Link. “Many developing nations view international security missions as a way to subsidize or reward their security forces.”

The US will contribute money but is loathe to send troops.

Link. “… After The New York Times contacted Apple, some Beeper customers began reporting that they had been unblocked in recent day..”

The NYT unlock makes it worse.

Link. Xi is a curse upon China.

Smith dissembles though about why Xi wants control. It’s not “lack of faith in the Chinese people”. Weird that he went that way.

Link. Finance wizards created complex instruments that could be used to fleece homeowners.

Thoughtful regulation needed. Federal money (subsidies) should only be available for “certified” / “qualified” packages.

Link. Israel has good reason to distrust the UN; it is not surprising that UN agencies in Gaza would have staff who are also Hamas.

It reinforces concerns that aid distributed through UN goes to Hamas rather than civilians.

Link. Of these only vaccination could be changed.

Link. Book illuminates the 19th century history of the imperial relationship through the stories on two interpreters.

Link. One possible cause.

Link. The esoteric and obscure Hugo Disaster of 2024 has many lessons for the world.

Link. I liked DeLong’s brief list. I am very glad I did not live in these societies.

Link. You can turn off SDP at home but not when out. There are times biometrics doesn’t work for me so I’m a bit wary of this.

Link. Wrong about the GOP. It wasn’t the party he thought it was.

Link. Chinese study, replicated in other centers.

Link. Boeing error. No signoff was done. Whistleblowers everywhere. Boeing workers are very angry.

Americans are working too hard.

Link. A good overview. She’s toast.

Link. Might be the good release?

Link. It’s not 1939 and it’s not the Great Depression. Democracies with stable economies are not able to do mass military. See also Israel.

Link. “…. about 40%, of foreign students come from India, with China coming in second with about 12%…”

China I understand. Xi seems to hate Canada, but he is sending China’s finest to support Canada. India’s flow is interesting.

Link. It appears Israel did not exaggerate Hamas tunnels the way the US invented Taliban/al Qaeda tunnels.

Link. Archival Flash lives.

Link. “Some macOS 13 Ventura and macOS 12 Monterey users are being upgraded to macOS 14 Sonoma after dismissing notifications that encourage an upgrade”

Link. Congress flying saucer fans. Not all are GOP. “taxpayer money was being inappropriately spent on paranormal research at Skinwalker Ranch in Utah,”

Link. Makes me cautiously optimistic.

Link. Review of how computers got faster over the decades. Using Apple’s Accelerate library requires careful coding.

Link. Scalzi is cautious but doesn’t leave a lot of doubt about what China did.

We can’t do international awards any more.

Link. Software outsourcing killed a lot of 90s companies.

Link. They even mention PBMs. Which need a lot more mentions.

Link. Gone the next day.

Link. NYT article is quiet about NYT.

Link. Did Modi use Appin when his people hacked phones?

Link. “Lack of bureaucratic state capacity
Onerous contracting requirements
Permitting, especially NEPA”

Set asides for underserved and other well intentioned restrictions have a terrible track record.

Link. I like the floating feature

Link. They are moving very carefully.

Link. Bending spoons bought them. They are a scammy vendor.

Link. SMS authentication is easy but has risks.

Link. More RSS goodness. I track Jedeed this way.

Link. “Visit your subscriptions page to get started. There will be a notice at the top of the page if Feedbin has detected any broken feeds it can help with”

Fixed 20 for me.

Link. I believe inflation made this possible.

“the gap between Black and white unemployment rates is the smallest it has been”

Link. Watch this space.

Link. Article doesn’t explain why low arrest rate.

Link. The chorus technique was new to me. He uses ChatGPT and Claude to get cross-validation.

Link. Teen vogue has replaced Time magazine.

Link. Was HP’s fall similar?

Link. 1. Longer delays from symptoms to antigen positive. Don’t know if infectious before antigen positive. Wait 4-5 days before testing?
2. COVID spread maybe unaffected by humidity, temperature?
3. Vaccines are great and probably worthwhile even in teens.

Link. Very old web – but still active. A personal index to blogs.

Link. “Denmark, in particular, seems to have gone through some population changes so complete and drastic that genocidal conquest comes to mind”

Or a novel disease.

Link. “Perplexity has their own search index now and is running their own crawlers, and they’re using variants of Mistral 7B and Llama 70B …”

Link. A complaint — that 58 people were murdered. Bihar state is probably a worst case. Lots of corruption, a government that manipulates courts and blocks reform. (India is more a coalition of states than a country so presumably varies by state.)

It’s easy to see how SCOTUS could turn into India’s massively corrupt Supreme Court.

Link. “Ms. Salazar, Ecuador’s first Black attorney general, was appointed in 2019. She prosecuted a former president, Rafael Correa, on corruption charges the next year.”

Link. I learned a lot. 30y ago BYTE magazine would have covered all this. We have no equivalent now.