Notices by Haderach C. Kwisatch (rayckeith@techhub.social)

"Lifehacker: This Extension Gets Rid of YouTube’s Annoying Clutter. “If you wish YouTube behaved more like a tool and less like a dopamine factory, I recommend Untrap. This browser extension, available for Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari, and Opera, lets you make almost 300 tweaks to the YouTube website, allowing you to remove the distracting features and enable a few useful ones by default.” YOU CAN HIDE THE SHORTS"
https://lifehacker.com/tech/youtube-untrap-browser-extension

"… With the help of Ames, the couples have been able to test their soil and tissue from some of the deceased animals. They sent samples to Kyla Bennett at Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, an environmental-protection nonprofit that serves as a resource for whistleblowers. According to Bennett’s report, two catfish were found to have PFAS levels of 74,000 and 59,000 parts per trillion. For context, the EPA limits PFAS in drinking water to 4 parts per trillion. The liver of one stillborn calf—which had never eaten contaminated grass or drunk from a contaminated pond, and was receiving nutrients only from its mother—showed a PFAS level of 610,000 parts per trillion.

"PEER also tested a sample of biosolid fertilizer from Synagro, the company that made the Colemans’ neighbor’s fertilizer. It found 27 different PFAS in the sample, 13 of which had also been found in the soil and water samples from the Coleman and Alessi properties. …"
https://flipboard.com/@texasmonthly/texas-news-politics-80bc06n9z/-/a-JL4k0-sfQ3Sd40Gr7rNJug%3Aa%3A2685024128-%2F0

Measured differences in how quickly the universe is expanding (leading to theories about repulsive gravity and "dark energy" [not dark matter]) can be explained by the universe spinning.

The observation that a majority of galaxies are spinning and oriented in the same direction also suggests the universe is spinning.

Could the expansion itself also be explained by the universe spinning?

Is there a center of the spinning? Or this a 4-dimensional spin?
https://mastodon.nl/@krisvdm/114343638657599651

"GPS and similar satellite navigation systems revolutionized how you keep track of where you are and what time it is. However, it isn’t without its problems. For one, it generally doesn’t work very well indoors or in certain geographic or weather scenarios. It can be spoofed. Presumably, a real or virtual attack could take the whole system down.

"Addressing these problems is a new system called Broadcast Positioning System (BPS). It uses upgraded ATSC 3.0 digital TV transmitters to send exact time information from commercial broadcast stations. With one signal, you can tell what time it is within 100 ns 95% of the time. If you can hear four towers, you can not only tell the time, but also estimate your position within about 100 m."
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/11/gps-broken-try-tv/

"… The report claims that the demo of Apple Intelligence’s most impressive features at WWDC 2024, such as where Siri accesses a user’s emails to find real-time flight data and provides a reminder about lunch plans using messages and plots a route in maps, was effectively fictitious. The demo apparently came as a surprise to members of the Siri team, who had never seen working versions of the capabilities.…"
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/10/how-apple-fumbled-siris-ai-makeover/

"prairie dogs in North America keep their colonies free of vegetation, which deprives fires of necessary fuel.

"Prairie dogs’ impressive power was put on display in 2021, when the Marshall Fire burned through part of Colorado’s densely populated Front Range. The inferno, the most destructive in the state’s history, killed two people and torched more than 1,000 homes and businesses. But even within the fire’s perimeter, scientists found large patches of unburned land ringing prairie dog colonies."
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/wildfire-prevention-restoration-animals

Stupid bugs I saw today:

Safari: After properly handling one page-down scroll event, it got into a mode where it ignores the scrollbar. I could not scroll the webpage up or down by mouse click or mouse drag.

Word: double-click a word to select it, control-click to bring up a menu, select "New Comment", and start typing a comment. The first couple of letters end up after the selected word instead of in the comment field.

Apple and Microsoft should be embarrassed that bugs this basic are happening now.

"Then she explained the type of access the AI agent would need to perform these tasks, including access to our web browser and a way to drive it as well as access to our credit card information to pay for tickets, our calendar, and messaging app to send the text to your friends.

“It would need to be able to drive that [process] across our entire system with something that looks like root permission, accessing every single one of those databases — probably in the clear, because there’s no model to do that encrypted,” Whittaker warned."
https://aus.social/@KathyReid/114253874882406509

"Careless People is darkly funny and genuinely shocking...Not only does [Sarah Wynn-Williams] have the storytelling chops to unspool a gripping narrative; she also delivers the goods." -Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times

"An explosive memoir charting one woman’s career at the heart of one of the most influential companies on the planet, Careless People gives you a front-row seat to Facebook, the decisions that have shaped world events in recent decades, and the people who made them.

"From trips on private jets and encounters with world leaders to shocking accounts of misogyny and double standards behind the scenes, this searing memoir exposes both the personal and the political fallout when unfettered power and a rotten company culture take hold. In a gripping and often absurd narrative where a few people carelessly hold the world in their hands, this eye-opening memoir reveals what really goes on among the global elite. …"
https://www.amazon.com/Untitled-Flatiron-Author-Revealed-March/dp/1250391237/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3MMJ6HQI0Q7EZ&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.1LHC7w3ZOPIRzDTg2OT37w.S3n0XieNV0rOap91nUImqK_c4KPjHDsu86s3wFOU04c&dib_tag=se&keywords=9781250391230&qid=1736515152&sprefix=9781250391230%2Caps%2C92&sr=8-1

"… Lithium-ion batteries can ignite in the wrong circumstances, and when they do so they are extremely difficult to extinguish. Renault has a solution, and in a rare moment for the car industry, they are sharing it freely for all manufacturers to use.

"The innovation in question is their Fireman Access Port, a standardized means for a fire crew to connect up their hoses directly to the battery pack and attack the fire at its source. An opening is covered by an adhesive disk designed to protect the cells, but breaks under a jet of high-pressure water. Thermal runaway can then be halted much more easily.

"The licensing terms not only allow use of the access port itself, but also require any enhancements be shared with the rest of the community of automakers using the system. This was the part which caught our interest, because even if it doesn’t come from the same place as the licences we’re used to, it sounds a lot like open source to us.…"
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/07/open-safety-in-the-auto-business-renault-shares-its-battery-fire-suppression-tech/

"I just listened to a podcast with an A.I. research scientist. She said if you wouldn’t trust autocorrect to be in charge of a decision, then you shouldn’t trust another A.I. with it, so… that’s something to worry about "
https://www.tumblr.com/ryns-ramblings/777567240070578176/derinthescarletpescatarian-lastoneout

"The new mayor began his term by tackling the 1,500 annual traffic-related deaths in the city. He seemed to abide by an old theater saying: If the show isn’t going well, send in the clowns. Ever the political performer, Mockus did just that.

"The mayor gave 1,800 traffic cops the boot and hired a meager clan of 20 mimes. Armed with nothing but signs that read correcto and incorrecto, the silent troupe theatrically mocked lawbreakers and applauded polite motorists. A system purely based on public approval was on trial in Mockus’s so-called classroom. And it worked.

“Rather than strength or physical violence to get people to cross the street in the right place, he used behavioral change—and this was powerful,” says Paulius Yamin, a behavioral scientist and Mockus’s former research assistant. “There are not always going to be police on every corner, but there are always citizens, and people care about what others think about them.”

"The 20 mimes quickly expanded to 420. …"
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/traffic-mimes-of-colombia

"1. Write a list of the test scenarios you want to cover

2. Turn exactly one item on the list into an actual, concrete, runnable test

3. Change the code to make the test (& all previous tests) pass (adding items to the list as you discover them)

4. Optionally refactor to improve the implementation design

5. Until the list is empty, go back to #2"
https://tidyfirst.substack.com/p/canon-tdd

"TDD is intended to help the programmer create a new state of the system where:

Everything that used to work still works.

The new behavior works as expected.

The system is ready for the next change.

The programmer & their colleagues feel confident in the above points."
https://tidyfirst.substack.com/p/canon-tdd

#startrek #deepspacenine #ds9

#hr #hiring https://www.tumblr.com/scarlettohairdye/769332697446416384/sourcedumal-guapet-so-my-brother-was-telling

"enshittification never came for Craigslist. The roots of its model, the person-to-person approach to commerce, has never truly gone away because it chose never to allow itself to reach beyond its original goals. Craig Newmark didn’t need to become a multi-billionaire, but nonetheless still succeeded beyond his wildest dreams because he knew when enough was enough. He never exploited the spigots or threw an algorithm on the thing he built. He has put much of his money into philanthropy. He is a key example of living the ethos.

To me, looking at the fediverse or services like Bluesky, that’s the real opportunity: People can do well while not being exploitative or overcapitalizing the business…"
https://tedium.co/2024/12/05/bluesky-business-models-craigslist/

"He said that experts tried to explain the way anesthesia billing works — that one specific billing code could be used for nearly 200 different procedures, leaving great variability in the amount of time needed under anesthesia — and learned that Anthem hadn’t audited claims and didn’t have any evidence that there was a problem that needed to be fixed.

“It’s a cynical exercise in figuring out a way to reject more claims initially, knowing that a number of those are just going to fall off and never be paid,” Morewood said."
https://kolektiva.social/@reverendstanley/113602672699484692

"University of Maryland entomologists uncovered a unique relationship between two species of fungi known for their ability to invade, parasitize and kill insects efficiently. Instead of violently competing for the spoils of war, the two fungi peacefully cooperate and share their victims."

#science #fungi https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/11/241107193224.htm

"The letter notes that the lawsuits filed in the aftermath of the 2020 election were “overwhelmingly unsuccessful,” adding that “a baseless lawsuit not only squanders judicial resources but also undermines the public’s trust in our democracy and our profession.” The attorneys even write that the actions of the attorneys involved in the 2020 efforts “likely contributed to the January 6 assault on the Capitol.”"