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American Is Killed by Bow and Arrow on Remote Indian Island

John Allen Chau had dreamed of returning to the Andaman Islands.

Mr. Chau, an American thought to be in his 20s, was fulfilling that dream last week when he set off by kayak for a remote island inhabited by a tribe whose members have killed outsiders for simply stepping on their shore.

Fishermen warned him not to go. Few outsiders had ever been there. And Indian government regulations clearly prohibited any interaction with people on the island, called North Sentinel.

But Mr. Chau pushed ahead in his kayak, which he had packed with a Bible. After that, it is a bit of a mystery what happened.

But the police say one thing is clear: Mr. Chau did not survive.

Also at NPR.

Ivanka Trump sent hundreds of emails last year to White House aides, Cabinet officials and her assistants using a personal account, many of them in violation of federal records rules, according to people familiar with a White House examination of her correspondence.

White House ethics officials learned of Trump’s repeated use of personal email when reviewing emails gathered last fall by five Cabinet agencies to respond to a public records lawsuit. That review revealed that throughout much of 2017, she often discussed or relayed official White House business using a private email account with a domain that she shares with her husband, Jared Kushner.

Some aides were startled by the volume of Ivanka Trump’s personal emails — and taken aback by her response when questioned about the practice. She said she was not familiar with some details of the rules, according to people with knowledge of her reaction.

Ivanka Trump used a personal email account to send hundreds of emails about government business last year

So I open Soylent this morning, and I'm greeted with a story where TFS started with:

ASUS Comments on Intel Shortages, U.S.-China Trade War

ASUS this week released its...

I'm thinking "WTF is ASUS???"

We're deluged with acronyms. It's difficult to know if one cares about something when TFS is more opaque than it really needs to be, unless you go digging deeper — and I generally don't go digging deeper unless I'm already interested.

So I thought it would be cool if there was a collapsed-by-default region at the bottom of the article that contained the apparent acronyms found in the article, if any were present. The detection would be simply catch all-caps "words" and look them up in a Soylent-local acronym dictionary.

One of the things in the article edit / update would be to catch any that exist, and list any that aren't in the dictionary with a place to define them when the article is submitted / edited /updated.

If the reader sees an acronym they aren't familiar with, they just open the collapsed-by-default region, learn what it means, and experience a "TIL" TFS instead of a "WTF" TFS.

It doesn't seem like it'd be that big of a pushup to code, and it would serve a reasonable purpose.

Example (faked with <spoiler>):

Or:

As a (poor) substitute, if the <spoiler> tag could have an optional text field, for example...

<spoiler "Acronyms">

...so that it wouldn't show as "spoiler" but instead as...

*Acronyms* (click to show)

...but perform the same function, then the author of the article or the editor could populate it on a per-TFS basis. It would result in considerable duplication of effort to constantly redefine such things (and that's why I suggested an automated process) but it would still provide a means to make TFSs (and comments) better, and it has the merit of probably being a lot easier to do, which would likely appeal to those who would have to implement it.

New York Parents Are Turning to Reiki Healers for Their Stressed Kids

Wikipedia: Reiki

4 green cabbages
4 lbs carrots
2 bunches of green onions (about 10-11 oz total)
1 lb radishes

Sauce contains:

8 tbsp soy sauce
8 tbsp sugar
1 cup canned crushed pineapple
12 tbsp ginger paste
3 heads garlic
2 onions
1/2 cup red pepper flakes
Some MSG

I'll put in some store bought kimchi to use as a starter.

1 cabbage makes about a gallon, so I'm using a 5 gallon food grade bucket. I bought these silicone grommets. Drilled a 9/16" hole in the bucket lid, popped it in. Airlock fits great. I'll put some vodka in it to ward off bugs (they probably won't get in, but could drown in the airlock).

In The Lab: Double Capacity 2x32GB DDR4 from G.Skill and ZADAK

One of the interesting things to come out of the news in recent weeks is the march to double capacity memory. In today’s market, memory modules for consumer grade computers have a maximum of 16GB per module. This is unbuffered memory, and the standard for home computers and laptops. However recently there have been two major announcements causing that number to double from 16GB to 32GB: Samsung has developed double capacity ICs to drive up to 32GB per module with the same number of chips, but also a couple of DRAM vendors have found a way to put two times as many ICs on a 16GB module to make it up to 32GB. Both G.Skill and ZADAK fall into that latter category, and now we have both of these kits in the lab for review.

Related: HP Footnote Leads Intel to Confirm Support for 128 GB of DRAM for 9th-Generation Processors

Edinburgh's road signs hacked by artist

I have used Google to look for previous SN stories for a year or two now. Mainly because there have been inconsistencies with SN's own internal search engine in the past (that may have been fixed since). I use the "site:soylentnews.org" search parameter, plus the keywords, and I have a textbox that automatically adds the "site:soylentnews.org" bit to the query.

While writing this submission:

China Still Has Trouble Staffing the World's Largest Radio Telescope

I'm pretty sure that the following story exists on site, although I don't know where it is or know the headline just yet:

China Can't Find Anyone Smart Enough to Run its Whizzbang $180M 500 Meter Radio Telescope

So I search for stuff like "china radio telescope" and "aperture spherical telescope". No dice.

I use SoylentNews internal search, looking for "Aperture Spherical Telescope", and it works.

Let's try "china radio telescope smart enough". Nope, nothing.

Let's try the exact title of the submission. Welp, there it is, finally. Except that that just before finishing this journal entry a few minutes later, it no longer works (I checked to see if it was a special character issue, and it doesn't seem to be).

This isn't the only example that I've come across, and it seems to have gotten worse in recent weeks. IIRC I had trouble looking for previous stories for an opioid-related submission. These have been popping up often enough that I may just ditch the GOOG for this purpose, especially since SN's search seems to work just fine.

AMD Investor Relations Announces “Next Horizon” Event for November 6th

On Election Day? Gee, what's the bad news?

Anyway, this is likely related to "7nm" Zen 2 Epyc server CPUs, which will debut well before desktop or mobile variants. They might also announce a Radeon RX 590 "12nm" Polaris GPU or talk about "7nm" Vega GPUs.

If Zen 2 Epyc has 64 cores, and Zen+/Zen 2 Threadripper has 32 cores, then Zen 2 Ryzen could have up to 16 cores.

These are two stories that I may or may not submit based on upcoming electoral events:

Congressman John Culberson is a driving force behind the Europa Clipper mission, and an SLS proponent. He may lose his re-election bid this November. This could have a significant impact on the mission. Or not, who knows?

Could November elections scramble a controversial U.S. mission to a frozen moon?

Here is an in-depth story about Culberson's Europa obsession: Inside NASA’s daring $8 billion plan to finally find extraterrestrial life

And a follow-up: The billion-dollar question: How does the Clipper mission get to Europa?

FiveThirtyEight currently forecasts a slight chance of Culberson losing, but it's essentially a coin toss.

This is a Denver local ballot initiative to decriminalize psilocybin mushrooms. It won't be on the ballot in November. They are collecting signatures so that it can be on the ballot in May 2019. 4,726 signatures must be collected by January 7th:

Denver, Colorado, Psilocybin Mushroom Initiative (November 2018)
After the success of cannabis legalization in Denver, could mushrooms be next?
No Magic Mushrooms On The Denver Ballot This Year. Supporters Are Looking To 2019
Denver’s Psilocybin Initiative Moves Forward to Signature Gathering Phase

If you live in Denver, go and sign the petition.

Here is the big list of 2018 ballot measures, amendments, etc.. And here's a few that may be of interest:

California Proposition 12, Farm Animal Confinement Initiative (2018)
Colorado Amendment 74, Compensation to Owners for Decreased Property Value Due to State Regulation Initiative (2018)
Florida Amendment 3, Voter Approval of Casino Gambling Initiative (2018)
Florida Amendment 4, Voting Rights Restoration for Felons Initiative (2018)
Massachusetts Question 3, Gender Identity Anti-Discrimination Veto Referendum (2018)
Michigan Proposal 1, Marijuana Legalization Initiative (2018)

Missouri has two amendments and one proposition regarding medical cannabis that are in conflict:

If two conflicting constitutional amendments, such as Amendment 2 and Amendment 3, are approved, the one receiving the most affirmative votes prevails. State law does provide a protocol for when voters approve statutes, such as Proposition C, and amendments, such as Amendment 2 and Amendment 3, that are in conflict. Speaking to a similar issue regarding tobacco tax initiatives in 2016, the attorney general's office said the issue would need to be decided in court.

Missouri Amendment 2, Medical Marijuana and Veteran Healthcare Services Initiative (2018)
Missouri Amendment 3, Medical Marijuana and Biomedical Research and Drug Development Institute Initiative (2018)
Missouri Proposition C, Medical Marijuana and Veterans Healthcare Services, Education, Drug Treatment, and Public Safety Initiative (2018)

Amendment 2 taxes cannabis at 4%, Amendment 3 taxes it at 15%, Proposition C taxes it at 2%.

North Dakota Measure 3, Marijuana Legalization and Automatic Expungement Initiative (2018)
Ohio Issue 1, Drug and Criminal Justice Policies Initiative (2018)
Oregon Measure 106, Ban Public Funds for Abortions Initiative (2018)
Utah Proposition 2, Medical Marijuana Initiative (2018)
Washington Initiative 940, Police Training and Criminal Liability in Cases of Deadly Force Measure (2018)

Legislative and automatic referrals

Alabama Amendment 1, Ten Commandments Amendment (2018)
California Proposition 2, Use Millionaire's Tax Revenue for Homelessness Prevention Housing Bonds Measure (2018)
California Proposition 7, Permanent Daylight Saving Time Measure (2018)

Hey look, it's Kanye's issue: Colorado Amendment A, Removal of Exception to Slavery Prohibition for Criminals Amendment (2018)

Colorado Amendment X, Definition of Industrial Hemp Amendment (2018)

I think one of our ACs complained about this mess: Florida Amendment 11, Repeal Prohibition on Aliens’ Property Ownership, Delete Obsolete Provision on High-Speed Rail, and Repeal of Criminal Statutes' Effect on Prosecution Amendment (2018)

Hawaii Constitutional Convention Question (2018)
Louisiana Amendment 1, Felons Disqualified to Run for Office for Five Years Amendment (2018)
Nevada Question 2, Sales Tax Exemption for Feminine Hygiene Products Measure (2018)
New Hampshire Question 2, Right to Live Free from Governmental Intrusion in Private and Personal Information Amendment (2018)
South Dakota Constitutional Amendment X, Constitutional Amendments Require a 55 Percent Supermajority (2018)
South Dakota Constitutional Amendment Z, Single-Subject Rule for Constitutional Amendments (2018)
West Virginia Amendment 1, No Right to Abortion in Constitution Measure (2018)

I plan to submit a story focusing only on ballot initiatives, measures, propositions, amendments, etc. Last time around, I submitted a story before the election. This time, I think I will do it after the results are in so we can see what succeeded and what failed.

If there's a specific ballot measure you want to see mentioned, please let me know below in the comments.