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Submission + - "My Pillow Guy" must pay $5m to engineer who answered election data challenge (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Tablizer
Tablizer writes: Election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell was ordered to pay $5 million to the electrical engineer and inventor who won the "Prove Mike Wrong" contest in which Lindell offered the prize to anyone who could prove that his data had nothing to do with the 2020 presidential election.

Lindell, the My Pillow CEO who helped finance Donald Trump's baseless election protests, was ordered to pay Robert Zeidman $5 million within 30 days in a ruling issued yesterday by the American Arbitration Association Commercial Arbitration Tribunal.

"Based on the foregoing analysis, Mr. Zeidman performed under the contract," a three-member arbitration panel wrote. The panel found that Zeidman proved the files provided by Lindell to contest participants did not contain actual data from the election.

Zeidman proved that Lindell's data "unequivocally did not reflect November 2020 election data. Failure to pay Mr. Zeidman the $5 million prized was a breach of the contract, entitling him to recover," the panel said...

Lindell claimed he possessed a great deal of data captured from the Internet during voting in the November 2020 US election, and that his data showed China interfered with the November 2020 election in several states.

Submission + - Scientists Finally Solved the Mystery of How the Mayan Calendar Works (popularmechanics.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Mayan calendar’s 819-day cycle has confounded scholars for decades, but new research shows how it matches up to planetary cycles over a 45-year span. That’s a much broader view of the tricky calendar than anyone previously tried to take. In a study published in the journal Ancient Mesoamerica, two Tulane University scholars highlighted how researchers never could quite explain the 819-day count calendar until they broadened their view.

“Although prior research has sought to show planetary connections for the 819-day count, its four-part, color-directional scheme is too short to fit well with the synodic periods of visible planets,” the study authors write. “By increasing the calendar length to 20 periods of 819-days a pattern emerges in which the synodic periods of all the visible planets commensurate with station points in the larger 819-day calendar.” That means the Mayans took a 45-year view of planetary alignment and coded it into a calendar that has left modern scholars scratching their heads in wonder.

Mercury was always the starting point for the tricky timeline because its synodic period—117 days—matches nicely into 819. From there, though, we need to start extrapolating out the 819 number, and if you chart 20 cycles of 819, you can fit every key planet into the mix. And Mars may be the kicker for the overall length. With a 780-day synodic period, 21 periods match exactly to 16,380, or 20 cycles of 819. Venus needs seven periods to match five 819-day counts, Saturn has 13 periods to fit with six 819-day counts, and Jupiter 39 periods to hit 19 819-counts.

Comment Re:Seems reasonable to me (Score 4, Informative) 188

Don't paint me as an Excel fanboy (far from it) but ...

Excel is everywhere and is immediately accessible. The cell-grid structure is more intuitive than pretty much any other presentation layer I have encountered. My kids back in elementary school figured it out with just a bit of minor initial prompting; they already knew all of the arithmetic structures.

Plus, it is THE universal program. It can do anything. Besides the usual financial planning stuff, I have seen people with no computing or programming background build:

- a classroom lesson planner

- an automated employee shift work planner/scheduler

- a word processor (yup if you have a screwdriver and a file, you also have a chisel)

- geological mining operation simulators (strip mine slope edge stability)

- an employee behavioral risk estimator (problem gambler spotter... use of corporate credit cards)

Basically anything that can be laid out on paper as a table with either or both text components and arithmetic calculations including calendar dates can be put into Excel. If you can imagine it on paper, transferring it to Excel is usually straightforward and requires little specialized expertise.

Excel gives you the ability to understand and manipulate data without having to first digest a programming language. If you already have the mathematical model, you don't have to translate it into program functions and structure.

Submission + - iPhone Maker Plans $700 Million India Plant In Shift From China (bloomberg.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Apple partner Foxconn Technology Group plans to invest about $700 million on a new plant in India to ramp up local production, people familiar with the matter said, underscoring an accelerating shift of manufacturing away from China as Washington-Beijing tensions grow. The Taiwanese company, also known for its flagship unit Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., plans to build the plant to make iPhone parts on a 300-acre site close to the airport in Bengaluru, the capital of the southern Indian state of Karnataka [...]. The factory may also assemble Apple’s handsets [...], and Foxconn may also use the site to produce some parts for its nascent electric vehicle business.

The investment is one of Foxconn’s biggest single outlays to date in India and underscores how China’s at risk of losing its status as the world’s largest producer of consumer electronics. Apple and other US brands are leaning on their Chinese-based suppliers to explore alternative locations such as India and Vietnam. It’s a rethink of the global supply chain that’s accelerated during the pandemic and the war in Ukraine and could reshape the way global electronics are made. The new production site in India is expected to create about 100,000 jobs, the people said. The company’s sprawling iPhone assembly complex in the Chinese city of Zhengzhou employs some 200,000 at the moment, although that number surges during peak production season.

Submission + - Bill would require bloggers who write about government to register with state (wfla.com)

Submitted by mmiscool
mmiscool writes: Florida state senator Jason Brodeur introduced bill 1316, An act relating to information dissemination in the Florida state legislator. The following except from the bill describes bloggers being required to register if they produce content about the executive or legislative branches of the Florida government and requires detailed accounting of ad revenue to the state and fines bloggers $25 a day if they fail to provide timely reports.

Requiring bloggers to register with the Office of Legislative Services or the Commission on Ethics, as applicable, within a specified timeframe; requiring such bloggers to file monthly reports with the appropriate office by a certain date; providing an exception; specifying reporting requirements; authorizing a magistrate to enter a final order determining the reasonableness of circumstances for an untimely filing or a fine amount; requiring that the Legislature and the Commission on Ethics adopt a specified rule;

It would seem that this would be an extreme attack on free speech rights and could provide a template for other states who want to the the power of government to silence opposing voices. While the bill likely would not withstand constitutional scrutiny in the courts it is a stark reminder that the freedom of speech is not only under attack by the large tech giants but by the government it self.

Comment Re:Antiquated language? (Score 1) 86

by dogsbreath (#63275947) Attached to: FAA Needs Until 2030 To Fix Safety System That Failed Last Month

Yeah, I wouldn't say fixing NOTAMs isn't possible just that it has a lot of hidden complexities and there is a need to understand risks. I think NOTAMs should be completely replaced rather than "fixed".

I used to service airport systems (comms, nav aids, radar, hf/vhf tx/rx, etc) and spent many an hour in the 2nd seat of a Twin Otter flying out to service remote NDBs. Ahhhh, the good old days before satellites!

Comment Re:Antiquated language? (Score 1) 86

by dogsbreath (#63273409) Attached to: FAA Needs Until 2030 To Fix Safety System That Failed Last Month

All pilots and ground controls speak English. This is the ONLY language used in air traffic communication.

This is just flat out wrong. ATC is almost always in the local native language with English if requested. Pilots and controllers working internationally are supposed to be fluent to a level specified by ICAO. That level is not the same as fluent English. It is specifically a workplace related communication proficiency.

ICAO level 4 language proficiency

From experience, your mileage may vary even when people have qualified at level 4. Example: often foreign pilots will understand a word such as "negative" but fail to comprehend a common word like "not".

Comment Re:Antiquated language? (Score 1) 86

by dogsbreath (#63273361) Attached to: FAA Needs Until 2030 To Fix Safety System That Failed Last Month

Of course it is in English, sort of. NOTAM abbreviations, technical words, order of items, etc, are like a language and are not readable unless you know what they are. If you have worked in an international air traffic centre you know there is a difference between speaking and understanding air traffic control English and being fluent in English. Lots of non English speaking pilots can follow directions and provide flight information but if you go off script they are lost.

Pilots are immersed in the terms and abbreviations. You have to be careful if you are going to change anything at all.

Intro to decoding NOTAMs

Comment Re:Antiquated language? (Score 1) 86

by dogsbreath (#63272587) Attached to: FAA Needs Until 2030 To Fix Safety System That Failed Last Month

Yeah, that statement is a bit odd. The language is specific and has to be understood whether or not the pilot speaks the native language of the airport or station generating the NOTAM. You can't just go about altering the language and structure of NOTAMs without getting ICAO, IFATSEA, IATA, etc on board with it.

Comment Re:Do not want (Score 4, Interesting) 73

My iPad Pro is the best ebook and pdf reader. It works wonderfully well at that task.

Web browsing on it sucks. Safari is full of bugs and guess what? The same bugs are present in Chrome and Firefox for iPad OS. Also no add ons or functional extensions to make the whole thing more useful. It is like browsing in the '90s.

Please EU, force Apple to open up.

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