bookwormstory.social

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interesting_number_paradox

Really annoying!

The Trump administration’s planned cuts to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) not only threaten essential biomedical research in the US, but the livelihoods of researchers – and some are seriously considering leaving the country.

A 27 January memo from the Office of Management and Budget instructed federal agencies to pause funding allocations to ensure they serve Donald Trump’s goals, including “ending ‘wokeness’ and the weaponization of government, promoting efficiency in government, and Making America Healthy Again”.

On 7 February, the administration implemented a policy that would cut NIH funding to research institutions by over two-thirds. A federal judge has since blocked the cuts – for now.

Diplomats and analysts have been left guessing whether Trump truly covets the war-ravaged Gaza Strip or was threatening a takeover to extract concessions from Arab states. Trump's secretary of state, Marco Rubio, suggested it was the latter and that Arab states should make a counteroffer.

With the Egyptian plan gaining momentum, it appears Trump has been swayed.

During a visit to Israel on Monday, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said there was "very little appetite" for the US to take over Gaza "in any way, shape or form".

As an update to everyone following, I had a meeting today with the Flatpak SIG and Fedora Project Leader, which was a very good conversation. We discussed the issues, how we got here, and what next steps are. For anyone not interested in the specific details, the OBS Project is no longer requesting a removal of IP or rebrand of the OBS Studio application provided by Fedora Flatpaks. This issue should be used for tracking of the other specific, technical issues, that the Fedora Flatpak does still have, which I will address below. From our perspective, there were two key points that we feel are the most important to address:

• The issue with the Qt runtime having regression
• The issue of not knowing where to report bugs for what is a downstream package

For the first bullet, this should be resolved with the update to the latest runtime, which includes Qt 6.8.2 that has the fixes for those regressions in it. For the second, this is obviously a much larger issue to tackle, especially for a project as large as Fedora. We had some very good discussion on how this might be accomplished in the medium-long term, but don't consider it a blocker at this point. We plan to stay engaged and offer our perspective as an upstream project. In addition to those two previously blocking issues, we discussed a handful of other problems with the Fedora Flatpak. I'll keep the details high level in the interest of brevity on this update:

• OBS Studio running on Mesa LLLVM pipe instead of with hardware acceleration (i.e. the GPU)
• X11 Fallback leading to OBS crashing
• VLC Plugin not behaving as expected in the sandbox, needs testing
• Shipping of third-party plugins in the Fedora Flatpak

The discussion was positive and they are actively working to resolve those issues as well, which should hopefully only affect a small number of users. I would like to give a final thank you to Yaakov and the FPL for taking the time to talk to us today.

It seems like I constantly see "X secure messaging option is actually bullshit because it was purchased by Dr. Evil and Y is actually just e-mailing your messages directly to Xi Jinping."

Is there an authoritatively "best" one I can just...download and setup easily? Is Signal good? Or do I need to solder a Raspberry Pi to the flux modulator of my home Linux NAS GUI, etc...?

Last week, the Washington Post sparked a media kerfuffle when it reported that talk-show-host-turned-defense secretary Peter Hegseth had invited MAGA provocateur Jack Posobiec to “participate” in Hegseth’s first overseas trip and that this was “triggering alarm among US defense officials worried about the military being dragged into partisan warfare.”

This article and pieces in other outlets noted that Posobiec was a 2020 election denier and a promoter of conspiracy theories who had championed Pizzagate—the bonkers idea that Democrats were running a Satanic pedophile ring from the basement of a Washington, DC, eatery. They reminded readers that last year at a conservative conference, he had proclaimed, “Welcome to the end of democracy. We are here to overthrow it completely. We didn’t get all the way there on January 6, but we will endeavor to get rid of it.”

As it turned out, Posobiec, a podcaster and a senior editor at Human Events, an ultra-right publication, told Politico that he didn’t tag along with Hegseth. Instead, he accepted an invitation from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to travel with him as media to Ukraine for the secretary’s meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

All of this raises a troubling question: Why are Trump cabinet officials reaching out to a right-wing activist who has associated with white nationalists and who has pushed dangerous and debunked conspiracy theories (one Pizzagate believer showed up armed at the restaurant and fired an AR-15 rifle inside)? Moreover, last year, Posobiec published a book that praised fascist leaders who used violence to suppress their opponents and that demonized modern-day progressives as “unhumans,” claiming these diabolical people are waging an “Irregular Communist Revolution” to annihilate American civilization.

In news that surprises absolutely no one, the makers of the infamous Humane AI Pin—a device that was overpriced, underwhelming, and widely returned—have been acquired by HP.

As expected, this acquisition effectively bricks existing AI Pins. According to the press release, some features will still work, such as checking the battery level. Incredible.

The real kicker? The people behind this spectacular failure are getting a massive payday from HP. Meanwhile, customers who dropped $700+ (plus a monthly fee!) on this glorified paperweight are left in the dust.

HP has a long history of acquiring pointless companies, so this doesn’t redeem the AI Pin in any way. If anything, it just reinforces that the product was as worthless as everyone suspected.

I was hoping this saga would end in Humane going bankrupt—not them cashing out. But here we are.

~~Superior Court Justice Charles Hackland found King guilty on five counts in November, including mischief and disobeying a court order.~~

Updated ...

‘Freedom Convoy’ organizer Pat King was sentenced to three months of house arrest in an Ottawa court this morning.

The sentence includes 100 hours of community service at a food bank or men’s shelter.

It comes on top of nine months he spent in custody both before and during his trial.

King was found guilty on five of nine charges in November, including mischief and disobeying a court order, for his role in the 2022 protest that took over downtown Ottawa for three weeks.