and commenting and buying my book and hitting my tip jar. It’s greatly appreciated.

Kinda Trash Day

Apparently, it’s Wednesday. What happened to Tuesday? I didn’t get the memo. No one notified me. I didn’t get a heads-up. I wasn’t clued in. At any rate, let’s clean out our browser bookmarks, and start looking forward to another week of putting fresh ones aside, and not getting around to reading them either.

How DRAM changed the world

1966 was a long time ago. The Beatles released Revolver. The No. 1 film was The Good, the Bad, and The Ugly. And computers, such as they were, involved paper tape and punch card readers. That same year, Robert Dennard invented dynamic random access memory (DRAM). Two years later — 55 years ago —on June 4, 1968, the DRAM patent was granted. The rest is history.

That’s not bad writing. It is, however, trite writing. Interesting story, though, of a man you never heard of that invented something akin to the wheel, only for computers.

Singapore grants conditional approval for 4,300km subsea cable to import electricity from Australia

Approval was granted to import 1.75 gigawatts (GW) of low-carbon electricity from Northern Australia into Singapore, announced Second Minister for Trade and Industry Tan See Leng on Oct. 22 at the Asia Clean Energy Summit during the Singapore International Energy Week (SIEW) 2024. This will account for approximately nine per cent of Singapore’s total electricity needs.

I hope the United States never objects to this. It would be a shame if something happened to your undersea infrastructure.

Brazil Arrests ‘USDoD,’ Hacker in FBI Infragard Breach

Brazilian authorities reportedly have arrested a 33-year-old man on suspicion of being “USDoD,” a prolific cybercriminal who rose to infamy in 2022 after infiltrating the FBI’s InfraGard program and leaking contact information for 80,000 members. More recently, USDoD was behind a breach at the consumer data broker National Public Data that led to the leak of Social Security numbers and other personal information for a significant portion of the U.S. population.

Does this mean the girl at the dentist’s office could just look up my SS# online, instead of asking me every time? It would save time.

Oriental hornets do not get sick or die when consuming very large amounts of alcohol, study shows

A team of behavioral ecologists, zoologists and crop protection specialists from Tel Aviv University reports that Oriental hornets have the highest-known tolerance to alcohol in the animal kingdom. In their study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group fed ethanol solutions to hornets.

I’ll take Answers to Questions nobody asked for $500, Alex. Also, the Oriental Hornets is the name of my Vapors tribute band. But I digress.

Tracks left by a bird-sized dinosaur suggest it used wings to run faster

A small international team of biologists, geologists and paleontologists has found evidence that a bird-sized dinosaur from the early Cretaceous used its wings to run faster. In their study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group analyzed both the footprints and the creature that left them and reported evidence for wing-assisted running.

It’s a news item about wings that doesn’t even mention how they might go with blue cheese dip and celery on the side. I’ll mark it incomplete.

A Hiker Started a Wildfire Trying to Signal for Help. Now He Owes the Government $300,000

Powers, she wrote, “was reckless and negligent in his preparation for a hike of this magnitude from the outset.” He hadn’t packed a GPS device, paper map, or compass, instead relying on a cell phone mapping app that was useless without service. He had failed to bring a headlamp or flashlight, instead relying on his phone’s built-in light. While he had brought two large knives, he hadn’t brought a first-aid kit or any method of signaling for help in an emergency. He wasn’t, she said, even on the right trail: Instead of the 17-mile, moderate Cabin Loop, he was hiking the 18.8-mile Taylor Cabin Loop, a full 50 miles away, which his guidebook rated as strenuous.

Nature tries as hard as it can to cull the weak-minded. We’re always interfering.

Welcome to the Dark Side of the Tech Industry

In the high-pressure world of technology startups, where willpower, work ethic, and high intelligence are highly prized, disheartening trends are prevailing in the industry. From drug use and disagreeable coworkers to the constant worry about losing your job and the harsh glass floor to get into the industry, these challenges paint a grim picture of what it takes to survive and thrive in tech.

Hmm. I was unaware the tech industry had a good side. People typing a little in cubicles want to make it sound like they’re climbing Everest. Oh well. If the going gets too rough, I suggest you light a signal fire in the break room, and wait for help.

Nationwide Telecommunications Provider and its CEO Plead Guilty to Massively Defrauding Federal Government Programs Meant to Aid the Needy

MIAMI –Issa Asad, 51, of Southwest Ranches, Fla., and Q Link Wireless LLC, of Dania Beach, Fla., pleaded guilty today to conspiring to defraud and commit offenses against the United States in connection with a years-long scheme to steal over $100 million from a celebrated federal program providing discounted phone service to people in need. Asad, Q Link’s CEO, also pleaded guilty to laundering money from a separate scheme to defraud a different federal program meant to aid individuals and businesses hurt by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Issa Asad? I always hate to see a fellow Irishman gone bad.

How the United States Can Win the Battery Race

But even significant funding won’t get the job done if it isn’t directed at the right target: securing U.S. supremacy in next-generation technology, solid-state batteries. U.S. companies and research institutions are on the cusp of commercializing next-generation batteries that far surpass the performance of today’s lithium-ion batteries in safety, longevity, and energy density. And with scaled-up production, these batteries would eliminate dependence on Chinese-produced graphite.

Solid state batteries are all of a sudden the answer. I’ve said it here ten times. Li-Ion batteries are the curlicue lightbulbs of energy storage. Although Teslas will always make excellent signal fires if you’re stranded a short walk from the nearest battery charger. 

Neanderthal group genetically isolated for 50,000 years despite being just 10 days’ walk from neighbours

Until now, the story has been that at the time of the extinction there was just one Neanderthal population that was genetically homogeneous, but now we know that there were at least 2 populations present at that time,” says co-first author Tharsika Vimala of the University of Copenhagen.

They should have lit a signal fire when the signal from their cellphones went dead. They were Neanderthal, so I assume they had flip phones.

Well, there’s the roundup. Go out there and have a terrific yesterday, people.

Tuesday Trash Roundup. On Thursday

Well, it’s the second daily anniversary of Tuesday. Tuesday is usually trash day. Of course we had a holiday, which sets trash pickup back a day. I’ve noticed that even though they don’t want to call it Columbus Day anymore, everyone who works for the government still wants the day off. I think it’s the descendants of the same governments that sorta crowded out the indigenous people around here, and sent them to the Dakotas, or perdition. They still want the day off to celebrate it. Go be indigenous somewhere else, though. But a  day off is a day off, I guess.

I’m reminded of St. Patrick’s Day in Boston. If you’re not from the Bay State, you may not know that Boston was once about 110% Irish. The indigenous people were the Yankees back then, and the Irish newcomers made them trace a trail of tears and mortgages to the suburbs, to live on cul-de-sac reservations in godforsaken places like Wellesley and Brookline. Anyway, St. Paddy’s day was more than a holiday in Boston. It was all the holidays put together.

There was a problem. Everyone Irish in Boston worked for the government in one way or another, and St. Paddy’s wasn’t an official holiday. You couldn’t be in the parades for ten minutes and the barrooms for ten hours if you were on duty at the State house, sleeping behind a desk like you did on any other given day. So Massachusetts invented a holiday called Evacuation Day. It’s the date when British troops finally got as tired of Bostonians as you are and left the city for good. I know the feeling. It’s amusing to see the Wikiup even gently calling the date of the holiday falling on the same day as St. Patrick’s Day “a coincidence.” Yeah, and Oswald was just trying to shoot pigeons and missed.

Not many people in Boston could actually tell you what Evacuation Day is supposed to commemorate. But eventually, everyone just decided it refers to evacuating every government building in town. And of course taking shelter in any safe haven. You know, one with a liquor license. They’re famously safe.

So it’s a day late for being a day late, and as always a dollar short unless someone hits my tip jar, but I’ve got to evacuate my browser bookmarks before Tuesday rolls around again, or I’ll have to put two bags of pixels out on the curb next week.

The Rise and Fall of Matchbox’s Toy-Car Empire

The announcement that John Cena has signed on to be the star of the new Matchbox live-action movie raises a few questions. First—there’s going to be a Matchbox movie? And second—what will it be about, exactly?

Egad. Please, no. The Barbie movie is mentioned. Enough. But I’m here to tell you that the original Matchbox cars were the coolest toy a male American child could own, and we owned hundreds of them. They were simply miniature versions of real cars, and very well-made. Eventually the company lost its mind and tried to compete with Hot Wheels, and started making ridiculous looking race car thingies, and got bought out by Mattel for their troubles. Now every car that passes me on the highway looks like a Hot Wheel. I long for a return of a Matchbox world. Not a Matchbox movie. And by the way, American Bricks were way, way better than Legos, too.

Why birds do not fall while sleeping

In this model, the body and foot bones were replaced by bars, and muscles and tendons by more or less rigid cables. The joints between each bone in the feet were replaced by pulleys. “We began the experiments by using a single cable that began at the ‘bird’s’ pelvis and stretched to its feet, passing through all of the joints (hip, knee, ankle), and therefore through all of the pulleys.”

That sounds like a lot of work. They should have just found a parrot, and asked nicely.

EV battery prices to fall by nearly 50 pct and near ICE parity by 2026, says Goldman Sachs

Technological advances designed to increase battery energy density, combined with a drop in green metal prices, are expected to push battery prices lower than previously expected, according to a new briefing from Goldman Sachs Research.

It says global average battery prices declined from $153 (all prices in USD) per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2022 to $149/kWh in 2023 and are projected to fall to $111 by the end of 2024.

Goldman Sachs’ researchers further predict that average battery prices could fall as far as $80/kWh by 2026, which would equate to a drop of almost 50 per cent from 2023 levels.

I assume this prediction just means Goldman Sachs is buying electricity generating companies.

Federal Trade Commission Announces Final “Click-to-Cancel” Rule Making It Easier for Consumers to End Recurring Subscriptions and Memberships

The Commission’s updated rule will apply to almost all negative option programs in any media. The rule also will prohibit sellers from misrepresenting any material facts while using negative option marketing; require sellers to provide important information before obtaining consumers’ billing information and charging them; and require sellers to get consumers’ informed consent to the negative option features before charging them.

Hey, maybe you can finally stop paying AOL every month.

Why Don’t We Use Awnings Anymore

They built these structures with incredibly clever passive heating and cooling systems like the double-hung window, making the best of the technological limitations of their day to create buildings that could keep people relatively comfortably even in extreme temperatures and awnings were a major part of that.

The author points to air conditioning as the death knell for awnings. Fair enough. But plenty of Americans didn’t have A/C until fairly recently. Vinyl siding killed awnings just as fast as A/C did. Everything was stripped off the exterior to make way for its plastic winding sheet.

How to Work for a Boss Who Always Changes Their Mind

Reporting to an indecisive boss is an unquestionably “challenging and frustrating situation,” says Sydney Finkelstein, the director of the Leadership Center at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. If your leader is easily influenced by whoever talked to them last, what other organizations are doing, or the TikTok they saw this morning, it shouldn’t sentence you to a constant state of flux. While you can’t control their behavior, you’re not powerless.

I can simplify this much further, Sydney. If your boss even knows what TikTok is, you have a stupid job. And man, the Harvard Business Review has lost a lot off its fastball over the years.

Court Tells EPA to Consider Fluoride Risk, to Dentists’ Dismay

Many experts say water fluoridation is a safe, crucial tool for preventing tooth decay. Critics say fluoridated water has little dental value, and they point to some studies suggesting that swallowing fluoride may harm developing brains.

I drank fluoridated water all the time while I was growing up, and I haven’t noticed any bad pancakes curbstones zzzyva garfish toenail gllllll fzzzbit gurgle… uh, effects.

The not-so-glamourous origins of standard track gauge

As it happens, the story in question was plagiarised in its entirety from an email spam chain that has been doing the rounds in the US since the 1990s. However, speculation over the reason why standard track gauge is, on the face of it, such an odd number isn’t confined to dodgy email spam — in fact, it occurs amongst seasoned railway folks too.

If you’re unfamiliar, they’re discussing the distance between railroad tracks, which is more or less standardized. It demonstrates something interesting about the internet: Not only is the internet mostly wrong about everything, it’s also the only source of information anyone pays attention to anymore, including the LLMs that are going to be used to answer everyone’s questions going forward. Good luck with that.

RTX to pay $950 million to resolve US defense fraud, Qatar bribery charges

Prosecutors in Boston alleged that Raytheon from 2012 to 2018 defrauded the Defense Department into paying over $111 million more than it should have in two contracts to purchase Patriot missile systems and operate a radar system.

So Raytheon will pay a fine to the US government using funds no doubt paid to it by the US government. No one gets fired or goes to jail. Nice work, when you can get it.

Two accused of DDoSing some of the world’s biggest tech companies

The prosecutors said Anonymous Sudan operated a cloud-based DDoS tool to take down or seriously degrade the performance of online targets and often took to a Telegram channel afterward to boast of the exploits. The tool allegedly performed more than 35,000 attacks, 70 of which targeted computers in Los Angeles, where the indictment was filed. The operation allegedly ran from no later than January 2023 to March 2024.

Interestingly, Anonymous Sudan was the name of my Joni Mitchell tribute band. Well, I think it was. Or it might just be the fluoride talking.

Have a great Tuesday… er, Wednesday… um, Thursday… hot damn that fluoride lingers, don’t it?