MHLoppy

Donald Trump vs. the NIMBYs

The teardown of the White House’s East Wing this week is a Rorschach test. Many see the rubble as a metaphor for President Donald Trump’s reckless disregard of norms and the rule of law, a reflection of his willingness to bulldoze history and a temple to a second Gilded Age, paid for by corporate donors. Others see what they love about Trump: A lifelong builder boldly pursuing a grand vision, a change agent unafraid to decisively take on the status quo and a developer slashing through red tape that would stymie any normal politician.

In classic Trump fashion, the president is pursuing a reasonable idea in the most jarring manner possible. Privately, many alumni of the Biden and Obama White Houses acknowledge the long-overdue need for an event space like what Trump is creating. It is absurd that tents need to be erected on the South Lawn for state dinners, and VIPs are forced to use porta-potties.

The State Dining Room seats 140. The East Room seats about 200. Trump says the ballroom at the center of his 90,000-square-foot addition will accommodate 999 guests. The next Democratic president will be happy to have this.

Preservationists express horror that Trump did not submit his plans to their scrutiny, but the truth is that this project would not have gotten done, certainly not during his term, if the president had gone through the traditional review process. The blueprints would have faced death by a thousand papercuts. [...]

Archived: archive.today

As OpenAI allows chatbot to spout erotic content, former British prime minister makes true feelings known

After a string of marriages and innumerable affairs, former UK prime minister Boris Johnson has come clean about his new squeeze.

"I love ChatGPT," the blond-mopped Brexiteer told Al Arabiya English earlier this week.

Famous for making stuff up and going on flights of fancy, Johnson served as prime minister from July 2019 until September 2022, when he was ousted after misleading colleagues over a scandal involving his government's deputy chief whip, the party disciplinarian. OpenAI's ChatGPT is also prone to making statements that turn out not to be entirely true. [...]

Forescout's phony water plant fooled TwoNet into claiming a fake cyber victory – then it quietly shut up shop

Security researchers say they duped pro-Russia cybercriminals into targeting a fake critical infrastructure organization, which the crew later claimed - via their Telegram group - to be a real-world attack.

Forescout said the short-lived TwoNet hacktivist group fell for one of its researchers' honeypots, designed to look like a water treatment plant to a remote attacker. [...]

For the majority of the year, Australian magpies are good neighbours - in September and October, things change

UK Power Networks trials Thermify's HeatHub boilers, swapping gas flames for clustered compute

Reusing heat from servers has gained momentum recent years, but UK Power Networks (UKPN) is taking an unusual approach: installing mini datacenters powered by Raspberry Pi hardware in customers homes to provide heating for families struggling with energy costs.

UKPN, which manages the "last mile" of cables and substations delivering electricity from the National Grid to customers in the South East of England, is piloting the project as part of its SHIELD (Smart Heat and Intelligent Energy in Low-income Districts) program.

This will equip participating households with solar and battery systems, while one-third will also receive the "HeatHub" system - a compact datacenter roughly the size of a large heat pump that replaces traditional gas boilers. [...]

Donald Trump’s new security directive labels anti-capitalist beliefs as a predictor of political violence. The irony: left-wing structural analysis actually pushes people away from lone-wolf attacks and toward mass organizing for change.

A new kind of sensory and storage experience

Editor's take: The number of peripherals designed to release fragrances at computer desks is growing at a curious pace. To that end, Taiwanese company Apacer claims that external SSDs can provide an augmented sensory experience if a few drops of essential oil are applied to their surface.

Asus introduced the Fragrance Mouse earlier this year, aiming to bring a fragrant, almost synesthetic experience to the otherwise metallic world of computers. Now, another Taiwanese manufacturer is embracing the same concept while adding a touch of environmental friendliness.

Apacer claims the AS712 is the world's first SSD with an essential oil diffuser, designed for tech workers who deserve to dream of a more relaxed lifestyle while battling unreliable machines and confused corporate users.

The portable solid-state drive comes with a fixed "cradle" and a diffuser stone, both made from sustainable materials includng natural bamboo and reservoir silt. While the cradle isn't strictly required – the SSD can connect to a PC via a USB-C cable – it is essential for getting the full sensory experience. [...]

Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos has argued that the huge surge of investment in artificial intelligence is fuelling a “good” kind of bubble, delivering lasting benefits for society even if share prices collapse as dramatically as his ecommerce company’s did 25 years ago.

“This is kind of an industrial bubble as opposed to financial bubbles,” Bezos said at a tech conference in Turin on Friday, drawing parallels with the dotcom-era investment in fibre-optic cable that outlasted many of the companies who deployed it and the “life-saving drugs” that emerged from the 1990s biotech boom and bust.

“The banking bubble, the crisis in the banking system, that’s just bad, that’s like 2008. Those bubbles society wants to avoid,” he said.

“The ones that are industrial are not nearly as bad, they can even be good. Because when the dust settles and you see who are the winners — society benefits from those inventions,” he continued. “That’s what is going to happen here too. This is real. The benefits to society from AI are going to be gigantic.” [...]

Republican Senator Ted Cruz thinks we need to “stop attacking pedophiles.”

The Texas senator made the brutal (potentially) Freudian slip during a Senate hearing about crime on Tuesday.

“Senator Booker also said we should have bipartisan agreement. I think that’s a great idea, we should have bipartisan agreement,” Cruz said. “How ’bout we all come together and say, ‘Let’s stop murders?’ How ’bout we all come together and say, ‘Let’s stop rapes?’ How ’bout we all come together and say, ‘Let’s stop attacking pedophiles?’” [...]

(other outlets portray it as more clearly a mistake, but we're rewarding the outlet leaning into the clickbait because it's more onion-y 🫠)

This is a real thing Peter Thiel told a group of tech professionals recently.

In a four-part series of religious lectures in San Francisco, Peter Thiel — yes, that Peter Thiel — has argued that the End Times are nigh and that a biblical Antichrist — yes, that Antichrist — will come to Earth in the form of onerous government regulations placed on science, technology, and AI.

These are, incidentally, areas where the tech billionaire, venture capitalist, and cofounder of Palantir has a vested financial interest. [...]

Note: source uses a two-headline system; the submission uses the shorter of the two

Archived: https://web.archive.org/web/20250925211248/https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/785407/peter-thiel-antichrist-tech-regulation

In short:

The University of Technology Sydney says it needs to cut 400 jobs, roughly 10 per cent of the workforce, as part of a cost-cutting initiative to save $100 million.

After ABC News revealed high levels of psychological distress among staff facing the axe, UTS rolled out advice to support their wellbeing.

Staff say the health advice, which includes making time to wash delicates and brush their teeth, "de-legitimised" their concerns.

Note: this news source uses two headlines for most things and the submitted headline is the shorter of the two

In short

A special counsel sent investigators to retrieve South Korea’s former president Yoon Suk Yeol from a detention centre near Seoul after he twice defied requests to attend questioning.

Yoon resorted to a new method to resist, by taking off his prison uniform and lying down on the floor of his detention room.

Counsel team members refrained from using physical means out of safety concerns, but notified Yoon that they would execute the warrant next time.

(Note: this source uses two headlines for most posts; the headline in the submission is the shorter one)