And Now For Something Completely Different: The Tuesday Trash Day Roundup Thingie

It’s easy for someone who has written 3,242 blogposts to suspect he might be repeating himself now and then. I suppose the 16,829 comments may be repetitive here and there, too. So instead of re-inventing the wheel, I’m going to let Monty Python comment on the news roundup today. They probably don’t repeat themselves as often as I do, and besides, MY BRAIN HURTS:

Earth has caught a ‘second moon,’ scientists say

The fact that asteroid 2024 PT5 will stick around for just a few weeks, as opposed to billions of years, isn’t the only major difference between this “mini-moon” and the actual moon.

So remember when you’re feeling very small and insecure, how amazingly unlikely is your birth. And pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere up in space, ’cause there’s bugger all down here on Earth!

A tiny town just got slammed by Helene. It could massively disrupt the tech industry

To make both semiconductors and solar panels, companies need crucibles and other equipment that both can withstand extraordinarily high heat and be kept absolutely clean. One material fits the bill: quartz. Pure quartz. Quartz that comes, overwhelmingly, from Spruce Pine.

The mill’s closed. There’s no more work. We’re destitute. I’m afraid I have no choice but to sell you all for scientific experiments.

Red team hacker on how she ‘breaks into buildings and pretends to be the bad guy’

Despite the buzz around AI-assisted social engineering and deepfakes, human conversations — over the phone, electronically, or in-person — are still the most commonly used, and most effective, social engineering tactics for crooks looking to make money off of their victims.

It’s nothing very special. Try to be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations.

Dockworkers at ports from Maine to Texas go on strike

The strike will likely have an almost immediate impact on supplies of perishable imports like bananas, for example. The ports affected by the strike handle 3.8 million metric tons of bananas each year, or 75% of the nation’s supply, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation.

Now, it’s quite simple to defend yourself against the banana fiend. First of all, you force him to drop the banana, next, you eat the banana, thus disarming him. You have now rendered him helpless

Franklin expedition captain who died in 1848 was cannibalized by survivors

“Concrete evidence of James Fitzjames as the first identified victim of cannibalism lifts the veil of anonymity that for 170 years spared the families of individual members of the 1845 Franklin expedition from the horrific reality of what might have befallen the body of their ancestor,” the authors wrote in their paper. “But it also shows that neither rank nor status was the governing principle in the final desperate days of the expedition as they strove to save themselves.”

Look. I tell you what. Those who want to can eat Johnson. And you, sir, can have my leg. And we make some stock from the Captain, and then we’ll have Johnson cold for supper.

FDA Approves Drug with New Mechanism of Action for Treatment of Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia can cause psychotic symptoms including hallucinations (such as hearing voices), difficulty controlling one’s thoughts and being suspicious of others. It can also be associated with cognitive problems and difficulty with social interactions and motivation. About 1% of Americans have this illness and globally it is one of the 15 leading causes of disability. Individuals with schizophrenia are at greater risk of dying at a younger age, and nearly 5% die by suicide.

My brain hurts!

Oh, it will have to come out!

Here’s what happened when Ford tried to react to the Volkswagen Beetle.

More accurately, they didn’t like the small cars American automakers offered. They did like the ones being imported from Europe. New foreign car registrations in the US ballooned from 12,000 units in 1949 to 207,000 by 1957 and were projected to reach 625,000 by 1961 before falling to 495,000 in 1963. By 1959, even Studebaker noticed and launched the compact Lark. Its sales proved popular enough to reverse its slow slide to oblivion momentarily.

My hovercraft is full of eels.

AI bots now beat 100% of those traffic-image CAPTCHAs

Anyone who has been surfing the web for a while is probably used to clicking through a CAPTCHA grid of street images, identifying everyday objects to prove that they’re a human and not an automated bot. Now, though, new research claims that locally run bots using specially trained image-recognition models can match human-level performance in this style of CAPTCHA, achieving a 100 percent success rate despite being decidedly not human.

We interrupt this program to annoy you and make things generally more irritating.

Study: Cats in little crocheted hats shed light on feline chronic pain

Our feline overlords aren’t particularly known for obeying commands from mere humans, which can make it difficult to study their behaviors in controlled laboratory settings. So a certain degree of ingenuity is required to get usable results—like crocheting adorable little hats for kitties taking part in electroencephalogram (EEG) experiments. That’s what researchers at the University of Montreal in Quebec, Canada, did to learn more about assessing chronic pain in cats—and they succeeded. According to their recent paper published in the Journal of Neuroscience Methods, it’s the first time scientists have recorded the electrical activity in the brains of conscious cats.

I’m afraid I’m not personally qualified to confuse cats, but I can recommend an extremely good service.

Day: October 1, 2024

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