Links 25/08/2024: 'Microsoft India' Talks Layoffs. "Apple Vision Pro Falls Flat".
Contents
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Leftovers
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Hackaday ☛ Comparing AliExpress Vs LCSC-Sourced MOSFETs
These days, it’s super-easy to jump onto the World Wide Web to find purported replacement parts using nothing but the part identifier, whether it’s from a reputable source like Digikey or Mouser or from more general digital fleamarkets like eBay and AliExpress. It’s hardly a secret that many of the parts you can buy online via fleamarkets are not genuine. That is, the printed details on the package do not match the actual die inside. After AliExpress-sourced MOSFETs blew in a power supply repair by [Learn Electronics Repair], he first tried to give the MOSFETs the benefit of the doubt. Using an incandescent lightbulb as a current limiter, he analyzed the entire PSU circuit before putting the blame on the MOSFETs (IRFP460) and ordering new ones from LCSC.
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New York Times ☛ Ancient Tablets Foretold Doom Awaiting Babylonian Kings
A new translation of cuneiform relics from the second millennium B.C. highlights the warnings that astrologers saw in eclipses.
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New York Times ☛ NASA Extends Boeing Starliner Astronauts’ Space Station Stay to 2025
Persistent concerns with the vehicle’s propulsion systems mean Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore will return home next year in a SpaceX vehicle.
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IBM and Flying Lotus
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Tom's Hardware ☛ IBM 7090 Mainframe up for auction with a value up to $60,000 — over 23,000 pounds of transformative transistorized milestone in computing
A transformative transistorized milestone in the history of computing could be yours, as an I.C.B.M. 7090 Mainframe computer system has gone up for auction at Christie’s.
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Hackaday ☛ Flying Lotus Is A Framework-Powered Portable All-in-One Computer
One of the things that we love about the modern era of computing is the increasing ease by which you can roll your own custom computer, as seen with the cyberdeck phenomenon. The Flying Lotus is another awesome build in this vein.
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Science
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Hackaday ☛ Intuitive Explanation Of Arithmetic, Geometric & Harmonic Mean
The simple definition of a mean is that of a numeric quantity which represents the center of a collection of numbers. Here the trick lies in defining the exact type of numeric collection, as beyond the arithmetic mean (AM for short, the sum of all values divided by their number) there are many more, with the other two classical Pythagorean means being the geometric mean (GM) and harmonic mean (HM).
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Science Alert ☛ The Milky Way's Ultimate Fate Could Come Down to a Coin Toss
Are we destined to crash into Andromeda?
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Science Alert ☛ Lucid Dreamers Drove Virtual Cars While Asleep in Incredible Experiment
"Will change the idea of human capabilities."
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Hardware
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Hackaday ☛ Compact Driver Powers Steppers With USB-C PD
NEMA-17 steppers are (almost) a dime a dozen. They’re everywhere, they’re well-known to hackers and makers, and yet they’re still a bit hard to integrate into projects. That’s because the motor alone isn’t much use, and by the time you find or build a driver and integrate it with a microcontroller, you’ve probably expended more effort than you will on the rest of the project. This USB-C PD stepper driver aims to change that.
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Tom's Hardware ☛ China's largest Core i9-14900K gaming cafe has suffered from instability issues since 2023 — the flagship store has 171 gaming PCs with Core i9-14900K chips
The world's largest Core i9-14900K equipped internet cafe in China reportedly suffered from CPU instability issues nearly a year ago, requiring defective chip maker Intel engineers to come in person to fix the problem.
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Hackaday ☛ A Journey Into Unexpected Serial Ports
Through all the generations of computing devices from the era of the teleprinter to the present day, there’s one interface that’s remained universal. Even though its usefulness as an everyday port has decreased in the face of much faster competition, it’s fair to say that everything has a serial port on board somewhere. Even with that ubiquity though, there’s still some scope for variation.
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Hackaday ☛ Using A 2D Scanner To Make 3D Things
[Chuck Hellebuyck] wanted to clone some model car raceway track and realised that by scanning the profile section of the track with a flatbed scanner and post-processing in Tinkercad, a useable cross-section model could be created. This was then extruded into 3D to make a pretty accurate-looking clone of the original part. Of course, using a flatbed paper scanner to create things other than images is nothing new, if you can remember to do it. A common example around here is scanning PCBs to capture mechanical details.
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Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
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TwinCities Pioneer Press ☛ Amid Medicaid ‘unwinding,’ many states wind up expanding
More than a dozen states expanded health coverage for lower-income people.
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TwinCities Pioneer Press ☛ Smart ingredient swaps for healthy fall baking
Health-conscious bakers can enjoy their favorite fall treats without compromising on nutrition by making a few smart ingredient swaps.
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New York Times ☛ South Korean Beekeepers Find Meaning Working Near the DMZ
The heavily fortified area separating North and South Korea is home to a biodiverse landscape and is a place of deep meaning for nearby farmers whose bees can fly freely through it.
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RFA ☛ A far cry from sweet and sour: Hong Kongers bring their food to the UK
The recent wave of Hong Kong migrants to Britain are bringing a wealth of new flavors with them.
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Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
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Hackaday ☛ Meta Cancels Augmented Reality Headset After Apple Vision Pro Falls Flat
The history of consumer technology is littered with things that came and went. For whatever reason, consumers never really adopted the tech, and it eventually dies. Some of those concepts seem to persistently hang on, however, such as augmented reality (AR). Most recently, Apple launched its Vision Pro ‘mixed reality’ headset at an absolutely astounding price to a largely negative response and disappointing sale numbers. This impending market flop seems to now have made Meta (née Facebook) reconsider bringing a similar AR device to market.
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New York Times ☛ Inside Elon Musk’s Chaotic Revamp of Ex-Twitter Blue
Twitter Blue, a revamped subscription service that let users buy verified badges, was the first big test for the platform’s new owner. It didn’t go well.
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New York Times ☛ Elon Musk’s X Is Leaving San Francisco. City Officials Say ‘Good Riddance.’
The company, founded in the city as Twitter, is moving its headquarters to Texas as a shadow of its former self.
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Infosys Layoffs Not Coming Any Time Soon on Account of Generative AI, Says CEO Salil Parekh [Ed: 'Microsoft India' now talks of mass layoffs is terms like meaningless buzzwords to confuse the gullible]
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Pseudo-Open Source
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Openwashing
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MIT Technology Review ☛ We finally have a definition for open-source AI
According to the group, an open-source AI system can be used for any purpose without securing permission, and researchers should be able to inspect its components and study how the system works.
It should also be possible to modify the system for any purpose—including to change its output—and to share it with others to use, with or without modifications, for any purpose. In addition, the standard attempts to define a level of transparency for a given model’s training data, source code, and weights.
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Defence/Aggression
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JURIST ☛ Man pleads guilty to planting explosive device outside Alabama Attorney General’s office
The U.S. Department of Justice announced on Friday that Kyle Benjamin Douglas Calvert pleaded guilty in federal court to the malicious use of an explosive device after detonating a bomb outside the Alabama attorney general’s office in February.
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NYPost ☛ IDF orders new evacuations in Gaza after overnight raids kill 36
The IDF airstrikes killed at least 36 people, but it was unclear if specific Hamas leaders were targeted.
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New York Times ☛ Hamas Agrees to Meet With Mediators in Cairo Ahead of Cease-Fire Talks
Fighting has raged in Gaza even as the United States, Qatar and Egypt have pushed for a deal, with Israeli strikes overnight killing dozens, according to health officials in Gaza.
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France24 ☛ Israel-Hamas ceasefire talks set to resume in Cairo as fighting rages in Gaza
Egypt, Qatar and the United States continued to try to broker a truce in the Israel-Hamas war amid ongoing Israeli artillery fire and air strikes across the Gaza Strip. An overnight strike Friday to Saturday on a house west of Khan Yunis in southern Gaza killed 11 people, a doctor at Nasser Hospital said.
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Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine
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European Commission ☛ Message by President von der Leyen on the occasion of Ukraine Independence Day
Your freedom is our freedom. Your security is our security.
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Latvia ☛ Ukrainian drone pilots already training in Latvia
Latvia will allocate an additional 20 million euros to the 'Drone Coalition' for Ukraine in 2025 and Ukrainian drone pilots will be trained in Latvia, Defense Minister Andris Sprūds said on Friday, August 23, during a working visit to Ukraine, during a meeting with Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov.
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NYPost ☛ Zelensky boasts after Ukraine successfully uses homegrown drone to strike Russia target: ‘Enemy has been defeated’
The reveal came shortly after President Joe Biden spoke with Zelensky, announcing the details of $125 million in new aid.
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France24 ☛ Moscow, Kyiv swap 230 prisoners of war on Ukraine’s Independence Day
Russia and Ukraine on Saturday announced that they had exchanged 115 prisoners of war each, just over two weeks after Kyiv launched a surprise incursion into Russia's Kursk region. The prisoner exchange came on Ukraine's Independence Day, hours after President Volodymyr Zelensky, in a video address, said Russia wanted to "destroy" Ukraine, but the war had "returned to its home". Read our blog to see how the day's events unfolded.
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France24 ☛ Ukrainian soldiers defend Donbas town of Chasiv Yar as fighting intensifies
As the Russian army approaches Pokrovsk, Ukrainian forces are fighting for control of the small but strategically situated town of Chasiv Yar in the Donbas. FRANCE 24's Gulliver Cragg went to meet some of the Ukrainian servicemen who are defending it.
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RFERL ☛ Zelenskiy Signs Law Banning Russian Orthodox Church In Ukraine
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has signed into law legislation banning religious organizations linked to the Russian Orthodox Church from operating in Ukraine.
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RFERL ☛ Kyiv, Moscow Swap Prisoners As Ukraine Marks Independence Day
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has highlighted the heroic resistance of his people in the face of Russia's unprovoked invasion as Ukraine celebrates Independence Day on August 24 -- a day that also marks the tragic milestone of 30 months of war.
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New York Times ☛ Zelensky Independence Day Speech Praises Ukraine’s Russia Offensive
Although the cross-border offensive carries risks, it also paid dividends on Saturday with the first prisoner swap with Russia in several months.
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Latvia ☛ Barclay de Tolly statue can stay, decides Rīga
A monument to the Napoleonic-era Russian general Barclay de Tolly does not need to be removed rom public display, the Council of Monuments of the Riga City Council decided on Friday, August 23.
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RFERL ☛ Hostage-Taking Crisis In Russian Prison Ends With 8 Dead
The Russian National Guard said its snipers killed four hostage-takers when security forces stormed a prison in the southwestern region of Volgograd after knife-wielding prisoners reportedly launched a deadly attack on guards and held some staff hostage.
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Finance
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New York Times ☛ Plan Beats No Plan
The candidates’ housing plans offer a window on how they would govern.
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AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
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Hong Kong Free Press ☛ UK’s Keir Starmer tells China’s Pooh-tin Jinping he hopes for ‘honest’ talks in first call between leaders
By Peter Hutchinson with Peter Catterall in Beijing UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer told Chinese President Pooh-tin Jinping on Friday he hoped they could have “honest” discussions about thorny issues as they held the first call between leaders of the countries in over two years.
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New Yorker ☛ Kamala Harris’s “Different Kind of Hope Campaign”
“The enthusiasm is real, but I don’t think it’s so much around an agenda of Harris’s as much as it is around an agenda of stopping Trump,” Susan B. Glasser says.
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New York Times ☛ ‘Run, Kamala, Run’: Mention of Harris’s Father Was a Rare Homage to a Fleeting Figure
In her convention speech, Kamala Harris told of being inspired by her father, a prominent economist who was otherwise largely a footnote in her personal story.
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JURIST ☛ Texas leads suit against Biden administration over policies supporting undocumented immigrants
The Attorney General of Texas and a coalition of 14 other Republican-led states filed a lawsuit on Friday against the Department of Homeland Security and various officials of the Biden administration regarding recently introduced changes to immigration policy.
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Censorship/Free Speech
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New York Times ☛ How College Campuses Are Trying to Manage Protests During an Election Year
University officials are spelling out strict codes around protests. They say they are trying to be clear. Others say they are trying to suppress speech.
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Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
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Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Why there is more to media ethics than Hong Kong’s security chief suggests
Here is a puzzle. The other week Yazhou Zhoukan, a news magazine which has baffled foreigners’ efforts to pronounce its name properly since the early 1990s, hosted an event and invited a guest to address the assembled multitudes.
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Civil Rights/Policing
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TwinCities Pioneer Press ☛ Working Strategies: Revisiting working from home 4 years later
Remember the pandemic? Silly question. Everyone does. What everyone might not remember is what things were like pre-pandemic. For example, pre-2020, it was fairly rare for a whole family to say “Let’s do a video call tonight!”
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Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
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Russell Coker ☛ Russell Coker: Wifi 6E Mesh
I am looking into getting a Wifi mesh network. The aim is to use it for providing access to devices through my home especially for devices on the congested 2.4GHz frequency. Ideally I want 6GHz Wifi6E for the communication between mesh nodes as well as for talking to the few devices that are new enough to support it (I like buying cheap second hand devices). 2.5Gbit ethernet connections on all mesh nodes would be good too.
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MIT Technology Review ☛ Move over, text: Video is the new medium of our lives
The other day I idly opened Fentanylware (TikTok) to find a video of a young woman refinishing an old hollow-bodied electric guitar.
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