SoylentNews

Sanders campaign wracked by dissension

Elizabeth Warren just won an endorsement that’s making Bernie Sanders’s world really mad

According to polls, Warren needs a little more to fully absorb Sanders.

I saw these two Maruchan ramen packets next to each other at a Walmart, and decided to taste test them.

Bring back Mushroom flavor, you fucks!

This is a fairly simple concept. Economies, of any sort, thrive on the flow of goods and services, for which money is an abstraction. Money (currency) may be thought of as something like electrical current or water; it does useful work only when it's moving ("velocity of money"), because it's a proxy for the movements of goods, resources, and services.

Capitalism has the potential, realized repeatedly, to produce staggering amounts of goods and services, and to keep the flow of same in motion. However, the profit motive is a concentrating tendency. In particular, it tends to accumulate both money and the goods/services/resources represented by money in fewer and fewer hands over time, and this effect is a positive feedback loop, i.e., the longer it goes on the more it potentiates and reinforces and accelerates itself.

The problem here is that this accumulation stagnates the economy. When money and the things it abstracts away stop circulating, useful work is not done. The knock of effects are economic malaise, increase in rent-seeking behaviors, and widening disparities between the rich and poor (which, again, are self-catalyzing). Bluntly, a consumer economy grinds to a halt when people can't buy stuff.

When this reaches its logical conclusion, we find the vast majority of resources, goods, money, land, and political power in the hands of a wealthy few, with the huge mass of the people as impoverished slave laborers or serfs. In a word: *feudalism.* Without proper regulations to make sure wealth keeps circulating, then, capitalism will inevitably degenerate into feudalism. Which is, ironically, the very state it was created to oppose ideologically! The reason this happens is because the drives behind both systems are the same: greed.

This seems to be an inevitable consequence of unrestrained human nature. I am told a slur against progressives is that they believe humans and human nature are perfectible; this is not something I have actually heard from any of them, so it's probably another stupid slur and can be safely disregarded. That said, if we don't make some serious changes to how we think about economic activity and the reasons for engaging in it, we're going to end up in a dystopian nightmare. Some could argue we already have, and others might say we never left it.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1170983609492103168

https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=16126&cid=417654#commentwrap

Ceres

Being the largest body in the asteroid belt, Ceres could become the main base and transport hub for future asteroid mining infrastructure, allowing mineral resources to be transported to Mars, the Moon, and Earth. Because of its small escape velocity combined with large amounts of water ice, it also could serve as a source of water, fuel, and oxygen for ships going through and beyond the asteroid belt. Transportation from Mars or the Moon to Ceres would be even more energy-efficient than transportation from Earth to the Moon.

Callisto

In 2003 NASA conducted a conceptual study called Human Outer Planets Exploration (HOPE) regarding the future human exploration of the outer Solar System. The target chosen to consider in detail was Callisto.

The study proposed a possible surface base on Callisto that would produce rocket propellant for further exploration of the Solar System. Advantages of a base on Callisto include low radiation (due to its distance from Jupiter) and geological stability. Such a base could facilitate remote exploration of Europa, or be an ideal location for a Jovian system waystation servicing spacecraft heading farther into the outer Solar System, using a gravity assist from a close flyby of Jupiter after departing Callisto.

In December 2003, NASA reported that a manned mission to Callisto might be possible in the 2040s.

Ganymede

Ganymede is the largest moon in the Solar System. Ganymede is the only moon with a magnetosphere, but it is overshadowed by Jupiter's magnetic field. Ganymede receives about 8 rem of radiation per day.

Compare to Europa at 540 rem per day, or Io at 3,600 rem per day and no water.

Titan

The American aerospace engineer and author Robert Zubrin identified Saturn as the most important and valuable of the four gas giants in the Solar System, because of its relative proximity, low radiation, and excellent system of moons. He also named Titan as the most important moon on which to establish a base to develop the resources of the Saturn system.

Robert Zubrin has pointed out that Titan possesses an abundance of all the elements necessary to support life, saying "In certain ways, Titan is the most hospitable extraterrestrial world within our solar system for human colonization." The atmosphere contains plentiful oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen and methane. Additional to this, strong evidence indicates that liquid methane exists on the surface. Evidence also indicates the presence of liquid water and ammonia under the surface, which are delivered to the surface by volcanic activity. While this water can be used to generate breathable oxygen, more is blown into Titan's atmosphere from the geysers on the icy moon of Enceladus (also a moon of Saturn), as they start as water molecules and evolve into oxygen and hydrogen. Nitrogen is ideal to add buffer gas partial pressure to breathable air (it forms about 78% of Earth's atmosphere). Nitrogen, methane and ammonia can all be used to produce fertilizer for growing food.

https://dailycaller.com/2019/09/09/nikolas-cruz-parkland-shooting-stories/

‘I Want To Kill!’ — The 7 Most Shocking Stories About Parkland Shooter Nikolas Cruz Revealed In New Book

A new book co-written by Andrew Pollack, the father of a teenager killed during the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas (MSD) High School in February 2018, contains a number of shocking details about the shooter Nikolas Cruz and his erratic behavior in school.

Pollack, whose 18-year-old daughter Meadow was killed in the shooting, co-wrote the new book “Why Meadow Died: The People and Policies that Created the Parkland Shooter and Endanger America’s Students” along with Max Eden.

An excerpt from the book was published in the New York Post Monday, and the details are bizarre. Here are the seven most staggering stories.
Cruz Was Caught Masturbating In School

According to the excerpt, a female student named Paige first met Cruz and he tried to give her a hug. After the hug, a teacher told Paige, “Don’t touch him. He just got caught jerking off.”

Cruz Shouted: “I Want To Kill!”

In another incident, Cruz’s eighth grade teacher Carrie Yon told him that he was a “good kid.”

In response, he yelled, “I’m a bad kid! I want to kill!”
A Teacher Wrote That Cruz Didn’t Understand The Difference Between Violent Video Games And Reality

The same teacher, Carrie Yon, wrote in a “Functional Behavioral Analysis” of Cruz that she didn’t think he “understands the difference between his violent video games and reality.”

“He is constantly showing aggressive behavior and poor judgment. His drawings in class show violent acts (people shooting at each other) or creepy sexual pictures (dogs with large penises) … I would like to see him sent to a facility that is more prepared and has the proper setting to deal with this type of child,” she wrote.
Cruz Attempted To Commit Suicide After School

As an eighth grader, Cruz reportedly tried to commit suicide by jumping into traffic. This incident was recorded by teachers as a “minor disruption.”
Cruz Was Obsessed With “Terrorist Topics” And Was An “Excessive” Gamer

After Cruz enrolled in a special school in early 2014, a psychiatrist wrote in a report that due to “excessive gaming,” the future school shooter had a preoccupation with war and terrorism.

“He goes to YouTube to research wars, military material, and terrorist topics. Wears military related items before he goes to school. Parent stated that all of these ideas are related to his excessive gaming,” Dr. Nyrma Ortiz wrote.
School Psychiatrists Warned That Cruz Has “Dreams Of Killing Others”

In a note written by Ortiz and another therapist Rona Kelly, they report that he admitted to having “dreams of killing others and [being] covered in blood.”
Despite All Of This, Cruz Was Able To Go To MSD High School And Join JROTC

Finally, the most interesting bit of information from the excerpt is that after a short period of good behavior, Cruz was sent to MSD High, and even temporarily joined the school’s Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC) program.

Eden and Pollack write:

        Nikolas Cruz couldn’t possibly have made himself any clearer. Broward schools staff knew exactly who and what he was. Yet they not only allowed him to enroll in Marjory Stoneman Douglas, they literally gave him an air gun, shaped like an AR-15, and let him practice shooting.

Indeed, there were many warning signs about Cruz and his potential for violence.

Immediately after the shooting, one MSD student told a local news reporter that “everyone predicted” Cruz being a shooter.

“Honestly, a lot of people were saying it was gonna be him.”

        “Everyone predicted it,” a student said about the #Parkland shooting. pic.twitter.com/mbzBIw8iUa

        — Vic Micolucci WJXT (@WJXTvic) February 14, 2018

Reports also indicate that the FBI was previously warned about someone posting on YouTube under the name “Nikolas Cruz,” saying he wanted to be a school shooter. (RELATED: Report: Broward School Officials ‘Did Not Follow Through’ On Nikolas Cruz’s Pleas For Help Before Massacre)

Upon being arrested, Cruz told officers that he heard “demons” and “voices.”

A few more details from CNN https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/14/us/nikolas-cruz-florida-shooting-suspect/index.html

Cruz's digital footprint
Cruz's social media posts paint what Israel called a "very, very disturbing" picture.
Israel said Cruz's digital profile contains troubling content that included a variety of gun- and violence-related posts on social media.
A user going by the name of Nikolas Cruz also included slurs against blacks and Muslims in his posts.
A law enforcement source said authorities are aware of Cruz's extremist views on social media. The investigation is in early stages and so they are gathering information. One question for investigators is whether Cruz simply espoused extremist views and used related language or was in fact tied to any groups.
Cruz's disturbing behavior also included several threatening comments under videos on YouTube and other sites. They include:

        "I whana shoot people with my AR-15"
        "I wanna die Fighting killing s**t ton of people"
        "I am going to kill law enforcement one day they go after the good people."

In September, a YouTube user going by Nikolas Cruz posted a comment to a vlogger's YouTube page, saying, "Im going to be a professional school shooter." A law enforcement official confirms the FBI received a report about the post.
A law enforcement official told CNN earlier Thursday the FBI had received two reports regarding potential threats from the shooter.
But later Thursday, a separate law enforcement official said authorities believe they only received one report, regarding the comment on YouTube. The investigation is in its early stages, the source said, and information could change as leads are investigated.

The report this week that the US extracted a top spy from Russia in 2017 after President Donald Trump revealed classified information to two Russian officials landed with a bang in the national security apparatus.

On the one hand, the news wasn't surprising. The president has a long record of disavowing the intel community's findings, distorting its conclusions to suit his narrative, and publicly siding with hostile foreign powers over the US.

On the other hand, the stark implications of this development, first reported by CNN — that a US spy was extracted in part because the president could not be trusted to protect the person's identity — floored intelligence veterans because it confirmed some of the worst fears about Trump.

'You actually have to give a s--- about your spies': Intel veterans are floored by report that an asset was extracted from Russia in part because of Trump

Four states are poised to cancel their 2020 GOP presidential primaries and caucuses, a move that would cut off oxygen to Donald Trump’s long-shot primary challengers.

Republican parties in South Carolina, Nevada, Arizona and Kansas are expected to finalize the cancellations in meetings this weekend, according to three GOP officials who are familiar with the plans.

The moves are the latest illustration of Trump’s takeover of the entire Republican Party apparatus. They underscore the extent to which his allies are determined to snuff out any potential nuisance en route to his renomination — or even to deny Republican critics a platform to embarrass him.

Republicans to scrap primaries and caucuses as Trump challengers cry foul

Yeah, I stole my title - https://www.xkcd.com/1022/

Exclusive: Feds Demand Apple And Google Hand Over Names Of 10,000+ Users Of A Gun Scope App

Own a rifle? Got a scope to go with it? The U.S. government might soon know who you are, where you live and how to reach you.

That’s because the government wants Apple and Google to hand over names, phone numbers and other identifying data of at least 10,000 users of a single gun scope app, Forbes has discovered. It’s an unprecedented move: Never before has a case been disclosed in which American investigators demanded personal data of users of a single app from Apple and Google. And never has an order been made public where the feds have asked the Silicon Valley giants for info on so many thousands of people in one go.

According to an application for a court order filed by the Department of Justice (DOJ) on September 5, investigators want information on users of Obsidian 4, a tool used to control rifle scopes made by night-vision specialist American Technologies Network Corp. The app allows gun owners to get a live stream, take video and calibrate their gun scope from an Android or iPhone device. According to the Google Play page for Obsidian 4, it has more than 10,000 downloads. Apple doesn’t provide download numbers, so it’s unclear how many iPhone owners could be swept up in this latest government data grab.

If the court approves the demand, and Apple and Google decide to hand over the information, it could include data on thousands of people who have nothing to do with the crimes being investigated, privacy activists warned. Edin Omanovic, lead on Privacy International's State Surveillance program, said it would set a dangerous precedent and scoop up “huge amounts of innocent people’s personal data.”

“Such orders need to be based on suspicion and be particularized—this is neither,” Omanovic added.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2019/09/06/exclusive-feds-demand-apple-and-google-hand-over-names-of-10000-users-of-a-gun-scope-app/#4bf4c5ca2423

Also,
Exclusive: ATN gun scope maker responds about feds demanding its app user data from Apple and Google

The Department of Justice did not contact rifle scope manufacturer American Technologies Network Corp. (ATN) before filing a court order on Thursday demanding Apple and Google turn over user data from ATN’s mobile app.

Following initial reporting on the government demand from Apple and Google of user data for the Obsidian 4 app, ATN stated on Friday that they were not aware of the government’s request for information from the tech giants until a Forbes article broke the story. ATN advised they would not be turning over user information to the DOJ unless required by law.

“ATN has not been contacted by the Department of Justice, Apple, or Google,” the company said in a statement to American Military News on Friday.

“ATN will protect its customers and their identifying data to the absolute extent possible under U.S. law. And, it will not provide any information regarding the identity of our customers to any third party unless specifically required by law,” the statement continued.

The turnover of data could affect up to 10,000 app users who have downloaded the app through the Apple Store and Google Play.

The Obsidian 4 app allows its users to pair their phone with their rifle scopes, helping users calibrate their scopes and allowing them to take video and live streams.

Initial reporting of the DOJ information request, indicated the court order was later sealed from public viewing.

Before the court documents were sealed, Forbes reported that part of the court order alleges the company’s scopes have been found in shipments to Hong Kong, Canada and The Netherlands but have not had the necessary import licenses required by the International Traffic in Arms Regulation.

A report published by the Terrorism Research & Analysis Consortium also claims the scopes in question had made it into the hands of Taliban fighters.

“The manner in which the ATN Obsidian 4 application is paired with this scope manufactured by Company A supports the conclusion that the information requested herein will assist the government in identifying networks engaged in the unlawful export of this rifle scope,” part of the order reportedly read.

The DOJ’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement department is apparently seeking the data to find end users connected to the shipments of rifle scopes that violated the arms export laws.

Though the import of their products is facing government scrutiny, ATN itself is not under investigation for the alleged export violations.

  The government’s requests for app user information sparked backlash from privacy advocates who warned the court order is overly broad and threatens to gather data from innocent users.

Tor Ekeland, a privacy lawyer, said the DOJ order amounted to a “fishing expedition.”

Ekeland warned the government may begin with a focus on one specific case but eventually use the overturned data to pursue other cases against unrelated app users.

Does anyone wonder what, and who, the government might target with their next fishing expedition? How secure is your baby monitoring hardware and software? Your GPS device? Your vehicle?

When I started writing this, I experienced a power flicker. Maybe use a battery-backed power strip so you don't get a taste of Afghanistan. Keep in mind that the shape of the official USB-C power supply is awkward and could take up more than one outlet on a strip.

Overall, Pi4 4GB with Raspbian works well as a desktop. Performance is reasonable and compares well to my 2011 laptop. RAM usage of Raspbian is very low. You may want to tweak it to use more of your RAM to reduce activity on the microSD card.

Ethernet and USB boot aren't available yet, but you don't necessarily need an SSD for boot/files. I'm using cheap 32 GB microSD cards, not the ones with A1 or A2 "Application class" IOPS, and it works great most of the time. The speed of the microSD interface was doubled, so that helps. Some things may suck. For example, I tried to download a 1 GB file from Mega, and it was in the ballpark of 100 times slower than the HDD laptop for no apparent reason. I don't know if that is a problem with sustained speeds or the browser-based encryption scheme Mega uses not being accelerated correctly.

I used the Pi4 in open air for a while, but switched to a Kodi FLIRC case. Temperatures now stay around 48-52°C during light use, or closer to 55°C under heavier use. It will never throttle in this case unless I start to look at overclocking it.

One person I gave a Pi4 to can't display video with LibreELEC even though it works fine on the displays I tested. However, LibreELEC for Pi4 is an alpha version and hasn't been updated since July 25. Kodi (Debian) within Raspbian does work, although it crashes when I exit it.

I have LibreELEC running on a Pi4 2GB and it is pretty snappy. Here is a short review of LibreELEC on Pi4. The 1GB model should be fine for LibreELEC, 2GB is regarded as a better choice than 1GB for 4K resolution, while 4GB is probably completely unnecessary.

In Chromium on Raspbian, video playback is still done using the CPU AFAIK, which will be fixed later. Aside from complaints others have had about video playback, I think I've noticed a weird lack of picture quality at 720p on YouTube, which I'm hoping will go away once hardware acceleration is switched on. I have seen some screen tearing, for which there is an explanation. I also hear weird clickiness/pops on some audio playback over headphones, but I need to pin down the cause.

I am looking into RetroPie for another user I am gifting a Pi4 to. No officially working version for Pi4 is available yet, but the expectation is that the newest consoles that Pi4 could emulate with acceptable performance are Nintendo 64, PS1, etc. N64 is probably a milestone in terms of emulation desirability. People are already testing GameCube on Pi4, but with generally bad performance. Part of the puzzle is that Pi4 supports OpenGL ES 3.0, up from 2.0 of the Pi3B+. But OpenGL ES 3.2 or Vulkan support will be needed to get performance closer to competing ARM platforms like the Nvidia Shield TV and add more graphics features that something like Dolphin would need. Improving the graphics driver is on the Pi Foundation agenda, with OpenGL ES 3.1 being worked on, but who knows when that will be done.

One interesting note is that contrary to initial announcements, Pi4 has LPDDR4-3200 SDRAM, not LPDDR4-2400. That fact was corrected on this page after yours truly pointed it out. Bragging aside, that incorrect info was copied endlessly by news outlets reporting the announcement. Wikipedia also has the incorrect speed. So yeah, that's pretty silly. The memory speed is up massively from previous gen, which was LPDDR2-800 (overclocked to 900 MHz), AFAIK.

Since the Raspberry Pi forums hates wishlists, I'll put one here for fun. My assumption is that Pi5 would come out in 2022, Pi6 in 2025:

802.11ax support: This standard offers a number of improvements over 802.11ac. I think it uses some spectrum closer to 1 GHz (an expanded 2.4 GHz band), which should improve range and wall penetration.

Better/actual Bluetooth 5 support: The Pi3B+ and Pi4B both use the same wireless chip. Bluetooth 5 "support" can be added to the older model with a firmware update. But it does not support the new BT5 modes which allow doubled speed at short range or quadrupled range at 1/8 speed. This is a problem with many more products than the Pi, because the Bluetooth SIG sucks and labels too many features as optional. It makes the USB standards look sane. They also need to adopt Opus.

Displays: Without overclocking, you are limited to a 4K display @ 60 Hz and a 4K display @ 30 Hz at the same time. Obviously, that could be improved. Given that Broadcom's SoC GPUs appear to be aimed primarily at TVs, it's inevitable that a future iteration of Pi will get the 8K display support that almost nobody needs.

Codecs: AV1 hardware decoding support would be great for the next iteration. It's unfortunate that there is basically zero support for AV1 in 2019 consumer products, but the situation could be improved by 2022. Maybe AV2 support is on the table (before Google switched to AV1, they were planning on releasing VP10 and future versions at an aggressive 18 month pace). H.266 could also be a thing at that point, although I'd rather see MPEG get brutalized in the market. There are concerns that patent trolling will slow down AV1 adoption or kill it, so expect that to happen in the worst timeline.

eMMC storage: I don't care, but a lot of people seem to. I have no problem swapping microSD cards (don't sneeze), and if I wanted better I would use an attached SSD which are getting very cheap. The Compute Module versions do have eMMC.

Memory: 4 GB is very adequate, but any desktop-oriented system could benefit from more (including to the the point of universal memory where your storage = RAM and you have hundreds of gigabytes of it). Word is that 64-bit Raspbian will likely be released before a Pi5. Pi4's SoC can technically address up to 16 GB of LPDDR4 memory. State-of-the-art is currently 12 GB LPDDR(4X|5), with 16 GB expected next year. We may finally be at a point where memory prices continue to decline instead of shooting back up. If there is any change at all from this generation, I would expect to see Pi5 with 2/4/8 GB versions. 2 GB would be adequate for many use cases, but 8 GB as a flagship would be nice. I doubt they would bother with a 6 GB model. Also, rumors of a Pi4 8GB were denied and attributed to a misprint in the user manual.

Better performance, but with lower heat: I think the Pi Foundation has heard enough complaints by now to understand that the heat issue is a bad meme for them, and there needs to be a reversal from using more power at higher heat every generation. Worst of all is that the official plastic case will cause the SoC to throttle under light/normal use. Now that Cortex-A72 cores are in use, any successor core designs used should allow higher performance with better efficiency (although they might want to skip A73: "In reviews, the Cortex-A73 showed improved integer instructions per clock (IPC), though lower floating point IPC, relative to the Cortex-A72."). There's also many nodes under "28nm". People seem to think that it will be stuck on "28nm" for a decade but I think "20nm" and "14nm" are possible (GlobalFoundries is stuck at "14nm" and a Chinese foundry is going to be at "14nm" soon, so there will be a lot of competition on that node). More efficient FinFETs could also be available.

Every iteration of Pi (2/3/4) has delivered massively improved performance over previous models. That might slow down for version 5... unless they bump up the core count. 6 or 8 cores may be coming. I'm not sure if a die shrink is needed first. I doubt that a future Pi will adopt big.LITTLE, but maybe it should. Maybe that is a way to ensure compatibility with older models, if done right.

3DSoC: This DARPA/SkyWater Technology Foundry project has the potential to increase performance to/beyond current HEDT levels while lowering power consumption back to Raspberry Pi Zero levels. It *could* revolutionize personal computing and create a situation where almost all people would be satisifed using a Pi or other single board computer at all times. While 3DSoC would be able to use larger, older nodes like "90nm", costs for "90nm" 3DSoC are projected to be comparable to conventional "7nm". If this does materialize on schedule, Pi Foundation and Broadcom will have to respond eventually or they risk being rendered utterly obsolete by faster-moving competitors. There have been plenty of Pi clones, but nothing 3+ orders of magnitude faster in the same footprint.

Kobo: Kobo debuts Libra H2O e-reader, updates software with more tools for readers

Kobo’s new Libra H20 is like a cheaper Kindle Oasis

Amazon: Amazon Kindle Oasis 2019 Review – It Could Replace Paper

Bonus thing: Acer Unveils Predator PowerGem: Claims Thermal Pad Boosts CPU Performance by Over 12%