Kamala, Keep Lina Khan

Because what she does is both good policy and good politics.

Case in point, the Federal Trade Commission has banned the roach motel business model:

It will soon be easy to "click to cancel" subscriptions after the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) adopted a final rule on Wednesday that makes it challenging for businesses to opt out of easy cancellation methods.

“Too often, businesses make people jump through endless hoops just to cancel a subscription,” FTC chair Lina Khan said in a press release. “The FTC’s rule will end these tricks and traps, saving Americans time and money. Nobody should be stuck paying for a service they no longer want.”

The heart of the new rule requires businesses to provide simple ways to cancel subscriptions. Under the rule, any subscription that can be signed up for online must be able to be canceled online. And cancellation paths for in-person sign-ups must be just as easy, offered either by phone or online.

In guidance released Wednesday, the FTC recommended that businesses keep "three guardrails in mind" to ensure cancellation methods comply with the law. First, customers cannot be required to talk to a live agent or chatbot to cancel if that wasn't required for sign-up. Next, any phone cancellation methods cannot include charges and must be offered during normal business hours. And finally, canceling services in person must always be optional.

To comply with the rule, businesses offering "negative option marketing" such as subscriptions, automatic renewals, and free trial offers—to both consumers and other businesses—are prohibited from misleading customers. They must clearly disclose all terms of the deal prior to accepting payment, including explaining how much and how often customers will be charged, when free trials or promotions end, any deadlines to avoid charges, and, importantly, how to cancel.

………

That provision is designed to end unfair and deceptive practices that the FTC found, such as inadequate disclosures about free trials or sneaky auto-enrollments. Those "practices have been a persistent source of consumer harm for decades," the FTC's notice on the final rule said, "saddling shoppers with recurring payments for products and services they never intended to purchase nor wanted to continue buying."

………

There were only a few major changes to the final rule following the public commenting period. Notably, the FTC dropped a provision that would have required businesses to send annual reminders about recurring charges, as well as another prohibiting promotions or deals offered during the cancellation process in efforts to retain customers without customers opting in to seeing those offers.

The FTC said that it's only dropped these provisions for now, noting that the Commission plans to keep the record "open on these issues" and may seek additional comments.

Of course, the Supreme Court will end up hearing this after wack-doodle corrupt Matthew Kacsmaryk issues an injunction against this, and then say that the Federal Trade Commission has no authority to regulate this, because the right wing dirtbags on the court want to return us to the days of Lochner.

OK, I Think That I Understand a Bit of Family Jargon Now

There is a term that is used in family, "Comyuckle," that generally means lame person.

It's used as a loving insult inside the family.

I thought that it was some sort of Yiddishism that came from my mom, but I could never find anyone outside of the family who used this term.

Well, I did another search today, and I found this mention from the Joy of Yiddish:

While visiting with my 94-year-old mother earlier this year, we were talking about the everyday person on the street. She said, “You know, Chaim Yankel!.” I instantly cracked up as she did as well. My husband who was sitting with us had never heard of Chaim Yankel. Mom and I were both stunned.

I grew up on Long Island and my husband in Queens. Yet he never heard of him. So I did a quick check with others. A good friend from Long Island had also never heard of Chaim Yankel, but my friend from the Bronx knew instantly who he was; she, too, started laughing as she hadn’t heard his name mentioned in a long time.

In his splendid book, The Joys of Yiddish, Leo Rosten gives two definitions of the Yiddish term Chaim Yankel:
1. A nonentity, a nobody, any “poor Joe.”
2. A colloquial, somewhat condescending way of addressing a Jew whose name you do not know — just as “Joe” or “Mac” is sometimes used in English.

So, "Comyuckle," is probably a corruption of Chaim Yankel.

Needless to say, I need to share this with my sibs. 

The Internet of Sh%$

Yes, internet connected vacuum cleaners can spy on you and shout racist slurs at you.

Why on earth would someone want an internet connected vacuum cleaner?

I could understand Bluetooth, but the only people who get anything of value out of an internet connected vacuum are people who want to spy on you, like the FBI, CIA, NSA ……… Oh, now I get it.

It’s a tale as old as… well, the Internet of Things era. Robot vacuums made by Ecovacs have been reported roving around people’s homes, yelling profanities at them through the onboard speakers after the company’s software was found to be vulnerable to intrusion.

ABC News in Australia reports that there were recently multiple instances across the U.S. when owners of Ecovacs vacuums noticed their devices acting unusually.

“It sounded like a broken-up radio signal or something,” Daniel Swenson, an owner of an Ecovac Deebot X2, told the outlet. “You could hear snippets of maybe a voice.” He opened the vacuum’s app to find a stranger was accessing its live camera feed and remote control feature, but assumed it might be an error. After resetting the password and rebooting the X2, the vacuum quickly started moving again:

This time, there was no ambiguity about what was coming out of the speaker. A voice was yelling racist obscenities, loud and clear, right in front of Mr Swenson’s son.

“F*** n******s,” screamed the voice, over and over again.

Perhaps the best part of this anecdote was Swenson’s incredulous conclusion that the situation “could have been worse.” But he’s right that it was nice of the hacker to let him know his vacuum was hacked instead of spying on him indefinitely.

Delightful.

Taxes, Neh?

So, Sharon* and I filed for an extension, which meant that our filing deadline was tonight. 

What this also meant was that Sharon* got her tax information together this evening.

She is an advocate for children needing special education services, and it is her true calling (that and beads), but the business end is sometimes less than well organized.

So once again we scrambled to assemble all of the data before the deadline.

I shouldn't complain, we have been together for more than 30 years, and married for almost 30 years, and she has not made a serious effort to murder me, unless you count the thing with the tongue. (Death by snu snu)

^*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.

Yeah, I've Noticed

It appears that professionals in public health have noticed that Covid infections screw up your ability to drive as well.

In Maryland, it has been obvious that the drivers have gotten worse.

Not only are drivers less attentive and less skilled, but they also seemed to be more prone to what I call, "Road Rage Lite."

I shudder to think what it is like driving in Boston:

Abstract

Objective

This study evaluated the association between acute COVID-19 cases and the number of car crashes with varying COVID-19 vaccination rates, Long COVID rates, and COVID-19 mitigation strategies.

Background

The ongoing SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has led to significant concern over long-term post-infection sequelae, especially in the Neurologic domain. Long COVID symptoms, including cognitive impairments, could potentially impact activities requiring high cognitive function, such as driving. Despite various potential impacts on driving skills and the general prevalence of Long COVID, the specific effects on driving capabilities remain understudied.

Design/Methods

This study utilized a Poisson regression model to analyze data from 2020-2022, comparing aggregate car crash records and COVID-19 statistics. This model adjusted for population and included binary variables for specific months to account for stay-at-home orders. The correlation between acute COVID-19 cases and car crashes was investigated across seven states, considering vaccination rates and COVID-19 mitigation measures as potential confounders.

Results

Findings indicate an association between acute COVID-19 rates and increased car crashes with an OR of 1.5 (1.23-1.26 95%CI). The analysis did not find a protective effect of vaccination against increased crash risks, contrary to previous assumptions. The OR of car crashes associated with COVID-19 was comparable to driving under the influence of alcohol at legal limits or driving with a seizure disorder.

Conclusions

The study suggests that acute COVID-19, regardless of Long COVID status, is linked to an increased risk of car crashes presumably due to neurologic changes caused by SARS-CoV-2. These findings underscore the need for further research into the neuropsychological impacts of COVID-19. Further studies are recommended to explore the causality and mechanisms behind these findings and to evaluate the implications for public safety in other critical operational tasks. Finally, neurologists dealing with post-COVID patients, should remember that they may have an obligation to report medically impaired drivers.

This is a Feature, not a Bug

So, someone has discovered that artificial intelligence decision making is more likely to illegally discriminate.

This was also a feature and not a bug for the microtargeted ads employed by the criminal enterprise formerly known as Facebook™, healthcare providers, the ride share companies, and Airbnb.

People are looking for ways to engage in bigotry without consequence, and the Tech Bros are more than willing to accommodate them:

In a recent study evaluating how chatbots make loan suggestions for mortgage applications, researchers at Pennsylvania’s Lehigh University found something stark: there was clear racial bias at play.

With 6,000 sample loan applications based on data from the 2022 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, the chatbots recommended denials for more Black applicants than identical white counterparts. They also recommended Black applicants be given higher interest rates, and labeled Black and Hispanic borrowers as “riskier.”

Basically, Silly-Con Valley is Eddie Murphy's "White Like Me" video made manifest: (Yeah, Eddie Murphy was actually edgy back in the day)

Ecch (Tweet) of the Day

This is Ted Cruz erasure https://t.co/dZVLo18HhK

— David Sirota (@davidsirota) October 15, 2024

That is some world class snark there. 

Mr. Sirota, you owe me a screen wipe.

Headline of the Day

How SpaceX Became the MyPillow of Government Contractors

—The Verge

Musk, long before Mike Lindell was Mike Lindell, has used the political process to enrich himself.

In fact, he has been more shameless and more aggressive about it than either Lindell or Trump.

If one looks at his history, it's all been government money in some way or another.  Regulatory forbearance for PayPal, saving money on customer service and money laundering compliance, massive subsidies for Tesla, (Tesla would not be profitable without them), FDA allowing Neuralink to maim disabled people, his various misbegotten tunnel efforts, and government money for SpaceX,

It really has been something to watch Elon Musk turn SpaceX into the MyPillow of rocket companies, hasn’t it?

………

I have never accused Musk of being anything other than self-interested. As I see it, his only real politics are: Elon Musk should get to do whatever he wants, forever. And his latest political outbursts strike me as being clearly connected to his money. He’s come to the same conclusion as Donald Trump, which is that it’s particularly easy to grift Republican voters, and there are lots of rewards and very few consequences for doing so. Donny, these men are nihilists.

………

Those of you familiar with SpaceX may recall its litany of lawsuits against the government. For instance, in 2005, the company alleged that Boeing and Lockheed Martin had engaged in anticompetitive behavior meant to keep SpaceX from letting its Falcon 9 compete in government contracts. (The Falcon 9 didn’t have its first launch until 2010.)

And in 2014, Musk sued the US Air Force over a $11 billion sole-source contract awarded to the United Launch Alliance. (The Falcon Heavy wouldn’t have its first launch until 2018.) SpaceX got concessions, dropping the suit after the Air Force agreed to speed up its efforts to certify SpaceX to launch military satellites — and making more launches available for SpaceX to compete on. 

………

Look, Musk’s appearance at the Trump rally launched a thousand think pieces and the goofy photo that launched a thousand memes. But to talk about Musk’s political convictions, you have to talk about the only thing he really believes in: money.

It's worth a full read.

Blarf

Spent the evening doing two things that I hate, providing technical support to family members, and staring at the spinning wheel as Windows updates.

Headline of the Day

Hurricane Helene Isn’t an Outlier. It’s a Harbinger of the Future

 —Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

I would note that Hurricane Milton reinforces this take.

To quote Richard Feynman, "Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."

I would also add that reality must take precedence over profit as well.

This is My Shocked Face

I am not trying to suggest that those patriotic Canadians advocating for a "Victims of Communism" memorial are trying to use it to absolve Nazi collaborators of their culpability, but a f%$# ton of the names on this memorial are war criminals who collaborated with the Nazis.

The Department of Canadian Heritage is being told that more than half of the 550 names on the Memorial to the Victims of Communism should be removed because of potential links to the Nazis or questions about affiliations with fascist groups, according to government records.

As originally planned, there were to be 553 entries on the Ottawa memorial’s Wall of Remembrance.

Article content

The department had determined that 50 to 60 of the names or organizations were likely directly linked to the Nazis, according to the documents obtained by the Ottawa Citizen through an access to information request.

A 2023 report for Canadian Heritage recommended more than 330 names be excluded to be on the safe side, the records noted. The exclusions were recommended because of the lack of information about the individuals or organizations and whether they might have links to fascist organizations or the Nazis. Some of the entries could also be removed because they have no direct link to Canada.

Rather unsurprisingly, Chrystia Freeland, whose grandfather was a Nazi collaborator and a war criminal (Julius Streicher was executed for doing what dear old grandad did) has been instrumental in securing federal money for the project.

Imagine that.

It now appears that something more than half the names were Nazi collaborators and a significant portion of the remaining names are not victims of Communism in any way shape or form.

Some of the names:

………

An organization calling itself the General Committee of United Croats of Canada purchased virtual bricks dedicated to Ante Pavelić, describing him only as a "doctor of laws."

Pavelić was the wartime leader of the Ustaša, the fascist organization that ran the Independent State of Croatia, a Nazi puppet regime. In this role, Pavelić was the chief perpetrator of the Holocaust in the Balkans. Approximately 32,000 Jews, 25,000 Roma and 330,000 Serbs were murdered by the regime.

The same organization purchased a brick dedicated to Mile Budak, whom they identified simply as a "poet". Budak was also a high-ranking Ustaša official.

………

It's not clear whether the donations were returned; when asked, Ludwik Klimkowski, Tribute to Liberty's chair, said it would be "premature" to comment. Another Ustaša official, Ivan Oršanić, remains listed on the site.

An organization calling itself the Knightly Order of Vitéz purchased five bricks. "Several members of the order actively participated in the persecution, despoliation and, in 1944, the deportation of the Hungarian Jews," said László Karsai, a professor of history at the University of Szeged. 

Vitéz members included high-ranking members of the Nazi-puppet government established late in the war, which organized the deportation of some 437,000 Hungarian Jews. "It was the biggest, fastest deportation action of the Holocaust," said Karsai. "Several tens of thousands of Vitéz members got large lands (from) Jewish properties."

The League of Ukrainian Canadians' Edmonton Branch, meanwhile, purchased five virtual bricks in honour of Roman Shukhevych — who led the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) during the Second World War and was responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Belarusians, Jews, Poles and Ukrainians.

………

"If Canada commemorates Ante Pavelić or Roman Shukhevych," said Efraim Zuroff, a noted Nazi-hunter and the director of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Jerusalem, "it can throw its human rights record right in the trash."

………

"A monument to the victims of communism is fair and legitimate. Millions of people were murdered by Stalin and Mao, and there is a case to be made for their commemoration. It is peculiar, however, that people who committed genocide are being glorified along with those legitimate victims."

It's not peculiar at all.  Canada was to Nazi Collaborators from the Ukraine what Argentina was to former SS officers.

………

The Royal Architectural Institute of Canada initiated a court challenge of the project, arguing that the National Capital Commission (NCC) violated its own procedures on public consultation and the rules set out in the National Capital Act. A poll from the spring of 2015 found that a majority of Canadians — including nearly two-thirds of self-identified conservatives — opposed the initial project.

A NCC spokesperson said the estimated total cost of the monument is now $7.5 million, with $6 million coming from the federal government after Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland included an additional $4 million in this spring's budget to complete the monument. 

………

Canadian Heritage hired Carleton University historian Michael Petrou to review those 600 names, but not the names listed on Tribute to Liberty's website or in its newsletters. Petrou told CBC News there is overlap between the list of names for the monument and the list on the website.

Petrou filed his report to the department back in the spring. He said he red-flagged the names of individuals in that list of 600 who collaborated with the Nazis or were associated with fascist organizations that were active in Eastern Europe and the Balkans during the Second World War.

Petrou said he also flagged names of individuals who could not reasonably be described as "victims of communism."

The Pathways to Liberty list seems to embrace a very broad definition of "victims of communism" that extends to other apparent victims of political violence and veterans of Cold War era conflicts.

The list on the website also includes people who don't seem to be victims of persecution by communist regimes — such as Tara Singh Hayer, a Sikh journalist and activist assassinated in Vancouver in 1998, and Jagat S. Uppal, a successful B.C. businessman who was one of the first Sikhs to attend public school in Vancouver.

The final word on this is this:

………

[Wiesenthal Center Director Ephriam] Zuroff said he's alarmed by efforts to present wartime Nazi collaborators as anti-Communist patriots.

"From the beginning of their renewed independence, following the breakup of the Soviet Union, almost all the governments of Eastern Europe — and nationalist elements in diaspora communities — have promoted the canard of equivalency between the crimes of the Third Reich and those of Communism as part of a broader effort to distort the history of the Holocaust and the Second World War," he said.

Doubtless, this is embarrassing to the Canadian government, but Canada's history of harboring and protecting war criminals who were willing participants in the Holocaust is a lot more embarrassing.

Deep Thought

 NASA missed an opportunity during the Apollo program.

They could have named the command and lunar modules Ralph and Alice (Kramden).

(Not my joke)

In Case You Are Wondering

 My Yom Kippur fast went pretty well, except for a really bad case of dry mouth.

Still feeling a bit fuzzy though.

That's what happens when your gut, about ⅙ of one's metabolism goes from idle to full throttle in 15 minutes.

No Blogging Tonight

It's Yom Kippur.

I'm busy fasting.

I Think that I Saw the Aurora Borealis This Evening

It was a faint purple tint in the north sky from my back yard, but it could have been light pollution.

In any case, we are experiencing a major solar storm, so any ham radio operators are probably frustrated right now.

Security Experts Have Been Warning About This Forever

It appears that the systems mandated by the US government to allow our state security apparatus to easily spy on people were hacked by the Chinese state security apparatus to spy on people.

Security experts have been saying that mandatory government back doors are a bad idea, because other people can use them as well.

QED

Chinese government hackers penetrated the networks of several large US-based Internet service providers and may have gained access to systems used for court-authorized wiretaps of communications networks, The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday. "People familiar with the matter" told the WSJ that hackers breached the networks of companies including Verizon, AT&T, and Lumen (also known as CenturyLink).

"A cyberattack tied to the Chinese government penetrated the networks of a swath of US broadband providers, potentially accessing information from systems the federal government uses for court-authorized network wiretapping requests," the WSJ wrote. "For months or longer, the hackers might have held access to network infrastructure used to cooperate with lawful US requests for communications data, according to people familiar with the matter."

These "attackers also had access to other tranches of more generic Internet traffic," according to the WSJ's sources. The attack is being attributed to a Chinese hacking group called Salt Typhoon.

The Washington Post reported on the hacking campaign yesterday, describing it as "an audacious espionage operation likely aimed in part at discovering the Chinese targets of American surveillance." The Post report attributed the information to US government officials and said an investigation by the FBI, other intelligence agencies, and the Department of Homeland Security "is in its early stages."

The Post report said there are indications that China's Ministry of State Security is involved in the attacks.

Considering the possibilities, from Daesh to the Sinaloa Cartel to whatever is left of al Qaeda, the Chinese are probably the least worrisome group to penetrate these systems. 

This is why mandatory back doors are a bad idea.

It's Thursday, and I'll Go With ╭∩╮（︶︿︶）╭∩╮

Initial unemployment claims are up 33,000 to 258,000, with a significant portion of the boost coming from the carnage wrought by Hurricane Helene. Continuing claims, which are tallied from a week before, rose by to 42K 1.861 million.

Between Helene and Milton, the jobs numbers are going to suck for a while.

We also had the consumer inflation data coming out today, and inflation fell slightly to 2.4% year over year.

In terms of macroeconomics, I have no clue as to what this means. 

In terms of climatology and atmospheric science, it's rather clearer:  If we do not get a handle on greenhouse gas emissions, we are completely f%$#ed.

The Call is Coming from Inside the House

It turns out that the connected television manufacturers are spying on their customers in a way that would give J. Edgar Hoover a hard on.

This is not an acceptable state of events:

The companies behind the streaming industry, including smart TV and streaming stick manufacturers and streaming service providers, have developed a "surveillance system" that has "long undermined privacy and consumer protection," according to a report from the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) published today and sent to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Unprecedented tracking techniques aimed at pleasing advertisers have resulted in connected TVs (CTVs) being a "privacy nightmare," according to Jeffrey Chester, report co-author and CDD executive director, resulting in calls for stronger regulation.

The 48-page report, How TV Watches Us: Commercial Surveillance in the Streaming Era [PDF], cites Ars Technica, other news publications, trade publications, blog posts, and statements from big players in streaming—from Amazon to NBCUniversal and Tubi, to LG, Samsung, and Vizio. It provides a detailed overview of the various ways that streaming services and streaming hardware target viewers in newfound ways that the CDD argues pose severe privacy risks. The nonprofit composed the report as part of efforts to encourage regulation. Today, the CDD sent letters to the FTC [PDF], Federal Communications Commission (FCC), California attorney general [PDF], and California Privacy Protection Agency (CPPA) [PDF], regarding its concerns.

"Not only does CTV operate in ways that are unfair to consumers, it is also putting them and their families at risk as it gathers and uses sensitive data about health, children, race, and political interests,” Chester said in a statement.

……… 

The report notes "misleading" privacy policies that have minimal information on data collection and tracking methods and the use of marketing tactics like cookie-less IDs and identity graphs that make promises of not collecting or sharing personal information "meaningless."

"As a consequence, buying a smart TV set in today’s connected television marketplace is akin to bringing a digital Trojan Horse into one’s home," it says.

You left off the DoJ.

Seriously, we need to see executives frog-marched out ………

Huh ……… I'm saying that a lot today, aren't I?

Speaking of Boeing

We now have another example of Boeing retaliating against whistleblowers.

Half the reason that they have a strike now is that the rank and file employees want to make good aircraft, and management doesn't:

Late last year, Boeing employee Craig Garriott says a 4-ton satellite inside an El Segundo plant fell after engineers failed to properly secure a clamp.

No one was injured by the collapse of the $1 billion-plus satellite that happened over a weekend, but it could have been fatal if workers were present, Garriott claims.

The incident highlighted a raft of safety violations that were ignored by management, according to a whistleblower lawsuit that was recently transferred to federal court in Los Angeles. 

In the lawsuit, the veteran Boeing employee alleges that his employer retaliated against him for speaking out about problems he saw at Boeing and Millennium Space Systems, a Boeing defense contractor that makes small satellites.

………

The lawsuits come as the Arlington, Va.-based aerospace giant’s new chief executive, Kelly Ortberg, grapples with a strike by its machinists union and ongoing controversies over its manufacturing and safety practices — including how it treats employee whistleblowers who have alleged quality control and other problems.

In June, outgoing CEO Dave Calhoun admitted at a Senate hearing that whistleblowers have faced retaliation — saying “I know it happens” — with Boeing promising to take steps to fix the problem.

Saying, "I know it happens," without following up with, "They have all been fired," is a tell that current Boeing management will never take steps to fix the problem.

Once again, we need to hold managers who did this, and managers who looked the other way, criminally liable for this behavior.

As I note occasionally, they need to be frog-marched out of their offices in handcuffs.

Elon Caves

Ecch (Twitter) has agreed to follow Brazilian law and Brazilian court rulings in order to keep operating in Brazil.

I'm sure that Snoflake Elon is stewing over that one.

It's a Feature, Not a Bug

Software body shop Cognizant has been found liable for discriminating against non H1-B employees.

This is not discrimination against white people, it's that they saved money using H1-B employees, because they knew that if they were fired, they could be deported.

It's against the law, but within the spirit of the program, which is all about using employee precarity to suppress wages: 

Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. engaged in a pattern of discriminatory conduct toward non-Indian workers and should pay punitive damages to compensate employees who suffered harm, a US jury found.

The verdict came after the IT firm failed to persuade a Los Angeles federal judge last month to toss a 2017 job bias class-action lawsuit when a previous trial ended with a deadlocked jury.

………

Bloomberg News reported in July that the Teaneck, New Jersey-based company was among a handful of outsourcing firms exploiting loopholes in the H1-B visa lottery system. The company defended its practices, saying it’s fully compliant with US laws on the visa process. Cognizant also said that in recent years it has increased its US hiring and reduced its dependence on the H1-B program.

The technical legal term for Cognizant's defense is, "Bullsh%$."  It's all about paying the employees less.

………

The Los Angeles case began after three employees who identify as “Caucasian” claimed in a lawsuit that Cognizant made a practice of giving preference to South Asians in employment decisions. The plaintiffs alleged they were terminated after being “benched” with no work for five weeks and then replaced by “visa-ready” workers from India set to be deployed to US projects and assignments.

Cognizant had the highest number of H-1B visas of any US employer from 2013 to 2019, according to Citizenship and Immigration Services. 

Again, this not about white or brown or black, it's about green. Cognizant wants to pay below market wages.

You could do that with a bidding process, where the people who have real unmet skills needs will outbid those who have a need for skills on the cheap.

The fix is fairly simple, raise the cost of getting an H1-B high enough that it is no longer a lower cost option.

Also, frog-march these rat-f%$#s out of their offices in handcuffs.

Doesn't Care About Making Planes

I have been saying for some time that Boeing can no longer make planes.

Based on the revelations from previously undiscovered communications between Boeing and Ethiopian Airlines, it's now clear that they just did not care.

In late 2018, Ethiopian Airlines’ chief pilot sent an urgent message to Boeing, the manufacturer of the 737 Max airliner.

Barely a month earlier, a 737 Max operated by Lion Air of Indonesia had plunged into the sea, killing everyone on board. The cause appeared to be a problem with the plane’s flight control system.

The Ethiopian carrier also flew the 737 Max, and the chief pilot wanted more information from Boeing about the emergency procedures to follow if the same problem that doomed the Lion Air flight should recur. At the time, Boeing was providing detailed briefings to pilots in the United States who were asking the same types of questions about how to respond.

But Boeing chose not to answer the Ethiopian pilot’s questions beyond referring him to a public document it had already issued after the Lion Air crash. Boeing said in its response that it was prohibited from giving additional information because it was providing technical support to Indonesian authorities investigating that crash.

………

Three months after the request by Ethiopian Airlines, one of its 737 Max’s nose-dived into the ground after takeoff from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, killing all 157 people on board. The main cause was found to be the same flawed flight control system responsible for the Lion Air flight crash, a failure that presented the Ethiopian Airlines pilots with the very same kinds of life-or-death decisions about how to respond that the chief pilot had asked about months earlier.

Or maybe they just don't care about Black pilots:

………

After the Lion Air crash, Boeing executives sought out U.S. pilots to brief them on topics that were not discussed with the Ethiopian pilots, including long-term strategies for improving flight safety, a recording of the briefing shows.

………

The company’s representatives highlighted efforts to address and clarify what they called misunderstandings related to MCAS. They pushed for training that would extend beyond routine checklists, focusing instead on equipping pilots with a thorough understanding of system behaviors and potential failures.

………

Despite the constraints Boeing described in the response to the Ethiopian chief pilot, Boeing officials discussed numerous details of the Lion Air crash.

………

The Ethiopian report, released in December 2022, found that if Boeing had provided more information to the carrier’s pilots about how to respond in the event of a software malfunction, they might have been able to regain control of the aircraft.

“The investigation found the questions raised by the airline to be safety critical, and if Boeing had answered the questions raised by the training department either directly or indirectly,” the report said, the outcome might have been different.

The Ethiopian investigators also had access to the emails between the chief pilot and Boeing and included them in their report. But Boeing’s unwillingness to provide the airline with more detailed guidance went largely unnoticed at the time.

………

The emails — which were not made available to congressional investigators in the United States and only came to the attention of some families of those killed in the crash last year — are now part of an effort by the families to block the plea deal.

The families argue that the agreement does not do enough to hold Boeing and its executives responsible for the crashes or to address what they see as deep-rooted problems in Boeing culture and operations that are leaving air travelers at risk.

There are not many problems that one can arrest one's way out of, but this is one of them.

Frog march every executive in the authority over the MCAS debacle out of their offices in handcuffs.\

That will make the useless MBA types think twice about f%$#ing the company to get this year's stock options.

 

Headline of the Day

Trump Gets Unhinged, Even for Him, Over Kamala Harris ‘60 Minutes’ Interview

—The Daily Beast

It's that interior clause, "Even for Him," that makes this headline.

If Trump is so upset over this, he could give the interview that the news magazine program has requested.

Donald Trump—who agreed to an interview with the CBS newsmagazine show 60 Minutes before backing out—has gone on the warpath at Kamala Harris for her performance on the show.

“The Interview on 60 Minutes with Comrade Kamala Harris is considered by many of those who reviewed it, the WORST Interview they have ever seen,” he wrote, in a Tuesday morning post on Truth Social. “She literally had no idea what she was talking about, and it was an embarrassment to our Country that a Major Party Candidate would be so completely inept.”

If the interview were as bad as he claims, and he implies a Razorfish level of fail, he would be happy, not irate.

………

Trump seemingly wants no part of that level of scrutiny. The Republican nominee for president accepted an invitation to a similar sitdown interview on the storied program, but his campaign later “decided not to participate,” a CBS spokesperson told CNN. 

I've not seen the interview, but it appears that it touched a nerve.

Finally

So, the New York Times has finally noticed that Donald Trump is bat-sh%$ insane.

Even then, they do their level best to fob this observation on a 3rd party, specifically a computer program that counts words, because they are cowardly pissants.

Being a cowardly pissant is antithetical to journalism, but they are all nepo-babies there, so it does not matter:

The New York Times has finally weighed in on the subject of Donald Trump’s mental unfitness. On Sunday, Peter Baker and Dylan Freedman described Trump’s obvious problems at great length.

It marked a red-letter day for journalism.

The New York Times is by far the most influential news organization in the media ecosphere. By publishing this story, it has created a permission structure for others to more directly address the issue of Trump’s mental fitness.

So let’s go! Start your engines! As I wrote, perhaps a bit prematurely a few weeks ago, Trump’s mental capacity is now topic one.

………

As Michael Tomasky wrote in The New Republic on Monday, Baker and Freedman’s piece “could stand as the single most important piece of journalism in this election” – particularly if “the Times keeps finding ways to raise this question, and … other mainstream outlets follow.” 

Of course they are.  For some reason, other media outlets see the New York Times imprimatur as authorization to cover this story.  I'm not sure why, because that f%$#ing paper is a sh%$-show, but it is what it is.

I don't expect them to run this non-stop though, because when he was President, Trump gave the NYT a one on one interview, so they lack the motivation of narcissistic butt-hurt.

BTW, here are the weasel words:

………

The heart of the story was a statistical analysis:

According to a computer analysis by The New York Times, Mr. Trump’s rally speeches now last an average of 82 minutes, compared with 45 minutes in 2016. Proportionately, he uses 13 percent more all-or-nothing terms like “always” and “never” than he did eight years ago, which some experts consider a sign of advancing age.

Similarly, he uses 32 percent more negative words than positive words now, compared with 21 percent in 2016, which can be another indicator of cognitive change. And he uses swearwords 69 percent more often than he did when he first ran, a trend that could reflect what experts call disinhibition. (A study by Stat, a health care news outlet, produced similar findings.)

You know, considering the allegations of tumult in his campaign, a real journalist could do more than say, "We have a computer program that counts words," but that is actual work.

………

Another giant problem with the article was that it failed to use the word “lie” even once. And it failed to connect the dots between Trump’s “rambling” and how his constant lies are not random – they come straight from the authoritarian playbook, consistently intended to divide the nation and terrify voters into electing a strongman. (See Ruth Ben-Ghiat.)

It’s also worth noting that Baker snuck an astonishing revelation into his 19th paragraph:

Some of Mr. Trump’s cabinet secretaries had a running debate over whether the president was “crazy-crazy,” as one of them put it in an interview after leaving office, or merely someone who promoted “crazy ideas.” There were multiple conversations about whether the 25th Amendment disability clause should be invoked to remove him from office, although the idea never went far.

How long has Baker been sitting on this quote? And while there have been vague reports in the past about such conversations within the cabinet, they’ve been in the context of the Jan. 6 insurrection, not his mental health. That strikes me as newsworthy.

He sat on it until he was certain that he could not get a book deal out of this, like many other NYT staffers (looking at you nepo-baby Maggie Haberman) and Bob Woodward did.

I don't expect much to come of this.  The Times spent years writing about Biden's alleged cognitive decline, and there is less than a month to the election, but we should see more coverage from places like the Washington Post, LA times, Boston Globe, Chicago Sun Times, etc.

I Did Not Know This

I knew that the Crystal Palice was constructed quickly and cheaply for the 1851 London exposition, but I did not know that this was largely because it was the first building constructed with standardized threads on its nuts and bolts.

Whitworth had already written his book on common threads in use, but I thought that standardized threads did not come into general use until decades later:

London's Great Exhibition of 1851 attracted some 6 million people eager to experience more than 14,000 exhibitors showcasing 19th-century marvels of technology and engineering. The event took place in the Crystal Palace, a 990,000-square-foot building of cast iron and plate glass originally located in Hyde Park. And it was built in an incredible 190 days. According to a recent paper published in the International Journal for the History of Engineering and Technology, one of the secrets was the use of a standardized screw thread, first proposed 10 years before its construction, although the thread did not officially become the British standard until 1905.

“During the Victorian era there was incredible innovation from workshops right across Britain that was helping to change the world," said co-author John Gardner of Anglia Ruskin University (ARU). "In fact, progress was happening at such a rate that certain breakthroughs were perhaps never properly realized at the time, as was the case here with the Crystal Palace. Standardization in engineering is essential and commonplace in the 21st century, but its role in the construction of the Crystal Palace was a major development."

………

Paxton's design called for what was essentially a giant conservatory consisting of a multidimensional grid of 24-foot modules. The design elements included 3,300 supporting columns with four flange faces, drilled so they could be bolted to connecting and base pieces. (The hollow columns did double duty as drainage pipes for rainwater.) The design also called for diagonal bracing (aka cross bracing) for additional stability.

The cross braces were bolted, which could have been a major headache, since screws were traditionally made by skilled craftsmen, such that no two were exactly alike and it was nearly impossible to replace lost or broken screws. Paxton's design called for 30,000 nuts and bolts; screws with a consistent thread form would have streamlined the construction process considerably. James Whitworth had proposed a common standard thread in an 1841 paper, based on his analysis of an extensive collection of screw bolts from the main British producers. And thanks to the invention of Henry Maudslay's screw-cutting lathe around 1798, the technology needed to create standard screws already existed.

………

Gardner and Kiss had their answer: The Crystal Palace was constructed with a standardized screw thread. "Often technical objects such as nuts and bolts seem distant from the human, based in theories and standards that are set from above," the authors concluded. "However, the Whitworth screw thread is in fact an organic form with human practice at its center. It is a form that has influenced all standard thread forms since."

International Journal for the History of Engineering and Technology, 2024. DOI: 10.1080/17581206.2024.2391984 (About DOIs).

Yeah, I love this sort of stuff.

They Are Laughing at You, Not with You

I’m sorry, this is the funniest single photo of the entire election cycle. pic.twitter.com/w6PuJlPPmW

— Sonny Bunch (@SonnyBunch) October 6, 2024

I'm not getting a Tesla. I'm keeping my 1978 Trabant.

tfw you have acquired another idiot son https://t.co/E3tTVBBCXb pic.twitter.com/sBS2Eu29n9

— Alex Shephard (@alex_shephard) October 6, 2024

Donald Trump is the sane looking one. (WTF?)

The Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ spoke at a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Not a good look, but it was made even worse by him jumping around like a chihuahua on meth.

People memed the sh%$ out of this.

What can I say about this but, somewhere in America there is a village looking for their idiot who has wandered off.

As Anna Russel Would Say

"I'm not making this up, you know."

There was a meet the candidates forum for candidates running for the state legislature in district 6 in Idaho, and when one of the audience members asked about discrimination in the state, the incumbent state senator Dan Forman, a Republican (Of course), said that there was none in the state.

I guess that he's never experienced any discrimination, because he's white, Christian, and a bigot

When Trish Carter-Goodheart called him out on this, noting that just because he never felt discriminated against it does not mean that there is no discrimination, and that she had experienced discrimination and bigotry many times in her life and in Idaho.

His response was to tell her to go back from where she came from.

Needless to say, Ms. Carter-Goodhear, a member of the Nez Perce, whose ancestors were in North America when Mr. Forman's ancestors were running naked through the woods of Europe painting their bodies blue, was unimpressed.

A bipartisan forum in a small Latah County community took a turn when Republican Senate incumbent Dan Foreman stormed out of the event, following a racist outburst directed at a Native American candidate.

On Tuesday, local Democrat and Republican representatives organized a “Meet your candidates” forum in the northern Idaho town of Kendrick. Three contenders from each party vying for District 6 legislative seats - one senate and two house representatives positions - answered questions submitted by audience members.

When asked if discrimination existed in Idaho, conservative Sen. Dan Foreman said no.

In a statement released Wednesday, Democratic candidate for House Seat A and member of the Nez Perce tribe Trish Carter-Goodheart said she pushed back on that idea when it was her turn to speak, pointing to her own experience and the history of white supremacy groups in Northern Idaho.

“[J]ust because someone hasn’t personally experienced discrimination, doesn’t mean it’s not happening. Racism and discrimination are real issues here in Idaho, as anyone familiar with our state’s history knows,” the statement read. “I highlighted our weak hate crime laws and mentioned the presence of the Aryan Nations in northern Idaho as undeniable evidence of this reality.”

Foreman stood up and angrily interjected, using an expletive to criticize what he cast as the liberal bent of the response, according to the release and people present at the forum.

Carter-Goodheart said he then told her she should go back to where she came from, and heatedly stormed off. One event organizer and two other panelists confirmed Carter-Goodheart’s account, adding Foreman appeared very agitated.

(Emphasis Mine)

This sort of sh%$ is why I could never be a political humorist.  This is beyond my capacity for mockery.

Great Shades of Elvis!

I am referring, of course to Hurricane Milton, which went from a Category 1 Hurricane to Category 5 in less than a 24 hours, and  now has sustained winds of over 180 mph and a pressure in the eye of less than 900 millibar.

It's dropped slightly since peak, but they are looking at a 12-15 foot storm surge in the Tampa area.

Sunday morning, it was just a tropical storm.

Don't worry though, Florida is protected from woke types who have been warning about anthropogenic climate change.  You can thank Ron DeSantis for that.

Another note, even at its worst, Milton will not be the most deadly weather event in the United States.

It might not even be in the top 10.

Typically, the most deadly weather events are heat waves, where you can see thousands of deaths.

(On edit)

Yes, Marjorie Taylor Greene is asserting that the government created the hurricane with our super-duper weather control machine.

I just wanted to know that I just got off the phone with ZOG, and there were no Jewish Space Lasers involved in this storm.

Linkage

• All That Twitters (The Baffler) Musk's investors in Twitter, "Who pitched in that much? Saudi Arabia, Qatar, a mysterious UAE-based venture capital firm, a lawless crypto exchange, and CIA contractor [Oracle Executive Chairman Larry] Ellison. I’m sure they’re happy with their access."
• Bots, so many Bots (WakaTime) An analysis showing how over half of all activity on the ProductHunt website.
• OpenAI Is A Bad Business (Where's Your Ed At) Ed Zitron shows that there is no credible path to profitability for OpenAI.
• New assessment suggests Anthropocene started in the 1950s (Phys.org) "A team of Earth scientists from the Center for Marine Environmental Studies, the University of Tokyo, The Australian National University, Matsuyama University, Kyoto University, and Shimane University, has found, via a new assessment, that the 1950s is the strongest candidate for the start of the Anthropocene."
• The Toxic Men Who Want to Control Federal Employees (Can We Still Govern?) The lede says it all about these blokes, "Imagine being an employee so toxic that you were fired by a guy who boasted to his co-workers about beating a dog to death with a shovel. Now imagine that you are still less sketchy than the guy using the dating app he started to solicit 18 year old girls, offering them free trips to LA to hook up."
• Study of 500,000 Medical Records Links Viruses With Alzheimer's Again And Again (ScienceAlert) Severe viral infections correlate with Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.
• US Senators Want DOJ To Hold Boeing Executives Accountable For 737 MAX Safety Issues (Simple Flying) Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal want the DoJ to prosecute aggressively.  I agree.
• Vietnam plans US$67 billion high-speed railway with no foreign capital (CNA) Hanoi has decided to go it alone.  This may slow development, but keeping foreign rent seekers out is probably worth it.
• Truth Social Users Are Losing Ridiculous Sums of Money to Scams (Gizmodo) This is a feature, not a bug. What part of "Donald Trump" don't you get?
• A National Movement to Organize Amazon Takes Off (Labor Notes) Your mouth to God's ear, but I am not optimistic.
  
• After Historic Chattanooga Win, the UAW Is Bargaining for Better Conditions at Volkswagen (In These Times) I have more optimism about this, if just because the VW plant unionized because the local plant managers went native, and used abusive US management strategies.  I expect VW to bring back German management back to the plant.
  

I've heard reports that the Israeli Air Force used sonic booms during a live speech by Hassan Nazrallah to triangulate his position.

Republican Famlily Values

Former Las Vegas Councilwoman and former Nevada candidate for Governor Linda Fiore has been convicted of fraud after getting caught using money for a slain officer's memorial for herself.

I don't mean some of the money, I mean all of the money:

Former Las Vegas City Councilwoman Michele Fiore was convicted of federal fraud charges Thursday after she used donations intended for a fallen police officer’s memorial for her personal gain, marking a downfall for the firebrand conservative who nearly became Nevada’s treasurer two years ago.

A Las Vegas jury convicted Fiore, 54, of six counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Each count carries a maximum sentence of 20 years imprisonment. She will be sentenced Jan. 6 and had little reaction as Judge Jennifer Dorsey read the verdict.

………

The verdict culminated a trial that included testimony from dozens of witnesses, including Gov. Joe Lombardo, FBI agents, local business owners and Fiore’s daughter. Fiore declined to testify.

The case centered on the construction of a statue honoring Alyn Beck, a Las Vegas police officer killed in the line of duty in 2014. Federal prosecutors accused Fiore — across six months in 2019 and 2020 while serving as a councilwoman — of soliciting donations to her PAC and nonprofit for the construction of the statue but using the money for personal use, including her rent, plastic surgery and another daughter’s wedding.

………

A real estate group, Olympia Companies, originally agreed to pay for half of the statue but ultimately footed the entire bill, according to testimony from Chris Armstrong, a company executive. The statue’s sculptor also testified that Fiore never gave money for the memorial.

Several witnesses testified that Fiore had pledged to use their donations to fund the statue, but that they were never contacted about the money no longer being needed, and that they were not fully reimbursed. Others who testified about giving money to Fiore for the statue included Tommy White, the secretary-treasurer of Laborers Local 872, attorney Peter Palivos and former Henderson Mayor Robert Groesbeck.

It wasn't that she took some of the money, she took it all.

Serious MAGAt, BTW.  Among other things, she released a cheese cakey gun fondling calendar a few years back.

Seriously.  If you are gonna be corrupt, don't take it all.  That's some third world sh%$.

It Was Suggested That She Might Want to Go for a Few Thousand Pounds Less than the Prime Minister to Avoid This Very Story. She Declined.

As you may be aware,UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer was forced to sack his chief of staff Sue Gray following multiple missteps, including her and the PM taking gifts of high fashion clothing worth thousands of pounds.

The final straw was when someone at 10 Downings Street leaked the fact that she was paid more than he was. (Link for the quote in the title here)

Sue Gray has resigned from her position as Keir Starmer’s chief of staff after finding herself at the centre of a political storm since Labour came into power.

Gray will be replaced by Morgan McSweeney, who masterminded Starmer’s succession from Jeremy Corbyn, and with whom she is said to have found herself at odds in government.

………

Gray would take on a new government role as the prime minister’s envoy for the regions and nations, No 10 announced, as Starmer shook up his entire top-team after facing intense pressure to put an end to the hostile briefings that had at times overshadowed his first 100 days.

Envoy for the regions and nations means sacked.

This is what happens when you have a government with no moral center.  Everything becomes palace intrigue, which does not work.  (Though it does make for amusing episodes of Yes, Minister and The Thick of It)

This is the logical extension of Blairism.

When you believe in nothing, all that is left is the quest for power, and unlike the contemptible Tony Blair, Keir Starmer cannot fake sincerity as well.

It's why his popularity has fallen 45% in only a few weeks.

Well, that and leaving senior citizens to freeze in the winter.

Dissing the Cult of the Founder

It's time to acknowledge that Sam Altman is a fraud (snollygoster?) who is running a con that has allowed him to raise billions of dollars.

Large language model "Artificial Intelligence" in general, and OpenAI in particular have nothing of value to deliver at their current state, and likely will never have anything to deliver, because they are bullsh%$ generators that have no understanding at all:

OpenAI announced this week that it has raised $6.6 billion in new funding and that the company is now valued at $157 billion overall. This is quite a feat for an organization that reportedly burns through $7 billion a year—far more cash than it brings in—but it makes sense when you realize that OpenAI’s primary product isn’t technology. It’s stories.

Case in point: Last week, CEO Sam Altman published an online manifesto titled “The Intelligence Age.” In it, he declares that the AI revolution is on the verge of unleashing boundless prosperity and radically improving human life. “We’ll soon be able to work with AI that helps us accomplish much more than we ever could without AI,” he writes. Altman expects that his technology will fix the climate, help humankind establish space colonies, and discover all of physics. He predicts that we may have an all-powerful superintelligence “in a few thousand days.” All we have to do is feed his technology enough energy, enough data, and enough chips.

Maybe someday Altman’s ideas about AI will prove out, but for now, his approach is textbook Silicon Valley mythmaking. In these narratives, humankind is forever on the cusp of a technological breakthrough that will transform society for the better. The hard technical problems have basically been solved—all that’s left now are the details, which will surely be worked out through market competition and old-fashioned entrepreneurship. Spend billions now; make trillions later! This was the story of the dot-com boom in the 1990s, and of nanotechnology in the 2000s. It was the story of cryptocurrency and robotics in the 2010s. The technologies never quite work out like the Altmans of the world promise, but the stories keep regulators and regular people sidelined while the entrepreneurs, engineers, and investors build empires. (The Atlantic recently entered a corporate partnership with OpenAI.)

As an aside here, the fact that The Atlantic has partnered with OpenAI is not a surprise.  Enthusiastic support of bad ideas is core branding for them. 

Despite the rhetoric, Altman’s products currently feel less like a glimpse of the future and more like the mundane, buggy present. ChatGPT and DALL-E were cutting-edge technology in 2022. People tried the chatbot and image generator for the first time and were astonished. Altman and his ilk spent the following year speaking in stage whispers about the awesome technological force that had just been unleashed upon the world. Prominent AI figures were among the thousands of people who signed an open letter in March 2023 to urge a six-month pause in the development of large language models ( LLMs) so that humanity would have time to address the social consequences of the impending revolution. Those six months came and went. OpenAI and its competitors have released other models since then, and although tech wonks have dug into their purported advancements, for most people, the technology appears to have plateaued. GPT-4 now looks less like the precursor to an all-powerful superintelligence and more like … well, any other chatbot.

I call it a slightly improved ELIZA program, but basically it's the same thing. 

Short version:  A parrot has speech, but it does not have language, and LLMs are much the same.

………

In Altman’s rendering, this moment in time is just a waypoint, “the doorstep of the next leap in prosperity.” He still argues that the deep-learning technique that powers ChatGPT will effectively be able to solve any problem, at any scale, so long as it has enough energy, enough computational power, and enough data. Many computer scientists are skeptical of this claim, maintaining that multiple significant scientific breakthroughs stand between us and artificial general intelligence. But Altman projects confidence that his company has it all well in hand, that science fiction will soon become reality. He may need $7 trillion or so to realize his ultimate vision—not to mention unproven fusion-energy technology—but that’s peanuts when compared with all the advances he is promising.

There’s just one tiny problem, though: Altman is no physicist. He is a serial entrepreneur, and quite clearly a talented one. He is one of Silicon Valley’s most revered talent scouts. If you look at Altman’s breakthrough successes, they all pretty much revolve around connecting early start-ups with piles of investor cash, not any particular technical innovation.

Actually, if you look at Altman's career, he's not even a particularly good rainmaker.  He created a failed social network (Loopt) whose "Special Sauce" was that it would spy on you even more intensely than Facebook,  he was fired from YCombinator for not showing up to work and personally trading in companies that they backed, etc.

He's just a bunco artist.

Today in Carbon Credits

As I have noted the carbon credit market is a particularly criminogenic activity, and we have another example of this, with the CEO of a major carbon credit developer being charged with a massive years long carbon credit fraud.

Hoocoodanode?

On 2 October 2024, the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York announced criminal charges against Ken Newcombe, ex-CEO of carbon credit project developer, C-Quest Capital LLC. Newcombe was indicted on wire fraud, commodities fraud, and securities fraud. If found guilty, he faces up to 20 years in prison.

In February 2024, Newcombe resigned as CEO of C-Quest Capital, the company he set up in 2008. C-Quest is incorporated in the tax and secrecy haven of Delaware.

Newcombe was a major promoter of carbon trading, having worked at the World Bank, Climate Change Capital, and Goldman Sachs, before launching C-Quest Capital.

He was a member of Verra’s board [The non profit responsible for setting the Verified Carbon Standard for carbon offsets] from 2007 to December 2023.

………

The charges are against Newcombe and Tridip Goswami, former head of C-Quest’s carbon and sustainable accounting team. Jason Steele, C-Quest’s ex-chief operating officer pleaded guilty and is cooperating with the US authorities.

The indictment accuses Newcombe and Goswami of carrying out a fraud from 2021 to 2023 that resulted in their company CQC Impact Investors LLC “fraudulently obtaining carbon credits worth tens of millions of dollars”.

They are accused of “fraudulently altering data to show that CQC’s cookstoves achieved increased fuel savings and by manipulating the data-collection process to make it appear that more of CQC’s stoves were operational than was actually the case”. CQC allegedly received millions more carbon credits than it otherwise would have done because of this fraud.

Newcombe is also accused of using the fraudulently obtained carbon credits to deceive an investor into agreeing to invest up to US$250 million in CQC. The deal also included the investor buying some of Newcombe’s shares for more than US$16 million.

As an FYI, this technology is nothing new.  It's called a, "Rocket Stove", and it is generally more efficient than conventional wood stoves.

Of course, their business model was to use this to generate carbon credits, and there it would be difficult, if not impossible, to get honest numbers for this, so they lied.

The carbon credit markets encourage fraud, whether it is something like this, or as is the casse of organizations like the Nature Conservancy, reselling forests that had already been set aside for preservation.

This is why I favor a carbon tax over cap and trade.

Remember When I Said That Microsoft Wants to Reopen Three Mile Island?

I described Microsoft's plan to be the exclusive purchaser of the output from that plant as jumping the shark.

But it just got even worse, because the owner of the plant, Constellation Energy, is seeking government subsidies to restart energy production.

So now, it's not just Microsoft throwing money at the most notorious nuclear plant in the United States to power its misbegotten efforts in artificial intelligence, they want the taxpayers to subsidize this.

The owner of the shuttered Three Mile Island nuclear plant is pursuing a $1.6 billion federal loan guarantee to help finance its plan to restart the Pennsylvania facility and sell the electricity to Microsoft to power data centers, according to details of the application shared with The Washington Post.

The taxpayer-backed loan could give Microsoft and Three Mile Island owner Constellation Energy a major boost in their unprecedented bid to steer all the power from a U.S. nuclear plant to a single company.

Microsoft, which declined to comment on the bid for a loan guarantee, is among the large tech companies scouring the nation for zero-emissions power as they seek to build data centers. It is among the leaders in the global competition to dominate the field of artificial intelligence, which consumes enormous amounts of electricity.

………

The restart plan has already generated controversy as energy experts debate the merits of providing separate federal subsidies for the project, in the form of tax credits. Constellation’s pursuit of the $1.6 billion federal loan guarantee, which has not been previously disclosed, is likely to intensify that debate.

………

A loan guarantee would allow Constellation to shift much of the risk of reopening Three Mile Island to taxpayers. The federal government, in this case, would pledge to cover up to $1.6 billion if there is a default. The guarantees are typically used by developers to lower the cost of project financing, as lenders are willing to offer more favorable terms when there is federal backing.

And if Microsoft changes its mind in the years that it will take to reactivate the plant?  The taxpayers will be on the hook.

Taxpayers would be on the hook if difficulties or delays occur during the refurbishment of the plant, which are almost certain.

F%$# no.

The Grifting Continues

The cybersecurity firm IronNet, founded by former senior US intelligence officials, has shut down with a general odor of corruption.

Sounds to me like they thought that they could use their professional connections to sell nothing to the government.

The future was once dazzling for IronNet.

Founded by a former director of the National Security Agency and stacked with elite members of the U.S. intelligence establishment, IronNet promised it was going to revolutionize the way governments and corporations combat cyberattacks.

That former director would be General Keith Alexander.

Its pitch — combining the prowess of ex-government hackers with cutting-edge software – was initially a hit. Shortly after going public in 2021, the company’s value shot past $3 billion.

I cannot imagine that their special sauce was anything beyond the potential to hire government employees after their retire.

I'm sure that Alexander made a lot of money after the IPO.

………

Last September the never-profitable company announced it was shutting down and firing its employees after running out of money, providing yet another example of a tech firm that faltered after failing to deliver on overhyped promises.

The firm’s crash has left behind a trail of bitter investors and former employees who remain angry at the company and believe it misled them about its financial health.

IronNet’s rise and fall also raises questions about the judgment of its well-credentialed leaders, a who’s who of the national security establishment. National security experts, former employees and analysts told The Associated Press that the firm collapsed, in part, because it engaged in questionable business practices, produced subpar products and services, and entered into associations that could have left the firm vulnerable to meddling by the Kremlin.

“I’m honestly ashamed that I was ever an executive at that company,” said Mark Berly, a former IronNet vice president. He said the company’s top leaders cultivated a culture of deceit “just like Theranos,” the once highly touted blood-testing firm that became a symbol of corporate fraud.

Remember how I noted that generals are in bed with defense contractors because of an implicit promise of a comfortable sinecure on retirement.

This is just a particularly egregious example of this.

………

IronNet’s founder and former CEO Keith Alexander is a West Point graduate who retired as a four-star Army general and was once one of the most powerful figures in U.S. intelligence. He oversaw an unprecedented expansion of the NSA’s digital spying around the world when he led the U.S.’s largest intelligence agency for nearly a decade.

Alexander, who retired from the government in 2014, remains a prominent voice on cybersecurity and intelligence matters and sits on the board of the tech giant Amazon. Alexander did not respond to requests for comment.

IronNet’s board has included Mike McConnell, a former director of both the NSA and national intelligence; Jack Keane, a retired four-star general and Army vice chief of staff, and Mike Rogers, the former Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee who is running for the U.S. Senate in Michigan. One of IronNet’s first presidents and co-founders was Matt Olsen, who left the company in 2018 and leads the Justice Department’s National Security Division.

Alexander’s reputation and the company’s all-star lineup ensured IronNet stood out in a competitive market as it sought contracts in the finance and energy sectors, as well as with the U.S. government and others in Asia and the Middle East.

Translation to that last paragraph:  They were the selling personal and professional connections of senior executives and board members, not any unique knowledge of cybersecurity threats or cybersecurity strategies.

………

Top officials were prohibited from unloading their stock for several months, but Alexander was allowed to sell a small amount of his shares. He made about $5 million in early stock sales and bought a Florida mansion worth the same amount.

Well, that beats working for a living.

………

It did not take long for IronNet’s promises to slam into a tough reality as it failed to land large deals and meet revenue projections. Its products simply didn’t live up to the hype, according to former employees, experts and analysts.

Stiennon, the cybersecurity investing expert, said IronNet’s ideas about gathering threat data from multiple clients were not unique and the company’s biggest draw was Alexander’s “aura” as a former NSA director.

The AP interviewed several former IronNet employees who said the company hired well-qualified technicians to design products that showed promise, but executives did not invest the time or resources to fully develop the technology.

Of course they didn't.  This was about insider access, not technology.

Not a Surprise

Attempting to outflank right-to-repair legislation, John Deere made promises to ease repair of their tractors and other agricultural equipment.

They lied.

This is not a surprise.  Extracting maximum money to the detriment of their customers is a core business strategy for Deere:

US Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has sent a letter to John May, CEO of agricultural equipment maker Deere & Company, questioning whether John Deere is living up to the promises it made to support people's right to repair.

And if it's not fulfilling those promises, it may be failing in its obligations under America's Clean Air Act, she added.

In January 2023, following years of legal challenges from farmers wanting to simply fix their own farm equipment outside authorized dealerships, John Deere signed a memorandum of understanding with the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF).

The agreement [PDF] calls for the manufacturing giant to provide farmers and independent repair shops with the tools, software, and documentation necessary to fix broken Deere-made agricultural machines, such as tractors and harvesters. In exchange, the AFBF agreed "to refrain from introducing, promoting, or supporting federal or state 'Right to Repair' legislation" that goes beyond what's promised in the MOU.

Essentially, Deere promised to play nice and help people fix their machines, by providing the tools and support needed, and the federation would back off from pushing for tough laws enshrining the right to repair.

But according to Senator Warren's missive [PDF], dated Wednesday, John Deere has not lived up to those commitments, and the MOU looks like a gambit to sabotage strong right-to-repair legislation, which is being adopted in various states and has the support of the Biden administration. 

John Deere has been promising to play nice for some time, and they never keep their promises.

Stop negotiating, and fire up the lawsuits, lobbying for right to repair laws, and institute administrative actions to make their business plan untenable.

Trusting the company is a losing proposition.

Lovely News

In the journal Nature Medicine, a paper is showing that,"SARS-CoV-2-specific plasma cells are not durably established in the bone marrow long-lived compartment after mRNA vaccination.

Translated into English, it means that immunity to the disease falls off of a cliff after 3 months.

Abstract

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) mRNA vaccines are effective at protecting from severe disease, but the protective antibodies wane rapidly even though SARS-CoV-2-specific plasma cells can be found in the bone marrow (BM). Here, to explore this paradox, we enrolled 19 healthy adults at 2.5–33 months after receipt of a SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccine and measured influenza-, tetanus- or SARS-CoV-2-specific antibody-secreting cells (ASCs) in long-lived plasma cell (LLPC) and non-LLPC subsets within the BM. Only influenza- and tetanus-specific ASCs were readily detected in the LLPCs, whereas SARS-CoV-2 specificities were mostly absent. The ratios of non-LLPC:LLPC for influenza, tetanus and SARS-CoV-2 were 0.61, 0.44 and 29.07, respectively. In five patients with known PCR-proven history of recent infection and vaccination, SARS-CoV-2-specific ASCs were mostly absent from the LLPCs. We show similar results with measurement for secreted antibodies from BM ASC culture supernatant. While serum IgG titers specific for influenza and tetanus correlated with IgG LLPCs, serum IgG levels for SARS-CoV-2, which waned within 3–6 months after vaccination, were associated with IgG non-LLPCs. In all, our studies suggest that rapid waning of SARS-CoV-2-specific serum antibodies could be accounted for by the absence of BM LLPCs after these mRNA vaccines.

The study does not do a comparison between mRNA and other vaccines, so it is unclear whether this is an artifact of the Covid virus or of the mRNA vaccines, but I'm due for a booster, and I am getting Novavax, and I recommend that you do to.

Remember though, I am an engineer, not a doctor, dammit*, so my advice is simply based on my very flawed gut, and nothing else.

Any shot is better than no shot.

^*I love it when I get to go all Dr. McCoy!