birdwatcher

Francis Fukuyama: Expecting Iran to Unconditionally Surrender Is a Fool’s Errand.
Похоже, победа у Трампа в кармане.

yankodesign.com -- Windows runs somewhere between 72 and 73 percent of the world’s desktops, and while that’s an impressive monopoly, it completely ignores the critical systems where Windows is actually even more prevalent and essential. Hospital admission systems, ATM networks, military command infrastructure, government offices, court systems, school networks, and banking operations across virtually every country on earth run on Windows. [...] That is the platform Microsoft has been treating as a vehicle for AI feature experiments. Recall, the AI tool Microsoft attempted to ship as part of Windows 11, worked by screenshotting the user’s screen every few seconds and storing those images locally to build a searchable timeline of everything they had ever done on the machine. Security researchers flagged it almost immediately as a catastrophic privacy liability: a permanent, silent, queryable record of every document, message, and webpage the screen had ever displayed. Microsoft paused the rollout after a fierce public backlash, but the revealing fact is that Recall cleared internal review in the first place. The teams approving that feature were not thinking about hospital clerks processing patient records, lawyers working with privileged communications, or government employees handling sensitive data. They were building a keynote demo.

Бомба - название обширного ряда видов и типов музыкальных стилей и танцев, зародившихся в Пуэрто Рико. Большинство бомб предназначены для развлечения. В русском языке слово «бомба» появилось в петровскую эпоху — впервые оно отмечается в бумагах самого Петра от 1688 года. Слово появилось как заимствование из фр. bombe с тем же значением. Французское слово происходит в свою очередь от итал. bomba, которое восходит к лат. bombus — «шум, жужжание», а то — к греч. βόμβος.

Выхожу из дома -- старик говорит в домофон по-английски, но какие-то странные славянские слова -- то ли шарашки, то ли чебурашки... Вслушался - оказывается, ( Read more... ).

Соучастие, сострадание и сопереживание ос по отношению друг к другу сводятся в значительной степени к обыкновенной соосности.

floridapolitics.com -- Senate approves measure to establish Antisemitism Task Force.
Следующим ходом надо назначить Царя по антисемитизму.

bloomberg.com (https://archive.is/cIMOI) -- Sweden Tells Citizens to Hold Cash in Case of War or Crisis. All Swedish adults should hold a week’s worth of cash at home so they can buy food, medicine and other essentials in case of a war or other crisis, Sweden’s central bank said.
In addition to the 1,000 kronor ($110) per adult, Swedes should also keep etc. etc.

Плохая новость в том, что в Швеции царит безнадёжная нищета и люди прячут по 110 долларов, чтобы в случае войны жить на них неделю. Хорошая новость: война с наличными проиграна.

mothership.sg -- A Singaporean teacher, 40, allegedly groomed and had sex with an underage boy on multiple occasions in 2023. She was charged with 26 offences, including procuring obscene acts from a young person, sexual penetration of a minor etc. etc.

Табаррок -- California cannot permit the construction of a smartphone factory, an electric car plant, or a Navy destroyer shipyard. Not won’t — can’t. The regulatory environment makes it effectively impossible to build new semiconductor fabs, automotive paint shops, battery gigafactories, or steel foundries.
Tesla didn’t put its Gigafactory in Nevada out of affection for Reno. General Dynamics NASSCO in San Diego can build destroyers only because it’s been grandfathered in since 1960. If it closed tomorrow, it could not be rebuilt.
I get tired at all the discussion of tariffs and industrial policy and manufacturing. All of it is BS in comparison to the basics. We have the met the enemy and the enemy is us. Our future is in our hands. Is that optimistic or pessimistic? Either way complaining about China won’t fix our problems.

ATLANTA -- The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's new acting director, Jay Bhattacharya, on ​Monday urged Americans to get vaccinated against measles, saying it was the best protection against the disease.
Возвращение доверия к науке и здравоохранению больше не стоит в повестке дня. И слава Богу.

ATLANTA — Aisha “Pinky” Cole, founder of the popular Atlanta restaurant franchise Slutty Vegan, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy over nearly $1.4 million in debt.

BBC выгнала Лебрехта после того, как Южа совершенно логично отказалась с ним интервьюироваться.
https://symphony.org/bbc-cuts-ties-with-norman-lebrecht-after-bullying-email-to-yuja-wang/

В архитектуре тоника называется доминантой.

Vishal R. Patel, Christopher M. Worsham, Michael Liu & Anupam B. Jena@nber.org -- Smartphones, Online Music Streaming, and Traffic Fatalities. Using event study analysis, we show that music streaming – an indicator for smartphone use, where streaming most often occurs – sharply increases, by nearly 40%, on dates of major music album releases, while U.S. traffic fatalities increase by nearly 15% on those same days.

WP (https://archive.is/g2eMe) -- The autism epidemic is a myth. Most new cases reflect mild or no significant impairment. Moderate and severe cases have declined.
Это называется аутизмоскептицизм. Аналогичный случай произошел с ковидом.

Во всех текстовых редакторах есть функция search, но ни в одном нельзя указать, куда поставить курсор относительно начала найденной строки.

Переведите следующее предложение:
Are hard courts eating the tour?

Если не получается удачно перевести, хотя бы объясните суть вопроса развёрнуто.

Правильный ответ: https://x.com/mattracquet/status/2025970938014003309

futurism.com -- Whole Foods shelves sit empty after a data breach shut down its wholesale distributor. Meat packers working for JBS Foods are paralyzed as an $11 million ransomware attack takes out their processing facilities. These scenarios, straight from a William Gibson novel, are becoming increasingly common in supply chains across the world. As recently noted by Mohammed Alzuhair, a doctoral candidate in business administration at Durham University, the growing number of grocery store failures isn’t a coincidence, but the result of AI’s pernicious creep into the global food network.
[...]
Аs the rise in devastating cyber-attacks makes clear, the increasing reliance on AI also has the effect of removing human judgement from the supply chain. When cyberattacks reshuffle stores’ digital records, there are increasingly few personnel who know how to right the ship. In many cases, Alzuhair writes, human supply chain managers are no longer being asked to override automatic shipments or intervene when discrepancies occur under their jurisdiction.
The result of all this may be catastrophic. Should a worst-case scenario ever occur — a cyberattack, a natural disaster, an internet outage — there may be no human workers left with the skills that once kept food on the shelves.

Дисна (бел. Дзісна, пол. Dzisna) — город в Миорском районе Витебской области Беларуси. Расположен в 45 км восточнее г. Миоры на реке Дисна в месте впадения её в реку Западная Двина. Известные уроженцы: Уолт Дисней, американский художник-мультипликатор, кинематографист и антрепренёр.

Great Looks and Jumbo Onions: что посмотреть в Великих Луках.

Derek Hunter@thehill.com -- It’s not very often an editorial from anywhere, let alone the Wall Street Journal, stops you in your tracks, but one titled “Vinay Prasad’s vaccine kill shot” did just that for me. Not normally known for bomb-throwing, the Journal’s editors went in very hard against someone you’ve probably never heard of — the chief medical and scientific officer and director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The damning sub-headline reads, “Does the White House know the harm he’s doing to public health?” And no, this is not some random question based on spasmodic, Trump-deranged leftist opposition to everything going on in Washington. This is serious.
The Journal editors write of Prasad — previously forced out of the FDA and then hired back within two weeks — that “it’s hard to recall a regulator who has done as much damage to medical innovation in as little time … In his latest drive-by shooting, the leader of the Food and Drug Administration’s vaccine division rejected Moderna’s mRNA flu vaccine without even a cursory review. This is arbitrary government at its worst.”
Замечательно. Так и надо, и ещё гораздо больше. Ведь здравоохранение всё ещё существует, и учёные всё ещё выползают по ночам из своих нор, оставляя здесь и там свои омерзительные рекомендации.

theguardian.com (https://archive.is/97XsD) -- Dozens of universities are facing legal action from more than 170,000 students seeking compensation after their studies were moved online during Covid-19.
Pre-action claim letters have been sent to 36 universities in England and Wales, including Bath, Bristol, Cardiff, Exeter, Imperial College London, Leeds, Liverpool and Warwick, on behalf of aggrieved students.
It follows a settlement last week between University College London and the Student Group Claim, representing 6,000 UCL students whose studies were affected by the pandemic.
The legal action is being brought under consumer law, which states that where a consumer pays for a service but is provided with a different service of lower value, they may be entitled to compensation.
Скоро везде.

chicago.suntimes.com (https://archive.is/erHbh) -- “You can rent the space…as a couple. You can bring in your friends…You can go take pictures. You can rent space for special events or whatever you want to do in that area. It’s multi-use. But, it’s all around sexual activity,” Business Affairs and Consumer Protection Commissioner Ivan Capifali told the Sun-Times.
“They’re very responsible business owners. They’re not irresponsible. They came to us. They were very honest and transparent with us and we appreciate that. They explained their business model to us. There’s a lot of activities they want to do. We issued a cease-and-desist order until we can figure this out.”