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Submission + - Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger Speaks Out (city-journal.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Wikipedia co-founder discusses Katherine Maher and the corruption of the Internet.

Larry Sanger remembers the promise of the web. He co-founded Wikipedia in 2001, with the hope that it could sustain a “free and open” Internet—a place where information, dissent, and creativity could thrive.

At Wikipedia, he proposed a system of rules that encouraged users to “avoid bias” and maintain a “neutral point of view.”

That Internet is gone.

Submission + - "David Bray is going on unhinged racist rants on LinkedIn" (campusreform.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: “David Bray is going on unhinged racist rants on LinkedIn. Clearly suffering from mental illness and too unstable to be teaching classes.”

  Bray's outspoken LinkedIn posts garnered the attention of conservatives who agreed with him, as well as of campus progressives who saw his sentiments as problematic.

  One former administrator told Campus Reform that he believes that 'the university administration is persecuting Dr. Bray and altering its standard procedures.'

Submission + - IMF sounds alarm on ballooning US national debt: 'Something will have to give

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes:

Under current policies, public debt in the U.S. is projected to nearly double by 2053. The IMF identified “large fiscal slippages” in the U.S. in 2023, with government spending surpassing revenue by 8.8% of GDP – a 4.1% increase from the previous year, despite strong economic growth.

If this trend continues, the Congressional Budget Office anticipates the national debt will grow to an astonishing $54 trillion in the next decade. Higher interest rates are also compounding the pain of higher debt.

Should that debt materialize, it could risk America’s economic standing in the world.

The IMF is talking down to Washington like we’re a Third World country because that’s the direction Washington is taking us.

Interest payments alone on the current debt is $1.6T/year.

Submission + - FBI says Chinese hackers preparing to attack US infrastructure (reuters.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Chinese government-linked hackers have burrowed into U.S. critical infrastructure and are waiting "for just the right moment to deal a devastating blow," FBI Director Christopher Wray said on Thursday.

An ongoing Chinese hacking campaign known as Volt Typhoon has successfully gained access to numerous American companies in telecommunications, energy, water and other critical sectors, with 23 pipeline operators targeted, Wray said in a speech at
Vanderbilt University.

China is developing the "ability to physically wreak havoc on our critical infrastructure at a time of its choosing," Wray said at the 2024 Vanderbilt Summit on Modern Conflict and Emerging Threats. "Its plan is to land low blows against civilian infrastructure to try to induce panic."

Wray said it was difficult to determine the intent of this cyber pre-positioning which was aligned with China's broader intent to deter the U.S. from defending Taiwan.

China claims democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory and has never renounced the use of force to bring the island under its control. Taiwan strongly objects to China's sovereignty claims and says only the island's people can decide their future.

Submission + - Top Astronomers Confront Possibility They Were Very Wrong About The Universe (futurism.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: “We have great data, but the theoretical basis is past its sell-by date,” he added. “More and more people are saying the same thing and these are respected astronomers.”

A number of researchers have found evidence that the universe may be expanding more quickly in some areas compared to others, raising the tantalizing possibility that megastructures could be influencing the universe’s growth in significant ways.

Sarkar and his colleagues, for instance, are suggesting that the universe is “lopsided” after studying over a million quasars, which are the active nuclei of galaxies where gas and dust are being gobbled up by a supermassive black hole.

The team found that one hemisphere actually hosted slightly more of these quasars, suggesting one area of the night sky was more massive than the other, undermining our conception of dark energy, a hypothetical form of energy used to explain why the universe is expanding at an accelerated rate.

“It would mean that two-thirds of the universe has just disappeared,” Sarkar told The Guardian.

Other researchers have suggested that the cosmological constant, which has been used for decades as a way to denote the rate of the universe’s expansion, actually varies across space, which would contradict the standard model of physics.

Submission + - Tesla lays off 'more than 10%' of its global workforce (electrek.co)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: “We don’t know which specific teams will be most or least affected by Tesla’s layoffs, but two well-known Tesla executives are now missing the “Tesla-affiliated” badge on twitter – Drew Baglino and Rohan Patel.”

Submission + - Trillions of tons of carbon locked in soil left out of environmental models (theconversation.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Trillions of tonnes of carbon locked in soil has been left out of environmental models – and it’s on the move

We all know about the carbon in Earth’s atmosphere, and probably about the carbon contained in plants and the bodies of animals. But a substantial fraction of the carbon in the planet’s land-based ecosystems is held in something so obvious we might overlook it: soil.

Even if we do think about carbon in soil, we are usually thinking of carbon in organic matter in the soil, such as plant litter, bacteria or animal waste. However, the inorganic, mineral component of soil also contains carbon.

In a new study just published in Science, we show there is much more soil inorganic carbon than anybody realised – and that it may be a surprisingly big player in Earth’s carbon cycle.

Submission + - California Burger King franchisee to expedite self-serve kiosks rollout (nypost.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes:

A businessman who owns 140 Burger King franchises in California will slash workers’ hours and expedite the rollout of self-service kiosks to cut down on labor costs in response to the state’s new $20 minimum wage.

Harshraj Ghai, who owns 180 fast-food restaurants throughout the Golden State, including Burger King, Taco Bell and Popeyes, told Business Insider last week: “We can’t move fast enough on this [rollout].”

“We have kiosks in probably about 25% of our restaurants today,” he said. “However, the other 75% are going to have kiosks in the next probably 30 to 60 days.”

“We are installing kiosks in every single restaurant,” Ghai said.

Several fast food chains have hiked menu prices since the new law increasing pay for fast-food workers went into effect April 1.

Ghai, who raised menu prices between 8% and 10% in the last year, said he plans to cut down on worker hours, eliminate overtime, pause plans to expand his restaurant empire and add more digital kiosks.

Skynet and the board of the Tyrell Corporation smile at the "unexpectedly" incredible opportunities in automation that Gavin Newsom is intent on providing.

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