No Blogging Tonight

I just got back from Trial By Fire & Lochmere Arrow (Take 2), and I am exhausted.

4 hours of intense cooking under camping conditions.

It was wet wicked humid as well.

Worst Team-Building Exercise Ever

It appears that there was some sort of team-building exercise in Colorado, and abandoned one of their cow-orkers on top of a 14,000 foot peak.

A Florida man on a corporate retreat became separated from his co-workers during a hike in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado last Friday, leaving him missing in the wilderness for a day and forcing him to brave a bitter storm overnight before being rescued, search and rescue authorities said.

(emphasis mine)

It's always a Florida man, isn't it? 

“He’s lucky to be alive,” Evan Brady, the public information officer for Chaffee County Search and Rescue South, said of the man, Steve Stephanides, of Apopka, Fla.

At sunrise last Friday, Mr. Stephanides, 47, and 14 of his co-workers at Beazley, a London-based global insurance firm, started on a popular trail hike to the summit of Mount Shavano, a 14,000-foot peak about 75 miles west of Colorado Springs, Chaffee County Search and Rescue South said in a statement. During the trek, Mr. Stephanides stopped for a break while his co-workers continued on the route, Mr. Brady said.

Sorry, at 14,000 feet if someone needs to take a break, you do not leave them alone.

………

As he tried to find his way to the correct trail on Friday, Mr. Stephanides sent his co-workers at least one more location pin from his phone, but became further disoriented. About 9 p.m., Chaffee County Search and Rescue South was alerted about Mr. Stephanides’s status as a missing hiker and used search teams and a drone pilot to try to find him. Ten local volunteer and professional search teams, as well as helicopters, were deployed to assist.

But rescue efforts were thwarted Friday night because of a “brutal” storm that rolled into the mountain range, Mr. Brady said.“Teams encountered high winds and freezing rain, which made reaching the summit unsafe, and presented many difficulties for the drone operator,” the county’s statement said.

I am by no means a wilderness maven, but even I know that leaving someone alone on a rather tall mountain is a recipe for disaster.

So, for that matter is someone going off on their own in such an area is foolhardy.

Buddy system, folks.

And These Are Supposed to Be the Sane Ones

It looks like the Democratic National Convention was a Covid superspreader event.

This is usually the point where I say, "Wear your f%$#ing mask," but the DNC banned masks, because the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) are a bunch of f%$#ing morons:

People often leave political conventions with lots of good memories and fun souvenirs, but some participants in the recent Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago also brought home an unwelcome visitor: COVID-19.

"Ugh: DNCovid-24," Doug Sovern, a political reporter at San Francisco's KCBS, wrote on X, adding a photo of his positive test result. "I brought home an unfortunate souvenir from #DNC2024. And so did many of my fellow convention crew. I guess 4 hours of sleep a night + endless work + close indoor proximity to so many people = my first COVID since the NBA Finals in 2021."

"Oh man! I brought home so much sweet swag from the DNC!" said Fred Wellman, a retired Army officer, in a social media post that has since been deleted. "Coffee mugs, stickers, t-shirts, poster, buttons, bags, pins, and...COVID!"

"I arrived at the DNC healthy and hopeful and left very sick and disillusioned," wrote Yasmine Taeb, a human rights lawyer, who, like Sovern, also posted a photo of her positive test on X.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton -- one of the event's marquee speakers -- also came down with COVID. The illness forced her to drop out of a Democratic fundraiser she had planned to attend.

The Democratic National Committee, which hosted the convention, gave convention-goers conflicting guidance regarding masking, one of the prime COVID prevention strategies. In its convention FAQ, the "Public Health and Safety" section says the following regarding COVID: "The 2024 Democratic National Convention Committee adheres to current guidance from relevant public health authorities regarding COVID-19. Masking is not required at convention events, but any participant desiring to wear a mask is welcome to do so."

Yeah, it's OK, but not really OK:

However, in the "Accessibility" section of the same document, a question about whether attendees are allowed to wear masks at the two main convention venues is answered as follows: "Yes, masks will be allowed if necessary due to a disability. You may be asked to remove your mask when going through security." The committee did not respond by press time to an email asking about whether any COVID precautions were taken at the event, at which very few masks were visible. 

Yeah, you can wear a mask, but security will harass you.

This is in the middle of the biggest Covid outbreak in about 2 years:

………

Katelyn Jetelina, PhD, MPH, the author of the "Your Local Epidemiologist" newsletter, told MedPage Today that she was "not surprised at all."

"We are in the middle of a massive infection wave and, presumably, a national gathering like this provides new social networks for the virus to explore," said Jetelina, who is a senior scientific consultant to the CDC. "There are a lot of things people could do to prevent this from happening, including wearing a high-quality mask to the event. Unfortunately, when I was watching from television, I saw very few utilizing this tool."

I'm not surprised. They are f%$#ing morons.

And the other side is as least as stupid, and bat-sh%$ insane as well.

I am not fond of the available choices.

It's Thursday ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Initial claims


Claims vs New HiresBoth the weekly unemployment report and the updated 2nd quarter GDP results are out, and it looks like the beginning of a recession to me, because the new hire numbers are falling off of a cliff.

Eventually, that will bleed over into the economy:

The number of Americans filing new applications for jobless benefits slipped last week, but re-employment opportunities for laid-off workers are becoming more scarce, a sign that the unemployment rate probably remained elevated in August.

Though the labor market is slowing, it is doing so in an orderly fashion that is keeping the economic expansion on track. The economy grew faster than initially thought in the second quarter, powered by consumer spending, other data showed on Thursday. Corporate profits also rebounded last quarter, helping to further dispel fears of a recession.

While the labor market slowdown positions the Federal Reserve to start cutting interest rates next month, the data argues against a 50 basis point reduction in borrowing costs.

I'll take the under on that one.  If the Fed cuts rates, my money is on ¼% (25 basis points), not 50.

………

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits fell 2,000 to a seasonally adjusted 231,000 for the week ended Aug. 24. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 232,000 claims for the latest week. Claims have retreated from an 11-month high in late July as distortions from temporary motor vehicle plant shutdowns for new model retooling and the impact of Hurricane Beryl faded.


A step-down in hiring because of tighter monetary policy is accounting for the loss of labor market momentum, rather than layoffs. It has attracted the attention of officials at the U.S. central bank, including Fed Chair Jerome Powell who last week said "the time has come for policy to adjust."
Financial markets expect the Fed to begin its easing cycle next month with a 25-basis-point reduction in its benchmark overnight interest rate. A half-percentage point cut is on the table. The Fed has maintained its policy rate in the current 5.25%-5.50% range for more than a year, having raised it by 525 basis points in 2022 and 2023.

………

Gross domestic product increased at a 3.0% annualized rate last quarter, revised up from the 2.8% rate reported last month, the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis said in its second estimate of second-quarter GDP on Thursday. The economy grew at a 1.4% pace in the first quarter.

I expect the economic news to get worse over the next few months.

Nothing in the Least Authoritarian or Fascist Here

Emanuel Macron is refusing to allow the left alliance that won the snaop election that he called to form a government, because nothing can ever be allowed to make investment bankers and industrialists uncomfortable.

F%$# Macron with Cheney's dick:

France has been plunged into further political chaos after Emmanuel Macron refused to name a prime minister from the leftwing coalition that won the most parliamentary seats in the snap election last month.

The president had hoped consultations would break the political deadlock caused by the election that left the Assemblée Nationale divided into three roughly equal blocks – left, centre and far right – none of which has a majority of seats.

After two days of talks with party and parliamentary leaders to break the stalemate and allow him to name a prime minister with cross-party support, Macron’s decision not to choose the New Popular Front’s candidate was met with anger and threats of impeachment.

Threats of impeachment are not enough.  Start the impeachment process, even though the mechanism is next to impossible to execute. 

………

A government formed by the leftwing alliance the New Popular Front (NFP) – comprising France Unbowed (LFI), the Socialist party (PS), the Greens (EELV) and the Communist party (PCF) – would lead to an immediate vote of no confidence and a collapse of the government, Macron said explaining his decision.

That's a lie.  While Macron's party (Renaissance) would likely support a vote of no confidence with near unanimity, it is far less likely that the right wing RN would do so, because while Marine Le Pen is a deeply evil person, she is not an idiot, and voting no-confidence would set back the party for years.

Macron seems to think that he is king.

He needs to study his history, because it has not been kind to the kings of France for the past few hundred years.

We Are F%$#ed

For a while, I have been saying that climate scientists have been underestimating the severity of global warming.  (See here, here, here, and here)

Remember all those dire consequences for a 1.5°C (2.7°F) increase in temperatures globally?

Remember how the IPCC said that a doubling of  CO2 levels might result in a global temperature increase of 4.5°C? (8.1°F)

Well, a new study is suggesting that the impact of increasing CO2 is even greater than previously thought, and that a doubling of atmospheric CO2 levels might result in a 14°C (25°F) temperature increase.

That is real end of the world stuff:

Doubling the atmospheric CO2 levels could raise Earth’s average temperature by 7 to 14 degrees Celsius (13 to 25.2 degrees Fahrenheit), according to sediment analysis from the Pacific Ocean near California conducted by researchers from NIOZ and the Universities of Utrecht and Bristol.

The results were recently published in the journal Nature Communications

“The temperature rise we found is much larger than the 2.3 to 4.5 degrees Celsius (4.1 to 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit) that the UN climate panel, IPCC, has been estimating so far,” said the first author, Caitlyn Witkowski. 

45-year-old drill core

The researchers used a 45-year-old drill core extracted from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. “I realized that this core is very attractive for researchers, because the ocean floor at that spot has had oxygen-free conditions for many millions of years,” said Professor Jaap Sinninghe Damsté, senior scientist at NIOZ and professor of organic geochemistry at Utrecht University. 

………

From this record, the researchers were able to extract an indication of the past seawater temperature and an indication of ancient atmospheric CO2 levels, using a new approach.

………

The researchers derived the temperature using a method developed 20 years ago at NIOZ, called the TEX86 method. “That method uses specific substances that are present in the membrane of archaea, a distinct class of microorganisms,” Damsté explains.

“Those archaea optimize the chemical composition of their membrane depending on the temperature of the water in the upper 200 meters of the ocean. Substances from that membrane can be found as molecular fossils in the ocean sediments, and analyzed to this day.”

………

Damsté: “A very small fraction of the carbon on Earth occurs in a ‘heavy form,’ 13C instead of the usual 12C. Algae have a clear preference for 12C. However: the lower the CO2 concentration in the water, the more algae will also use the rare 13C. Thus, the 13C content of these two substances is a measure of the CO₂ content of the ocean water. And that in turn, according to solubility laws, correlates with the CO₂ content of the atmosphere.”

Using this new method, it appears that the CO2 concentration dropped from about 650 parts per million, 15 million years back, to 280 just before the industrial revolution.

………

When the researchers plot the derived temperature and atmospheric CO2 levels of the past 15 million years against each other, they find a strong relationship. The average temperature 15 million years ago was over 18 degrees Celsius (64.4 degrees Fahrenheit): 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than today and about the level that the UN Climate Panel, IPCC, predicts for the year 2100 in the most extreme scenario.

Fighting anthropogenic climate change cannot be about convincing emitters to reduce output through incentives, and not just because it has been repeatedly shown that carbon offsets are a scam.

It won't get us there.

Legal mandates with a probability of swift criminal enforcement is the only way to fix this.

I Hate this World

I just heard about, "Monkey Crush Videos."

Don't click through.

Don't Google it. 

If you hear someone talking about it, rat them out to the local police, the FBI, the ASPCA, and anyone else you could possibly imagine.

Human beings are horrible.

Full Safe Driving, Huh?

It turns out that the Teslas operating in the Boring Company tunnel beneath Las Vegas, a 2 mile circle with no weather, pedestrians, or cross traffic, cannot operate autonomously.

The task is too tough for the Tesla "Full Safe Driving" hardware and software to handle.

Hoocoodanode?

Autonomous driving capabilities are a central component of Tesla's stratospheric share price, with CEO Elon Musk repeatedly telling investors that they're the difference between "being worth a lot of money or worth basically zero." But real-world performance on the road lags far behind Musk's claims, with the latest data point coming from another Musk venture, the Boring Company, and its tunnels under Las Vegas.

………

So far, there's just a 2.2-mile loop with three stations serving the Las Vegas Convention Center, albeit with the potential to expand the subterranean system to 68 miles (110 km) in total.

When the Boring Company tunnels were first proposed, the concepts featured custom-designed autonomous electric people movers, but when Ars got a ride in a test tunnel in 2018, it was in a Tesla Model X SUV with a human behind the wheel. The mode of transport inside the Boring Company's tunnels remains Tesla road cars, but they are resolutely human-driven despite the controlled environment with constant lighting and a lack of weather, other traffic, or pedestrians for the camera-based system to worry about.

In fact, there's no timeline for eliminating the driver in the (Vegas) loop, according to Steve Hill, president and CEO of the Las Vegas Convention Center and Visitors Authority. Speaking with the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Hill said, "Hopefully this will get started just lightly, using a driver assistance tool by the end of this year."

Gee, Elon R. Musk, sooper genius sounds a lot like Wile E. Coyote, sooper genius, doesn't it?

Elon Musk has an even more distant relationship with the truth than Donald Trump, and that is not a low bar.

Forget it Jake, It's Infosys

What a surprise, Indian IT consultancy Infosys has been accused of, stringing along new "Hires" by delaying their on-boarding and requiring them to do unpaid pre-training.

This is not a surprise.  The founder of the company called for a 70 hour work week, and their (completely illegal) abuse of the H1B process in the United States is perhaps the most extreme of any of the indian "Body Shops."

Indian IT firm Infosys has been accused of being “exploitative” after allegedly sending job offers to thousands of engineering graduates but still not onboarding any of them after as long as two years. The recent graduates have reportedly been told they must do repeated unpaid training in order to remain eligible to work at Infosys.

Last week, the Nascent Information Technology Employees Senate (NITES), an Indian advocacy group for IT workers, sent a letter [PDF], shared by The Register, to Mansukh Mandaviya, India’s minister of Labor and Employment. It requested that the Indian government intervene “to prevent exploitation of young IT graduates by Infosys." The letter, signed by NITES president Harpreet Singh Saluja, claimed that NITES received “multiple” complaints from recent engineering graduates “who have been subjected to unprofessional and exploitative practices” from Infosys after being hired for system engineer and digital specialist engineer roles.

According to NITES, Infosys sent these people offer letters as early as April 22, 2022, after engaging in a college recruitment effort from 2022–2023, but never onboarded the graduates. NITES has previously said that “over 2,000 recruits” are affected.

I'm beginning to think that Infosys employees should take a page from certain Indian steel workers,  though their specific protest methods, setting fire to senior managers' cars with the managers inside, seems a bit excessive.

Good on Ya, Mate!

Australia has passed a law giving employees the right to ignore work communications when they not at work.

I'd like to see the same thing in the United States, but I'd also like to see socialized healthcare and billionaires frog marched out of their offices in handcuffs. 

I'm not holding my breath on any of these.

Once Again, the Economists are Wrong

Whenever someone proposes raising the minimum wage, economists always scream that this will destroy jobs, and every time, they are wrong.

This time, it's California.

Last year, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the state’s fast-food minimum wage increase into law, which meant that employees at fast-food restaurants in the state went from making $15.50 per hour to $20 per hour. While the decision was lauded by many labor activists as part of broader efforts to improve working conditions and address wage disparities, some economists and fast-food industry members expressed concern over how the law would impact restaurants’ operating costs, which could result in reduced hours for workers or even job cuts.

However, according to new state and federal employment data, California’s fast-food industry has added jobs every month this year — including 11,000 new jobs since the wage increase officially went into effect in April.

I wonder if perhaps those elegant models which assume completely rational actors and perfect information might not reflect the real world.

Nice, But I Want Him in an Orange Jumpsuit

Special counsel Jack Smith has issued a superseding indictment for Donald Trump's attempts at insurrection on January 6.

He convened a different grand jury, and presented evidence as restricted by the recent Supreme Court decision. (Grand jury presentations are secret, but it is a reasonable supposition)

They returned the same four felony indictments.

This is not a surprise.  As the old saying goes, "A prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich."

I won't believe that this amounts to anything until Donald Trump is dragged off to prison kicking and screaming. 

Even if Smith gets a conviction, between appeals and the six thoroughly corrupt members of the Supreme Court, I do not think that he will ever spend a day in the slam.

Federal prosecutors on Tuesday issued a pared-down version of an indictment accusing former President Donald J. Trump of plotting to overturn the 2020 election, stripping out some charges and tweaking others to help the case survive the Supreme Court’s recent ruling granting former presidents broad immunity.

The revised indictment, issued in Federal District Court in Washington, represented an attempt by prosecutors in the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, to preserve the bulk of their case against the former president while bringing the allegations into line with the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling that former presidents are immune from criminal prosecution for many official acts taken while in office.

It kept the basic structure of the first indictment, issued nearly 13 months ago, which accused Mr. Trump of intersecting plots to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The thrust of the changes was to remove any discussion from the indictment of any allegations that might be construed as related to Mr. Trump’s official acts as president while also contending that others acts should be interpreted as the conduct of a private candidate for office.

 

Elections Have Consequences

Almost exactly a year ago, (link) I noted that the NLRB had issued a ruling that stated that when an employer breaks the law during a unionization election, the remedy is to declare the union to have won the election and direct that company to begin negotiating on a contract immediately.

We are now seeing the fruits of this ruling:

Five years ago, after a majority of workers at Red Rock Resort in Las Vegas signed cards to join the Culinary Workers Union, supervisors marched them into a series of mandatory meetings. The company promised employees free health care and new retirement benefits if they voted down the union, and vowed to drag out negotiations if the union won.

Red Rock, which is owned by billionaire brothers and major Trump donors Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta, also launched an anti-union website, plastered with the faces of employees without their permission. Then, two days before the vote, workers were greeted with hundreds of free steaks in the employee dining room, each branded with the same message: VOTE NO!

On election day, only 46% of the workers voted for the union.

“They never actually wanted to listen to the workers,” said Veronica Gomez, 57, who has worked as a housekeeper at Red Rock since 2006 and helped lead the union drive. “They never wanted to give up any power.”

In June, though, the National Labor Relations Board, which oversees union elections, offered Gomez and her co-workers a win. After a protracted legal fight, the NLRB’s five-person board, which issues final agency decisions on judicial rulings that have been appealed, concurred with an administrative judge’s earlier decision that Red Rock management had engaged in “pervasive and egregious misconduct.” The board also employed, for the first time, a new protection against union-busting that it had issued in a decision last year called Cemex. Citing Cemex, the board forced Red Rock to immediately recognize and bargain with the union. 

………

It’s been about a year since the Cemex decision overturned nearly five decades of precedent and limited an employer’s ability to illegally undermine union support without facing meaningful consequences. Since 1979, there has been little downside for an employer who breaks labor law during an election, and unfair labor practices — as such violations are known — are common. (As of late June, for example, Starbucks’ efforts to oppose unionization have generated 435 unfair labor practice charges from National Labor Relations Board regional offices.)

Except in the rarest of cases, violations simply triggered another election — until August 2023, when the NLRB created a new consequence for law-breaking employers in its ruling on a dispute between the Teamsters and Cemex Construction Materials Pacific, a cement-mixing company. Post-Cemex, if a majority of workers sign cards to join a union, an employer can either recognize the union or file a petition within two weeks for a union election. 

If the employer misses the deadline, and the cards are found to be valid, the National Labor Relations Board can order the employer to recognize the union. And if, during the election, the employer commits violations that require setting the election aside, the agency will order the employer to recognize the union and begin to bargain a first contract.

I thought that it was good news at the time, but I did not realize just how good the news was..

Not only does it offer real disincentives for employers breaking the law, but it also speeds up the unionization process.

Assuming that SCOTUS does not strike this rule down, and that is a big if, this is a major win for American workers.

Not the Onion

And it's not New York Times Pitchbot parody, the parody account has been reduced to simply citing an existing New York Times OP/ED.

I think we may be nearing the end of civilization pic.twitter.com/NaJ8s7Nsps

— New York Times Pitchbot (@DougJBalloon) August 26, 2024

The author of this OP/ED Rich Lowry, is best known for his masturbatory writings about Sarah Palin's performance at the 2008 Vice Presidential debate:

I'm sure I'm not the only male in America who, when Palin dropped her first wink, sat up a little straighter on the couch and said, "Hey, I think she just winked at me." And her smile. By the end, when she clearly knew she was doing well, it was so sparkling it was almost mesmerizing. It sent little starbursts through the screen and ricocheting around the living rooms of America. This is a quality that can't be learned; it's either something you have or you don't, and man, she's got it.

It might be more accurate to say that Lowry was best known for his masturbatory writings about Sarah Palin until yesterday, where he claimed that

As Anna Russel would say, "I'm not making this up, you know."  He actually wrote that Donald Trump can win the election, "On Character.". 

It seems to me that this analysis is even shallower and stupid than his mash note to Ms. Palin, and he is going to be subject to even more ridicule than he got 16 years ago.

Already, observers are describing this as, "'Laugh-out-loud funny. 

It's not funny though, it's just very, very sad. 

Also, cancel your f%$#ing New York Times subscription.

Still Can't Make Spacecraft

Boeing again, and we have a data point which goes a long way to explain why its Starliner has left 2 astronauts stuck on the International Space Station until February.

In a classic, "I see what your problem is," moment, we now know that workers at Boeing's New Orleans facility are inadequately trained and inexperienced. 

To be fair, how could they overpay executives or engage in massive stock buybacks if they had properly trained personnel?

An undertrained and inexperienced workforce at NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans is a key reason for a "degraded state" of quality control on the Artemis project that's set to send astronauts to the Moon and then Mars in coming decades, according to the space agency's internal watchdog.

In a scathing report issued Thursday, NASA's Office of Inspector General cited rocket maker Boeing, which employs more than 1,000 people at Michoud, for dozens of problems on its Space Launch System rockets that are being assembled there.

An upgraded version of the SLS rocket is more than seven years behind schedule and $1 billion over budget, and federal monitors found 71 problems on the Michoud-based project ranging from minor to potentially serious.

To be fair, the Starliner is not made at the Michoud facility, but the refusal to invest in people or equipment to get the job done is systemic.

If You Can't Stand the Heat, Watch for Allergens

As you may have heard on the news, the Evil Empire Klingons Sauron Yoyodyne Disney has backed away from its claim that signing up for a trial membership in Disney Plus does not mean that the plaintiff will have to use binding arbitration in a case where they killed a doctor.

Short version, at a Disney resort, a doctor was exposed to allergens that killed her, despite her repeatedly making clear to the restaurant staff that she had these issues and the staff's assurance that the food would be allergen free.

Disney claimed that the trial should be held under binding arbitration because the doctor's husband signed up for a trial membership to Disney Plus.

Disney said it is abandoning its motion to compel arbitration in a case filed by a man who alleges his wife died from anaphylaxis after a restaurant at a Disney complex failed to honor requests for allergen-free food.

Disney's motion to compel arbitration controversially cited the Disney+ streaming service's subscriber agreement, which includes a binding arbitration clause. The plaintiff's lawyer called the argument "absurd."

Disney confirmed this week that it will withdraw the motion, which it filed on May 31.

"At Disney, we strive to put humanity above all other considerations," Disney Experiences Chairman Josh D'Amaro said in a statement provided to Ars today. "With such unique circumstances as the ones in this case, we believe this situation warrants a sensitive approach to expedite a resolution for the family who have experienced such a painful loss. As such, we've decided to waive our right to arbitration and have the matter proceed in court."

Translation, "We had no idea that this would blow up and go viral." 

This is, after all, the company that bought a number of works from publishers and republished them while refusing to pay royalties  to the authors, because they claimed that they had just bought the publication rights, and not the responsibility to pay royalties. (See here)

Piccolo's lawyer, Brian Denney, wrote in a court filing that "there is simply no reading of the Disney+ Subscriber Agreement, the only Agreement Mr. Piccolo allegedly assented to in creating his Disney+ account, which would support the notion that he was agreeing on behalf of his wife or her estate, to arbitrate injuries sustained by his wife at a restaurant located on premises owned by a Disney theme park or resort from which she died. Frankly, any such suggestion borders on the absurd. Indeed, the Disney+ Subscriber Agreement was only between Mr. Piccolo and Disney+, not WDPR [Walt Disney Parks and Resorts] or any other Disney Affiliates."

Denney provided Ars with a statement today. "Although Disney has withdrawn its motion, the arbitration clauses they relied upon in their motion still exist on their various platforms (i.e. streaming services; entrance tickets to Disney's parks, etc.). This potentially puts other people injured by Disney's negligence at risk of facing a similar legal challenge," Denney said. "The right to a jury trial as set forth in the seventh amendment is a bedrock of our judicial system and should be protected and preserved. Attempts by corporations like Disney to avoid jury trials should be looked at with skepticism."

………

The lawsuit said Disney owns the premises where the restaurant is located and alleged that "Disney had control and/or right of control over the menu of food offered, the hiring and/or training of the wait staff, and the policies and procedures as it pertains to food allergies at Disney Springs restaurants, such as Raglan Road."

Disney's attempt to move the case into a confidential setting backfired as the company faced a deluge of criticism, Jamie Cartwright, an attorney who is not involved in the lawsuit, told the BBC. "In attempting to push the claim into a confidential setting on what were very tenuous grounds, it succeeded only in creating the very publicity and attention it likely wanted to avoid," he said.

Oh, the poor babies.  They wanted to avoid a PR fiasco, and in so doing got one.

I do not know if the case against Disney has any merit. that is a relatively complex issue for the trial, but the attempt to enforce arbitration over because of a clickwrap agreement for a streaming service certianly falls under the category of, "Shocks the conscience."

More significantly, this is yet another example of how This is perhaps the best argument for piracy this century.

Why should you pay Disney, or Amazon, or Netflix, or HBO/MAX, or Hulu, or Peacock, or Apple, or anyone when the net result is that you are abused by the company and receive an inferior product? (Things like being unable to get HD on your laptop, reneging on the product being ad-free, and the Disney case of forcing you into arbitration on completely different products)

It's not difficult for content distributors to minimize privacy, they just have to produce products that are better than pirating content. which is a pain in the ass.

Of course, they don't do that.  They don't care.

Of Course Economists Hate This

Economists really hate Kamala Harris' proposal to limit price gouging.

Of course they do.  That's the world that they live in, where private business always act in their rational long term self interest, consumers behave rationally on the basis of complete information, and all of the children are above average.

This is, of course, a delusional fantasy, but, "Delusional Fantasy," pretty much describes the assumptions made by academics working in the dismal science, as Law professor, antitrust advocate and consumer advocate Zephyr Teachout explains:

Last week, the economics commentariat and much of the mainstream media erupted with contempt toward Kamala Harris’s proposed federal price-gouging law. Op-eds, social-media posts, and straight news reports mocked Harris for economically illiterate pandering and warned of Soviet-style “price controls” that would lead to shortages and runaway inflation.

The strange thing about these complaints is that what Harris actually proposed was neither radical nor new—and it certainly wasn’t price controls. In fact, almost every state already has a law restricting at least some forms of price gouging. Although Harris has not specified the exact design of her proposal, one hopes that it would follow the basic outline of state-level bans: forbidding unwarranted price hikes for necessary goods during emergencies.

………

For example, early in the coronavirus pandemic, some New York City residents complained that grocery stores were charging exorbitant prices for Lysol. But because those stores were merely passing along price increases from their distributor, they didn’t get in trouble. Instead, the state pursued a case against the wholesaler, which agreed last year to pay $100,000 in penalties and restitution. (During the pandemic, I took a sabbatical from teaching law to work for New York Attorney General Letitia James, with a focus on price gouging; I worked on the appeal of the Lysol case.)

Would that other pundits were so open in their disclosures:

Price-gouging bans are broadly popular—except among economists. The reason is that, in the perfect world of simple economic models, allowing sellers to charge whatever they want during periods of heightened demand is actually a good thing: It signals to the rest of the market that there’s money to be made on the product in question, which in turn leads to more supply. Accordingly, prohibiting gouging leads to less production of essential goods and services. Plus, letting prices rise helps ensure that the product will be sold to the people who value it the most.

Here, regular people seem to understand a few things that economists don’t. During an emergency, such as a natural disaster, short-term demand cannot be met by short-term supply, setting the stage for sellers to exploit their position by raising prices on goods already in their inventory. The idealized law of supply and demand predicts that new investors would rush in, but the real world doesn’t work like that. A short-term price spike won’t always trigger the long-term investments needed to increase supply, because everyone knows that the situation is, by definition, abnormal; they can’t count on a continued revenue boom. During a rare blizzard, sellers might jack up the prices of snowblowers. But investors aren’t going to set up a new snowblower-manufacturing hub based on a blizzard, because by the time they had any inventory to sell, the snow would long be melted. So after the disruption, all goes back to normal—except with a big wealth transfer from the public to the company that raised prices.

Let's talk about Uber, for example, whose app is alleged to jack up your fare when your phone battery is low.

Yeah, that will get you more cars on the street, jacking up the fare for one rider.

Economist like rich corrupt people because they fit in with their over-simplified views of the world, and because rich corrupt people make large donations to things like economics departsmnets and endow chairs.

Economists love corruption, because corruption benefits them.

C%$# News Network

Every news organization these days seems to put out some performative bullsh%$ that serves no purpose beyond click or ratings bait.

CNN has taken it to a new level by putting a known and very public MAGAt on their "undecided" voter panel to ensure that there was at least one vote for Trump.

This sort of sh%$ is clearly over the line that one has to be willfully blind or actively malicious, and given that the CEO of CNN's parent company, David Zazlav, brought in Chris Licht to CNN, the man of who Keith Olbermann said, "When we worked together at MSNBC, I believed used to eat paste," my money is on malice:

A man introduced as an undecided voter during a CNN segment following Kamala Harris' speech on Day 4 of the Democratic National Convention has a history of supporting MAGA online. CNN host Gary Tuchman said all panelists claimed to be undecided voters at that time.

Meet Bryant Rosado, who, when asked to grade Kamala Harris' speech, gave it a "C" while the other seven panelists rated it either an "A" or a "B." When asked to explain his grade, Rosado said:

"She wasn't clear enough on the policies. She did speak a lot of her personal history, on her personal history which was great, but I still don't feel like she's ready. I feel like, more so, she should wait. I don't want to personally vote for someone that is a backup."

Rosado then confirmed he wasn't ready to vote for Kamala Harris. Moments later, he raised his hand, indicating that he was ready to make a commitment. When asked, he stated that he was now voting for Trump.

………

MeidasTouch has uncovered that, despite telling CNN that he was an undecided voter who just decided to vote for Trump, Rosado has a substantial MAGA social media history, including a video of himself shooting an AK-47, which he purchased.

As an aside here, what are allegedly patriotic citizens doing shooting AK-47s when there are good American designed and American made weapons out there?

An owner of such a weapon is unlikely to be undecided, as Kamala Harris has expressed support for banning assault weapons. Rosado's social media history, reviewed by MeidasTouch, reveals that he has been posting pro-Trump content for years.

This was a deliberate decision by CNN.  Adjust your channel selections accordingly.

All This to Play the Original Empire?

In a case of having WAY too much free time, former Microsoft Engineer Dave Plummer has reconstructed a DEC PDP-11 minicomputer from has spare parts bin.  (The multiplayer world conquest game Empire first ran on a PDP-11 in 1972)

Former Microsoft engineer Dave Plummer took a trip down memory lane this week by building a functioning PDP-11 minicomputer from parts found in a tub of hardware.

It's a fun watch, especially for anyone charged with maintaining these devices during their heyday. Unfortunately, Plummer did not place his creation in a period-appropriate case, and one might argue he cheated a bit by using a board containing a Linux computer to present boot devices.

Nonetheless, the build will undoubtedly bring back memories, both good and bad.

I have to admire his dedication, and no one got killed in the process, unlike, for example, the unfortunate (albeit fictional) crew of the Pequad.

Good News Everyone!

The National Labor Relations Board has ruled that Amazon cannot hide behind contractors, and that its drivers are employees.

This is pretty much indisputable.

Amazon specifies the schedules, specifies the routes, and watches its drivers on video cameras that it installs, which would not happen if they were not the drivers' employers:

In a loss for Amazon that could force it to meet the Teamsters union at the bargaining table, a regional National Labor Relations Board director said Thursday that the company is a joint employer of some of the thousands of contractor delivery drivers who deliver its packages.

The e-commerce giant has previously argued that it should not be responsible for alleged union busting or required to bargain with driver unions, because the drivers who ferry packages to consumers’ doors in Amazon-branded vans work for third-party contractors called delivery service partners, or DSPs. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

Thursday’s determination suggests that Amazon is wrong, finding that it failed to bargain in good faith after delivery drivers in Palmdale, Calif., voted to unionize in 2023, a first for the company’s delivery drivers. The regional NLRB director also found that Amazon had illegally targeted drivers in Palmdale with termination, threatened workers, and held unlawful captive audience meetings, according to labor board spokesperson Kayla Blado.

The Palmdale drivers worked for a DSP called Battle-Tested Strategies, which was terminated by Amazon as a contractor after its workers started organizing and where management voluntarily recognized the union. If Amazon, the DSP and the delivery drivers fail to reach a settlement agreement in California, the board said it will issue a complaint and schedule a hearing before an administrative law judge. Thursday’s determination by the NLRB applies only to the drivers in Palmdale in regard to their union campaign, and won’t have an immediate effect on the legal standing of Amazon drivers writ large.

It won't have an immediate effect?  Maybe, but I'd want to hear from a lawyer, and not just an assertion from a Jeff Bezos owned Washington Post reporter. 

Unfortunately, given the corrupt rat-f%$#s in the US Supreme Court, I am not sure where this will go when Amazon inevitably appeals this.

Just Got Back from Montgomery County

My son is finally out of his old apartment.

I hate moving.

15 miles down the road, and still a major pain in the ass.  Their dog is happy though, he has a back yard now.

Elections Have Consequences

The Department of Justice, and 8 states, have sued the RealPage platform, arguing that its whole business model is supporting illegal pricing collusion.

First, RealPage's model has clearly been to function as an intermediary to foment collusion, and second, I am a bit surprised that the DoJ decided to sue over this:

The United States today sued RealPage, alleging that the software maker distorts competition in rental housing by helping landlords collectively set prices.

"To ensure they secure the greatest value for their needs, renters rely on robust and fierce competition between landlords. RealPage distorts that competition," said the lawsuit filed by the US government and eight state attorneys general. In a press release, the Justice Department said that "RealPage's pricing algorithm violates antitrust laws."

Attorney General Merrick Garland delivered remarks on the lawsuit. "When the Sherman Act was passed, an anticompetitive scheme might have looked like robber barons shaking hands at a secret meeting," he said. "Today, it looks like landlords using mathematical algorithms to align their rents. But antitrust law does not become obsolete simply because competitors find new ways to unlawfully act in concert."

RealPage's commercial revenue management software "enable[s] landlords to sidestep vigorous competition to win renters' business," the lawsuit alleged. "Landlords, who would otherwise be competing with each other, submit on a daily basis their competitively sensitive information to RealPage. This nonpublic, material, and granular rental data includes, among other information, a landlord's rental prices from executed leases, lease terms, and future occupancy. RealPage collects a broad swath of such data from competing landlords, combines it, and feeds it to an algorithm."

It's more than this/.  RealPage also strong-arms its clients to follow its recommendations:

………

RealPage recently argued that its software "benefits both housing providers and residents," and "makes price recommendations in all directions—up, down, or no change—to align with property-specific objectives of the housing providers using the software." Landlords don't have to follow the recommendations, the company says.

The US said RealPage takes a more direct role in setting prices. RealPage "reviews and weighs in on landlords' other policies, including trying to—and often succeeding in—ending renter-friendly concessions (like a free month's rent or waived fees) to attract or retain renters," the lawsuit said. Garland alleged that "a large number of landlords effectively agree to outsource their pricing decisions to RealPage by using an 'auto accept' setting, which effectively permits RealPage to determine the price a renter will pay."

When one looks at tech in the US today, it seems that most of it is stalking, (Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc.), pursuit of monopoly rents (RealPage, Uber, Lyft, Alibaba, WeWork, etc), or outright fraud (Cryptocurrency, LLM Artificial Intelligence, etc).

If the DoJ would actually prosecute this sort of sh%$ criminally, it would make the world a better place, particularly San Francisco, which can survive earthquakes, but not, it seems, tech bros.

Wear Your F%$#ing Mask

Also, if you can take a class remotely, do so.

Covid is ripping through college campuses
byu/JunebugJitterbug inZeroCovidCommunity

The current Covid outbreak is not just a blip.

Get vaxxed, get masked, and be careful.

Snark of the Day

Choose Your Own Adventure with Microsoft 365

"You awake to find yourself in a dark room... with an empty wallet"

—The Register, commenting on the fact that when Microsoft's 365 Plan Chooser it simply recommends the most expensive plan

Microsoft is Microsofting again:

Did you have a collection of Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books? Microsoft offers something similar in the form of its subscription plan advisor, though it's tricky to avoid one particular priced outcome.

A Register reader got in touch after using the Microsoft 365 Plan Chooser. Answer six questions via the tool, and a result with a recommended plan will be displayed. This might be the Business Basic plan for $6 per user per month for an annual subscription, the $12.50 Business Standard plan, or the mighty $22 Microsoft 365 Business Premium.

Our reader mused: "If I follow the menu choices, it always selects Microsoft 365 Business Premium as the outcome."

Accepting the challenge, and because we still remember the excitement when a new Steve Jackson tome hit the shelves, we decided to try for ourselves, urged on by our reader: "Have a go and see if you can get it to choose another outcome..."

As with many Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books, there appears to be a key question: "Do you have access to an IT professional for advanced support and services?" Say yes, and almost all paths lead to the premium option. Say no, and basic or standard await.

A cynic might wonder if this means that Microsoft assumes there's an IT budget to be plundered if there's an IT pro on hand and so goes directly to the premium option. Or perhaps it's just that with someone around who knows a bit about computers, the variety of options available at the premium level makes more sense.

If you are amused by people riffing on Zork and similar games, read the comments.

 

Of Course He Did

So, RFK, Jr. has suspended his campaign and endorsed Donald Trump apparently because Trump will consider him for a cabinet position.

He has been telegraphing this for a while, but it's now official.

I'd call him a schmuck, but a schmuck has a head:

Robert F Kennedy Jr, the scion of the Democratic Kennedy family whose independent presidential campaign threatened to draw votes from both Republicans and Democrats, has suspended his campaign and endorsed Donald Trump.

Kennedy said he would be removing his name from the ballot in critical swing states, but will remain on the ballot in other states and some voters could still cast ballots for him.

In a rambling statement that started three-quarters of a hour behind schedule, Kennedy said he would be giving his support to Trump following a series of conversations with him, the first of which took place days after the Republican nominee survived an assassination attempt on 13 July.

F%$# him.

Ecch (Tweet) of the Day

"What I'm doing myself isn't illegal or litigatable."
Guess what it doesn't fucking matter you're party to shit that went down and courts will order you to go on record.

— SwiftOnSecurity (@SwiftOnSecurity) August 24, 2024

Even if you are not breaking the law, it there is a non-zero possibility that you will have to testify about something that you have done.

Would you want to talk about it in open court?

Thursday ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ On Friday

Busy helping my kid move to a new apartment in Motgomery County, so I did not do this yesterday.

That being said, initial unemployment claims rose to 232,000, 2,000 more than forecast, and continuing claims rose by 4,000 to 1.863 million.

Also, the the Chicago Fed National Activity index fell , which all seems to point to a downturn.

Also, remember when I mentioned that the BLS was revising its non-farm employment numbers, and they could be down by as much as 1 million, well they revised the total down 800,000, yet another indicator of a slowing economy.

The real news Jerome Powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, stated that, the time has come for interest rate cuts at the annual central banker conclave at Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

He did not give specifics as to the timing, because, of course he didn't, central bankers are never that transparent.

“The time has come” for the US Federal Reserve to cut interest rates, its chairman declared, hailing progress in the battle to bring down inflation from its highest level in a generation.

With price growth now on a “sustainable” path back to normal levels, Jerome Powell signaled that the central bank was ready to start reducing rates from next month.

The US labor market – which rapidly recovered from the damage inflicted during the early months of the Covid-19 crisis, adding millions of jobs – now faces greater “downside risks”, he acknowledged. Unemployment ticked up last month.

But Powell expressed confidence that there was “good reason” to believe inflation could retreat further without damaging the world’s largest economy – if the Fed now acts.

“The time has come for policy to adjust,” Powell told an annual symposium for central bankers at Jackson Hole in Wyoming on Friday. “The direction of travel is clear, and the timing and pace of rate cuts will depend on incoming data, the evolving outlook, and the balance of risks.”

It appears that I war wrong on my prediction, I predicted that they would not lower rates until after the election, but it appears that I was wrong.

 

Helping My Youngest Move

The second time helping my kids move in a week.

Truly, The joys of parenthood are without number.

Posted via mobile.

Handcuffs Please

The CEO of Steward Health Care system earned more than 250,000,000.00 while running the hospital chain into the ground.

If corporations are people, why is this guy not charged with criminally negligent homicide?

Steward Health Care System was in such dire straits before its bankruptcy that its hospital administrators scrounged each week to find cash and supplies to keep their facilities running.

While it was losing hundreds of millions of dollars a year, Steward paid at least $250 million to its chief executive officer, Dr. Ralph de la Torre, and to his other companies during the four years he was the hospital chain’s majority owner.

Steward filed for bankruptcy in May, becoming one of the biggest hospital failures in decades. Conditions at some of its hospitals have grown dire. In one Florida hospital, a pest-control company last year found 3,000 bats.

This month in Phoenix, where temperatures topped 100 degrees, the air conditioning failed at a Steward hospital, forcing patients to be transferred elsewhere, according to a court filing. Also, the kitchen was closed because of health-code violations. The state last week ordered the hospital to cease operations.

Steward’s bankruptcy has drawn government scrutiny. A Senate committee has launched an investigation and subpoenaed de la Torre to testify next month.

Last month, on the day Steward said it would close two Massachusetts hospitals, de la Torre was in France to attend Paris Olympics equestrian events at the Palace of Versailles.

How about we take Dr. "Let them eat cake" and make him, Dr. "Put him in handcuffs."

………

Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey called for de la Torre to be federally investigated. “He basically stole millions out of Steward on the backs of workers and patients and bought himself fancy yachts, mansions and now apparently lavish trips to Versailles,” Healey said.

………

The $250 million in payments from Steward to de la Torre and to his businesses are based on public disclosures from Steward or companies it dealt with. The total likely understates the full tally because Steward’s bankruptcy-court disclosures in most cases have covered only the 12 months before it filed for chapter 11. Some of the $250 million was paid to de la Torre directly. Other payments were to companies that did business with Steward where he had big ownership stakes.

He is being investigated, but he needs to be charged criminally, something something that magistrate in Malta has already recommended. (Too corrupt for Malta, that's an accomplishment)

Second, we need to change bankruptcy laws to expose senior executives greater liability for their misdeeds.

An Interesting AI Business Model

Procreate, a software company that makes a number of graphics and video editing programs for iOS, has announced that they will not be using generative AI in their software.

In fact they announced that they, "F%$#ing hate," generative AI.

On Sunday, Procreate announced that it will not incorporate generative AI into its popular iPad illustration app. The decision comes in response to an ongoing backlash from some parts of the art community, which has raised concerns about the ethical implications and potential consequences of AI use in creative industries.

"Generative AI is ripping the humanity out of things," Procreate wrote on its website. "Built on a foundation of theft, the technology is steering us toward a barren future."

In a video posted on X, Procreate CEO James Cuda laid out his company's stance, saying, "We’re not going to be introducing any generative AI into our products. I don’t like what’s happening to the industry, and I don’t like what it’s doing to artists."

We’re never going there. Creativity is made, not generated.
You can read more at https://t.co/9Fgh460KVu ✨ #procreate #noaiart pic.twitter.com/AnLVPgWzl3

— Procreate (@Procreate) August 18, 2024

Cuda's video plays on that polarization with clear messaging against generative AI. His statement reads as follows:

You've been asking us about AI. You know, I usually don't like getting in front of the camera. I prefer that our products speak for themselves. I really f%$#ing hate generative AI. I don't like what's happening in the industry and I don't like what it's doing to artists. We're not going to be introducing any generative AI into out products. Our products are always designed and developed with the idea that a human will be creating something. You know, we don't exactly know where this story's gonna go or how it ends, but we believe that we're on the right path supporting human creativity.

(%$# mine)

It is always joy to hear Australians saying f%$#.

On a more serious note, this is not just a moral stance, this is Procreate's business model now.

This is the first time that I have heard of this, but I expect more to follow, because, given the degree to which LLM "Artificial Intelligence" has been over-hyped, other companies will see coming out against it as an increasingly viable business model.

A Trump Appointee

U.S. District Judge Ada Brown, who serves in the Northern District of (Of Course) Texas, who was appointed (Of Course) by Donald Trump, has struck down the Federal Trade Comission's ban on non-compete agreements, because she believes that the FTC Act does not grant the FTC rule making authority.

Once again, we see nakedly corrupt rulings from nakedly corrupt judges whose jurisprudence originated somewhere beyond the plant Skaro.:

A federal judge in Texas yesterday blocked the Federal Trade Commission's attempt to ban noncompete agreements that make it difficult for workers to change jobs or start new businesses. Judge Ada Brown in the Northern District of Texas granted a motion for summary judgment that was requested by a tax services firm and business groups such as the US Chamber of Commerce.

"The Court sets aside the Non-Compete Rule. Consequently, the Rule shall not be enforced or otherwise take effect on its effective date of September 4, 2024 or thereafter," the ruling said.

The judge wrote in a previous ruling that the FTC lacks authority to issue a rule banning noncompete agreements and granted a preliminary injunction. But that previous ruling only postponed the effective date of the rule as it applied to the plaintiffs, whereas yesterday's order blocks the FTC rule entirely.

Yesterday's ruling is "a final and appealable judgment," the court said. In Texas, appeals go to the US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit. The FTC is likely to have better luck in less conservative circuits. In July, a federal judge in Pennsylvania upheld the agency's noncompete ban in a ruling that denied a motion for preliminary injunction.

"The FTC's substantive rulemaking authority has been confirmed by circuit courts interpreting the FTC Act, as well as by Congress when it enacted its 1975 and 1980 Amendments to the Act," the judge in Pennsylvania wrote.

It isn't that the judge is concerned about bureaucratic overreach, it's that the judge thinks that the 13th Amendment was an immoral taking of legally owned slaves, but (so far, at least) there is no way that this can be reversed, so peonage of workers must be maintained by all means.

OK, that may be hyperbole, but I do think that the corrupt conservatives in the Federal Judiciary are determined to bring back the Lochner Era, where neither the federal government nor the states could regulate minimum wages, child labor, workplace safety, banking, etc.

To quote John Roberts on Lochner, "It's quite clear that they're not interpreting the law, they're making the law," which equally applies to this judge, and to the Supreme Court ruling striking down Chevron, etc.

They made the law, let them enforce it.

It's Back

Remember Clippy? 

Remember how you thought that Microsoft could go any lower?

Remember how Microsoft came up with an an "AI" powered "assistant" that recorded your every keystroke, and you realized that, yes, they could go lower than Clippy?

After it was revealed to be dangerously insecure, and ineluctably creepy, the boys from Redmond backed down.

Well, They're Back!!!!! 

Microsoft is now saying that their totally non-creepy and totally non-stalking and totally non-insecure system has been fixed.

Yeah, right.

And Microsoft BOB was the greatest advance in computer interfaces the 20th century. (Heck, BOB wasn't an advance in user interfaces on March 10, 1995)

Microsoft will begin sending a revised version of its controversial Recall feature to Windows Insider PCs beginning in October, according to an update published today to the company's original blog post about the Recall controversy. The company didn't elaborate further on specific changes it's making to Recall beyond what it already announced in June.

For those unfamiliar, Recall is a Windows service that runs in the background on compatible PCs, continuously taking screenshots of user activity, scanning those screenshots with optical character recognition (OCR), and saving the OCR text and the screenshots to a giant searchable database on your PC. The goal, according to Microsoft, is to help users retrace their steps and dig up information about things they had used their PCs to find or do in the past.

The problem was that other users on the same PC, or attackers with physical or remote access to your PC, could easily access, view, and export those screenshots and the OCR database since none of the information was encrypted at rest or protected in any substantive way.

………

When the preview is released, Windows Insiders who want to test the Recall preview will need to do it on a PC that meets Microsoft's Copilot+ system requirements. Those include a processor with a neural processing unit (NPU) capable of at least 40 trillion operations per second (TOPS), 16GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage. The x86 builds of Windows for Intel and AMD processors don't currently support any Copilot+ features regardless of whether the PC meets those requirements, but that should change later this year.

Yeah, unrealistic hardware requirements, and it's still collecting extremely sensitive data.

The best way to keep this sort of data secure is to never allow Microsoft to get their grubby little hands on it.

For some reason, the operating system as spyware and "Artificial Intelligence" are central to the Blue Screen of Death vendor.

It probably won't end well.

Why I’m Not Writing about the DNC

Short answer: Because if I want good kayfabe, I'll watch professional wrestling.

Longer answer: There hasn't been any significant news from conventions in over 40 years.  They are stultifying and boring, and I am not in the mood to pretend otherwise.

The Democratic National Convention, much like the Republican National Convention, is like every other convention.  To quote Keith Olbermann:

They are exactly like the conventions of every other business organization in this country, from the American Psychiatric Association conference to the wholesale beard, hair brush, manufacture and supply Cartel. 

They are vacations you can write off as tax deductions.

Meh.

It Appears That the Stereotypes Are True

 A study had determined both for children and adults, (More for adults and children) less attractive people spend more time playing video games:

We investigate the relationship between physical attractiveness and the time people devote to video/computer gaming. Average American teenagers spend 2.6% of their waking hours gaming, while for adults this figure is 2.7%. Using the American Add Health Study, we show that adults who are better-looking have more close friends. Arguably, gaming is costlier for them, and they thus engage in less of it. Physically attractive teens are less likely to engage in gaming at all, whereas unattractive teens who do game spend more time each week on it than other gamers. Attractive adults are also less likely than others to spend any time gaming; and if they do, they spend less time on it than less attractive adults. Using the longitudinal nature of the Add Health Study, we find supportive evidence that these relationships are causal for adults: good looks decrease gaming time, not vice-versa. 

There is a PDF of the full study at the link, but their thesis is that attractive people spend more time socializing face to face.

Hoocodanode?

Still Cannot Build Planes

The Front Fell OffBoeing has had to halt certification testing for the B777-9 because, the engines might fall off.

As Anna Russel would say, "I'm not making this up, you know."

Boeing says it has halted certification flight testing of the 777-9 following the failure of a thrust link mounting component attached to one of the two GE Aerospace GE9X engines powering a test aircraft.

The discovery was made during post-flight inspections of the third test aircraft, WH003, following its return to Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, from a 5 hr. 31 min. certification test flight over the Pacific. Boeing says “during scheduled maintenance, we identified a component that did not perform as designed. Our team is replacing the part and capturing any learnings from the component and will resume flight testing when ready.”

The failure of the component, which was first reported by The Air Current, comes just as Boeing was accelerating into the first phase of 777-9 type inspection authorization (TIA), FAA-required testing for certification. Formal TIA tests began July 12 after a delay of almost three years and represent the last major milestone before anticipated FAA approval and initial deliveries—still currently scheduled for late 2025.

There are two fail-safe thrust links on each engine for redundancy and are designed to transfer vertical and lateral mechanical stresses between the engine and the aircraft. The Boeing-designed thrust links attach to the fan frame and carry mechanical loads—as well as engine torque about the engine axis and thrust—to the aft engine mount at the rear.

Company sources confirm the accuracy of reports that one of the links was severed, and that subsequent inspections on the other two active test aircraft, WH001 and WH002, have revealed cracks. Both of these aircraft are currently in lay-up undergoing scheduled maintenance at Boeing sites in Everett and Boeing Field, Seattle, respectively.

This is not normal for an aviation firm.

The suits have been eating their seed corn at Boeing ever since McDonnell took it over with Boeing's money.

It looks like there is nothing left here but executive stock options.

Just Lovely

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics will be releasing updated job numbers for the 1st quarter and it looks like as many as 1 million jobs will go away.

Yet another piece of information that the Fed will ignore when they refuse to cut rates: 

US job growth in the year through March was likely far less robust than initially estimated, which risks fueling concerns that the Federal Reserve is falling further behind the curve to lower interest rates.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co. economists expect the government’s preliminary benchmark revisions on Wednesday to show payrolls growth in the year through March was at least 600,000 weaker than currently estimated — about 50,000 a month.

While JPMorgan Chase & Co. forecasters see a decline of about 360,000, Goldman Sachs indicates it could be as large as a million.

There are a number of caveats in the preliminary figure, but a downward revision to employment of more than 501,000 would be the largest in 15 years and suggest the labor market has been cooling for longer — and perhaps more so — than originally thought. The final numbers are due early next year.

………

Once a year, the BLS benchmarks the March payrolls level to a more accurate but less timely data source called the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, which is based on state unemployment insurance tax records and covers nearly all US jobs. The release of the latest QCEW report in June already hinted at weaker payroll gains last year.

………

As it stands now, the BLS data show the economy added 2.9 million jobs in the 12 months through March 2024, or an average of 242,000 per month. Even if the total revision is as high as a million, monthly job gains would average around 158,000 — still a healthy pace of hiring but a moderation from the post-pandemic peak. 

No, that's not a 158,000 is not a healthy pace.  That's basically treading water, barely accounting for natural workforce growth.

The Fed should cut rates at their next meeting, but I'm not holding my breath.

Yeah, Just Like the Flu

The current Covid-19 surge is severe enough that the FDA is reported to be accelerating the release of updated vaccines.

The US Food and Drug Administration is poised to sign off as soon as this week on updated Covid-19 vaccines targeting more recently circulating strains of the virus, according to two sources familiar with the matter, as the country experiences its largest summer wave in two years.

The agency is expected to greenlight updated mRNA vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech that target a strain of the virus called KP.2, said the sources, who declined to be named because the timing information isn’t public. It was unclear whether the agency simultaneously would authorize Novavax’s updated shot, which targets the JN.1 strain.

The move would be several weeks ahead of last year’s version of the vaccine, which got FDA signoff on September 11.

“Now is the time to get a dose with this surge,” Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, told CNN.

Meanwhile, the public health establishment at places like the CDC, they are downplaying Bird Flu, MPox, and still denying airborne transmission.

We are f%$#ed.

Bye, Kitara

Former Congressman George Santos, aka drag queen Kitara Ravach, has pled guilty to wire fraud and identity theft.

I really wish that he were still embarrassing Republicans:

Republican George Santos, whose brief political career was marked by a slew of lies and embellishments before he was expelled from Congress, pleaded guilty Monday to federal charges of aggravated identity theft and wire fraud.

Santos admitted to defrauding donors to his 2022 campaign by taking their money for his personal use and charging thousands of dollars on their credit cards without authorization, among other charges. Sentencing guidelines indicate that Santos could face more than six years in prison, U.S. District Judge Joanna Seybert said during an afternoon court hearing. She set a sentencing date of Feb. 7.

As part of his agreement, he pleaded guilty to two counts — wire fraud and identity theft — and prosecutors said they would ask the judge to dismiss the remaining 21 counts at his sentencing. He admitted in court to wrongfully claiming unemployment benefits for nearly a year and making false statements to Congress on his required disclosure statements, in which he said he had millions of dollars in fabricated assets.

I'm pretty sure that once he gets out of the slam, he'll have a very lucrative speaking tours.

 

Helping My Eldest Move

The joys of parenthood are without number.

Posted via mobile.

Well, This Is Reassuring

Over at The Guardian, Carole Cadwalladr, has a take on Elon Musk's incitement or racist nationalist in the that is worrying.  Specifically, she believes that his actions were a rehearsal for inciting American MAGAts after the November Elections.

Gee, who could imagine an anti-Semitic and racist Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ with a God complex planning a coup.

Just over four years ago, an insurrectionist mob found each other online, descended on Washington, stormed the Capitol and threatened the vice-president with a noose. But that was the good old days. We’re living in a different reality now. One in which the billionaires have been unchained.

Because back in the golden days of 2020, tech platforms, still reeling from a public backlash, had at least to look as if they gave a shit. Twitter employed 4,000-plus people in “trust and safety”, tasked with getting dangerous content off its platform and sniffing out foreign influence operations. Facebook tried to ignore public pressure but eventually banned political ads that sought to “delegitimise voting” and scores of academics and researchers in “election integrity” units worked to identify and flag dangerous disinformation.

………

The streets are – for now – quiet. The violence has been crushed. But this is Britain, where extremist political violence is someone carrying a brick and throwing a chair leg. In America, there aren’t just automatic weapons and rights to openly carry firearms, there are actual militias. Regardless of how well Harris is doing in the polls, America is facing a singularly dangerous moment, whoever wins the election.

Because as Trump has already showed us and as Jair Bolsonaro learned, it’s not even necessarily about winning any more. Or even about a single day. The entire period between the result and the inauguration is an anything-can-happen moment not just for America but for the world.

In Britain, the canary has sung. This summer we have witnessed something new and unprecedented. The billionaire owner of a tech platform publicly confronting an elected leader and using his platform to undermine his authority and incite violence. Britain’s 2024 summer riots were Elon Musk’s trial balloon.

Because as Trump has already showed us and as Jair Bolsonaro learned, it’s not even necessarily about winning any more. Or even about a single day. The entire period between the result and the inauguration is an anything-can-happen moment not just for America but for the world.

He got away with it. And if you’re not terrified by both the extraordinary supranational power of that and the potential consequences, you should be. If Musk chooses to “predict” a civil war in the States, what will that look like? If he chooses to contest an election result? If he decides that democracy is over-rated? This isn’t sci-fi. It’s literally three months away.

What he did is a crime in the UK, so perhaps an extradition request would be in order.

Who am I kidding.  Keir Starmer would never approve the prosecution of a billionaire.