Tuesday, May 11
Daily News Stuff 11 May 2021
Totally Normal Edition
Going all the way back to 1981 today with the first of many opening themes from Urusei Yatsura. The show ran for 196 episodes, with 12 OVA specials and 6 theatrical movies.
Rumiko Takahashi has always been great at starting stories, but only once managed to finish one.
The one factor working in our favour is that our self-appointed fascist overlords are really, really dumb.
Totally Normal Edition
Top Story
- Congratulations on your purchase of a new iPhone, made using slave labour under a genocidal fascist regime! (The Information)
Original article requires registration but most of the details have been reposted elsewhere. (The Verge)
Apple gets the stick in the headline, but the investigation also implicates contract manufacturers used by Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google.
Rumiko Takahashi has always been great at starting stories, but only once managed to finish one.
Tech News
- Amazon destroyed 2 million counterfeit products in 2020. (Ars Technica)
The comments note that (a) it's likely that a lot of these weren't counterfeit, but merely undocumented products from smaller sellers - Amazon is infamous for simply taking and destroying sellers' entire stock without explanation or recourse, and (b) the site is awash with obviously fake products.
Ars Technica is a left-leaning site that agrees with Amazon's politics (though it wasn't always thus) so this is not political animus speaking, but bitter experience.
- You're sciencing it wrong!
Researchers at MIT are horrified to find that mask mandate skeptics are doing rigorous research and not blaming everything on white supremacy.
I am not making this up.
You can read the full paper for yourself. (Arxiv.org)
It reads like a bad parody of woke "science", but it's real.
- Supermicro put two of Intel's new Ice Lake Xeons on a standard ATX motherboard. (AnandTech)
Due to space constraints - these are huge chips, and there's two of them - it only supports four of the eight memory channels on each CPU, and only one module per channel, though that's still enough for 1TB of RAM, or even 2TB if you can find the high-capacity modules necessary.
I think the only reason this exists is that you need two Intel server CPUs to compete with one from AMD; it makes no sense otherwise.
- The DHS is spying on you for your own good. (NBC News)
You will learn to love Big Brother, you ungrateful little bastards.
- Petrol supplies - what you folks call "gas" even though it's a liquid - may resume in the eastern US states by the end of the week. (ZDNet)
The FBI and the perpetrators have both confirmed this was caused by a Russian hacking group, supposedly not at all under the thumb of the Russian government.
Pull the other one, it's got little Brooklyn Bridges on.
- It's not a labour shortage, it's just that the country is run by retards. (Washington Post)
When you subsidise bad behaviour, you get more of it.
Subsidising Bad Behaviour Video of the Day
The one factor working in our favour is that our self-appointed fascist overlords are really, really dumb.
Disclaimer: The question is whether they are dumb enough. And the answer is yes, they are all the dumb.
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1
"Petrol supplies - what you folks call "gas" even though it's a liquid"
You know it's 'gasoline', right? Or, as I've heard you Down Under folks call it, 'guzzleline'.
You know it's 'gasoline', right? Or, as I've heard you Down Under folks call it, 'guzzleline'.
Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, May 12 2021 12:22 AM (eqaFC)
2
Apparently the dog walking in the park is rape paper turned out to be a semi-honest effort to show that the review system and the editorial oversight were hot garbage. They produced some other papers that you might recognize from being passed around in right internet circles as 'those wacky leftist academics'. So possibly this paper is false flag, or dishonest.
I'm not trying to defend publications coming out of universities.
It isn't clear to me what strategic objective Russia is hoping to achieve here. Hitting the east coast makes sense for activities in Europe or Africa, but it is a really short window of opportunity.
One possibility is miscalculation wrt US internal tensions.
Another is that they are collaborating with the Biden regime to frame regime opponents as Russian.
I'm not trying to defend publications coming out of universities.
It isn't clear to me what strategic objective Russia is hoping to achieve here. Hitting the east coast makes sense for activities in Europe or Africa, but it is a really short window of opportunity.
One possibility is miscalculation wrt US internal tensions.
Another is that they are collaborating with the Biden regime to frame regime opponents as Russian.
Posted by: PatBuckman at Wednesday, May 12 2021 12:47 AM (6y7dz)
3
Semi-honest compared to the apparent UMinn matter.
The dog in the park folks admitted it when asked, and apparently then disclosed everything that they had been pulling.
The dog in the park folks admitted it when asked, and apparently then disclosed everything that they had been pulling.
Posted by: PatBuckman at Wednesday, May 12 2021 12:52 AM (6y7dz)
4
Oddly enough, in my many years of buying pretty much everything on Amazon, I've never received a product identifiable as a counterfeit. Lots of shoddy crap, some of it shipped slow-boat-from-China despite claims of guaranteed two-day shipping, and even Prime shipping has become non-deterministic over the past several years (particularly since they started using the US Postal Service), but no fakes.
The most annoying thing Amazon is doing to me these days is bait-and-switching the seller. I add something to my cart that's supposedly Prime shipping from Amazon, and when I go to check out, it's a week to ten days from a brand new Marketplace dealer with no history who's playing pricing games. I used to have a laptop on one of my wishlists, and every time the "prime" price went down, it turned out to be a dealer with no history that somehow was the "best" choice.
-j
The most annoying thing Amazon is doing to me these days is bait-and-switching the seller. I add something to my cart that's supposedly Prime shipping from Amazon, and when I go to check out, it's a week to ten days from a brand new Marketplace dealer with no history who's playing pricing games. I used to have a laptop on one of my wishlists, and every time the "prime" price went down, it turned out to be a dealer with no history that somehow was the "best" choice.
-j
Posted by: J Greely at Wednesday, May 12 2021 12:57 AM (ZlYZd)
5
Fundamental issue here, universities went all in trying to pave the way for the PRC's viceroy, and are salty about pushback. They publicly sold their credibility, and are sad now that people do not trust them.
Expect more stupid research into this that is likewise wildly off base.
Expect more stupid research into this that is likewise wildly off base.
Posted by: PatBuckman at Wednesday, May 12 2021 01:00 AM (6y7dz)
6
"even Prime shipping has become non-deterministic over the past several years (particularly since they started using the US Postal Service)"
I think I've had one, or maybe two at most, packages a day or so late. But since I moved to Galveston, where most of my Prime orders are shipped USPS, probably because they don't have a local carrier, I've run into a problem I've never seen before: two times, an order was marked as delivered, and wasn't actually in my mailbox. Apparently my postman sometimes marks packages as delivered before actually putting them in the box.
I think I've had one, or maybe two at most, packages a day or so late. But since I moved to Galveston, where most of my Prime orders are shipped USPS, probably because they don't have a local carrier, I've run into a problem I've never seen before: two times, an order was marked as delivered, and wasn't actually in my mailbox. Apparently my postman sometimes marks packages as delivered before actually putting them in the box.
Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, May 12 2021 02:08 AM (eqaFC)
7
Rick, about 70% of my USPS Amazon deliveries match that pattern. USPS will either mark it delivered or "attempted but failed" when the driver gets back to the post office and discovers that it never made it onto the truck. Then it will either show up at 6am the following morning or two days later, even if the status is "held for pickup". Meanwhile, Amazon believes the original false delivery claim and rates USPS as a reliable carrier.
-j
-j
Posted by: J Greely at Wednesday, May 12 2021 04:17 AM (ZlYZd)
8
Apple Computers: We can't see any evidence of genocide or slave labour.
Bob Berdella: I can't see any evidence of murder or homosexual rape.
Bob Berdella: I can't see any evidence of murder or homosexual rape.
Posted by: normal at Wednesday, May 12 2021 11:41 AM (obo9H)
9
On happier note, Slitherine announced a new Master of Magic game. New, not 'new addition.'
Actually, now that I think of it, I am not sure if that is good news.
Actually, now that I think of it, I am not sure if that is good news.
Posted by: cxt217 at Wednesday, May 12 2021 01:09 PM (4i7w0)
10
J, that's really annoying. But in the two cases I mentioned, the postman marked the items as delivered while he was still at my complex. (I know the 3rd-party Amazon-branded drivers can do it too, because I've had more than one instance where I knew where they were via delivery vehicle tracking, heard them at the door, opened it as they're walking down the hall, and fired up Amazon and seen the order was already marked "delivered" with a picture of the box on my doormat.)
Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, May 13 2021 04:30 AM (eqaFC)
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