FBI Extracts Suspect’s Deleted Signal Messages Saved in iPhone Notification Database. If you're a criminal and think using Signal is going to protect your communications from the FBI, don't use Apple's phones. You know how Apple lets you see a preview of the message on your notification screen so you don't have to log in to know what it's about? Yeah, that part is unencrypted. Did Apple know about this?
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Particles seen emerging from empty space for first time. No such thing as a true vacuum in the quantum world, is there?
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All good things come to an end eventually. What started out as a great idea with Mitch Kapor and John Barlow, has now gone the way of the ACLU. Some people see political motivations behind the decision to leave X and move to BlueSky, the Left's version of X.
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Stanley Zhong, the student who was felt to be not good enough for 16 colleges, but was good enough to be a Google engineer, is suing the colleges. This happened in 2023, the year of the Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) v. Harvard University and SFFA v. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill SCOTUS decision. You gotta laugh at this:
Zhong said the family spent a year in discussions with University of California officials after Stanley's rejections, but nothing changed. He said the turning point came when a UC admissions director emailed him, writing that his allegation of racial discrimination was unfounded because California law bans the practice.
It's like saying we don't need voter ID because illegal immigrants can't vote. Or illegals can't get federal benefits because the law says they can't. Hope Stanley wins.
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I read this article The Real Reason People Aren’t Having Kids, and can't find the answer. OK, so it's not that governments need to support families more. Lack of financial security isn't the entire answer.
“As attractive as economics may be as a solution to the riddle of the growing ambivalence about having children, it is partial at best,” Berg and Wiseman write. Pakaluk observes, “Cash incentives and tax relief won’t persuade people to give up their lives. People will do that for God, for their families, and for their future children.” In other words, no amount of money or social support will inspire people to have children—not unless there is some deeper certainty that doing so makes sense.
So what is the answer? The author thinks it's "loss of meaning".
If falling birth rates can be attributed to a loss of meaning, the question then becomes if there can be any government-based solution to fertility decline. People debating whether to have children seem to be seeking certainty that life is a good thing, that more life would thus be better, and that assistance, if needed, will arrive.
Loss of meaning? What bullshit. Whatever it is, it's global, and someone better figure it out soon.
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Iranian hackers are targeting US energy and water sectors, federal agencies warn. Well, people have been warning about how vulnerable our infrastructure is. Guess we're about to find out how right or wrong they were.
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The effects of caffeine consumption do not decay with a ~5 hour half-life. I never heard of paraxanthine before. Perhaps it's just the thing for a late afternoon or evening energy burst.
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It used to be that one sure fire way to tell if you were dealing with AI or a human, was to ask it to say the N-word. Like asking a North Korean to openly say a phrase denigrating Dear Leader. But even ChatGPT can say the N-word, it seems. Oh well. Gotta think of another test.
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It's rich reading Mozilla deriding Microsoft for forcing AI on its customers. Hey look in the mirror, guys. It's why people like me left Firefox for alternatives.
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How Gender Medicine Set Itself Up for Disaster. WPATH and USPATH eventually just became an echo chamber. Towards the end, they excluded any opposing viewpoints, while they kept advocating harmful practices, convincing themselves that they were helping:
The potential for treatment or surgical regret, and the largely unknown rate at which those who undergo gender-transition interventions as minors might experience it, is one of the larger elephants in the pediatric gender medicine exam room. Olson-Kennedy, who is currently serving as USPATH’s president, is notorious among critics of gender medicine for a one-minute clip from an undercover video, shot and published in 2018, in which she is captured responding glibly to the suggestion that minors might regret gender-transition mastectomies. “If you want breasts at a later point in your life,” she quipped, “you can go and get them.”“It’s been fairly frequent,” she said in 2022, that youth arrived at her practice already taking blockers. This despite the fact that the parents and child often lacked even a basic understanding of the drug’s impacts, risks, and benefits. “It becomes pretty clear that those important discussions either didn’t happen or they didn’t happen in a way that they really stuck,” Berg said. “That really concerns me.”
Holy crap. How was this practice allowed in medicine?
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Gen Z workers are so fearful AI will take their job they’re intentionally sabotaging their company’s AI rollout. Wasn't GenZ complaining that they can't get a job. Any wonder they struggle to find employers to hire them?
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Multnomah County appoints LA-area official to head homeless services. Why sure, because LA is doing such a great job with their homeless. Why not hire out that expertise? It's like hiring someone from Enron to take charge of accounting. What could go wrong?
Meanwhile: LA Mayor Karen Bass seeks City Council approval for $360 million affordable housing, using 'mansion tax' funding. Is that what Portland has in its future?
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Expensive PSU survey on the homeless finds that while almost all want housing, they want it on their terms. Someone else to pay for it, and to have some financial assistance, too. But there were deal-breakers:
“People with substance use disorder reported many more deal-breakers at a higher rate than people without substance use. Top deal-breakers included drug testing, no guests, room checks, curfews, criminal record exclusions, religious requirements, housing that is difficult to get to, and/or sober/drug-free housing compared to people without substance use,” the report states.
"Overall, people did not report shelters as being especially helpful." Someone tell that to Keith Wilson.
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