I have been having 0 access to the archive.today style tools. Anyone else having trouble?

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/22/amazon-employees-are-quitting-after-they-were-told-to-relocate-states.html

Original Link: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/08/28/elon-musks-shadow-rule

Will post highlights in comment but whole article's worth reading.

name a more cursed cars x carnism combo

This story was co-published with Popular Science.

Electric vehicles are becoming more and more commonplace on the nation’s roadways.

The federal government wants nearly two-thirds of all cars in the United States to be EVs within the next decade. All the while, EVs are breaking sales records, and manufacturers are building charging stations and production plants to incentivize a shift away from fossil fuels in the transportation sector.

With EVs taking the streets by storm, an unlikely industry now wants a piece of the pie.

Trade associations, fuel producers, and bipartisan lawmakers are pushing for biogas, fuel made from animal and food waste, to start receiving federal credits meant for powering electric vehicles.

The push for biogas-powered EVs would be a boon for the energy sector, according to biogas industry leaders. Environmental groups and researchers, however, say the fuel has yet to prove itself as a truly clean energy source. Biogas created from agriculture has been linked to an increase in waterway pollution and public health concerns that have disproportionately exposed low-income communities and communities of color to toxic byproducts of animal waste.

With the nation needing more ways to power fleets of Teslas and Chevy Bolts, the use of livestock manure to power EVs is still in limbo.

For biogas, there are, broadly speaking, three sources of waste from which to produce fuel: human waste, animal waste, and food waste. The source of this fuel input can be found at wastewater treatment plants, farms, and landfills.

At these locations, organic waste is deprived of oxygen, and a natural process known as anaerobic digestion occurs. Bacteria consume the waste products and eventually release methane, the main ingredient of natural gas. The gas is then captured, piped to a utility, turned into electricity, and distributed to customers.

Fuel created from animal waste isn’t a new concept. Farms around the country have been cashing in on biogas for decades, with a boom in production facilities known as anaerobic digesters expected after funding for their construction made it into the Inflation Reduction Act.

At the end of June, the Environmental Protection Agency finalized its Renewable Fuel Standard, or RFS, which outlines how much renewable fuels — products like corn-based ethanol, manure-based biogas, and wood pellets — are used to cut greenhouse gas emissions, as well as reduce the use of petroleum-based transportation fuel, heating oil, or jet fuel.

Under this program, petroleum-based fuels must blend renewable fuels into their supply. For example, each time the RFS is updated, a new goal for how much corn-based ethanol is mixed into the nation’s fuel supply is set. This prediction is based on gas and renewable-fuel-industry market projections.

These gas companies and refineries purchase credits from renewable-fuel makers to comply with the mandated amount of renewable fuel that needs to be mixed into their supply.

A currency system tracks which renewable fuels are being produced and where they end up under the RFS. This system uses credits known as RINs, or Renewable Identification Numbers. According to the EPA, a single RIN is the energy equivalent of one gallon of ethanol, and the prices of the credits will fluctuate over time, just as gas prices do.

Oil companies and refineries purchase credits from renewable-fuel makers to comply with the mandated amount of renewable fuel that needs to be mixed into their supply. The unique RIN credit proves that an oil seller has purchased, blended, and sold renewable fuel.

Currently, the biogas industry can only use its RIN credits when the fuel source is blended with ethanol or a particular type of diesel fuel. Outside of the federal program, biogas producers have been cashing in on low-carbon fuel programs in both California and Oregon.

With the boom in demand for renewable electricity, biogas producers want more opportunities to sell their waste-based fuels. EVs might get them there.

During recent RFS negotiations, the biogas industry urged the EPA to create a pathway for a new type of credit known as eRINs, or electric RINs. This pathway would allow the biogas and biomass industry to power the nation’s EVs directly. While the industry applauded the recent expansion of mandatory volumes of renewable fuels, the EPA did not decide on finalizing eRIN credits.

Patrick Serfass is the executive director of the American Biogas Council. He said the EPA could approve projects that would support eRINs for years, but has yet to approve the pathway for biogas-fuel producers.

“It doesn’t matter which administration,” Serfass said. “The Obama administration didn’t do it. The Trump administration didn’t do it. The Biden administration so far hasn’t done it. EPA, do your job.”

Late last year, the EPA initially included approval of eRINs in the RFS proposal. Republican members of Congress who sit on the Energy & Commerce Committee sent a letter to the EPA, saying that the RFS is not meant to be a tool to electrify transportation.

“Our goal is to ensure that all Americans have access to affordable, available, reliable, and secure energy,” the committee members wrote. “The final design of the eRINs program under the RFS inserts uncertainty into the transportation fuels market.”

The RFS has traditionally supported liquid fuels that the EPA considers renewable, the main of which is ethanol. Stakeholders in ethanol production see the inclusion of eRINs as an overstep.

In May, Chuck Grassley, a Republican senator from Iowa, introduced legislation that would outlaw EVs from getting credits from the renewable-fuels program. Grassley has been a longtime supporter of the ethanol industry; Iowa alone makes up nearly a third of the nation’s ethanol production, according to the economic growth organization Iowa Area Development Group.

Serfass said biogas is a way to offset the nation’s waste and make small and midsize farms economically sustainable, as well as local governments operating waste treatment plants and landfills. When it comes to animal waste, he said the eRIN program would allow farmers to make money off their waste by selling captured biogas to the grid to power EVs.

“There’s a lot of folks that don’t like large farms, and the reason that large farms exist is that as a society, we’re not always willing to pay $6 to $9 for a gallon of milk,” Serfass said. “You have farm consolidation so that farmers can just make a living.”

Initially, digesters were thought of as a climate solution and an economic boon for farmers, but in recent years, farms have stopped digester operations because of the hefty price tag to run them and their modest revenue. Biogas digesters are still operated by large operations, often with the help of fossil fuel companies, such as BP.

In addition to farms, Serfass said biogas production from food waste and municipal wastewater treatment plants would also be able to cash in on the eRIN program.

Dodge City, Kansas, a city of 30,000 in the western part of the state, is an example of a local government using biogas as a source of revenue. In 2018, the city began capturing methane from its sewage treatment and has since been able to generate an estimated $3 million a year by selling the fuel to the transportation sector.

Serfass said the city would be able to sell the fuel to power the nation’s EV charging grid if the eRIN program was approved.

The EPA’s decision-making will direct the next three years of renewable-fuel production in the country. The program is often a battleground for different industry groups, from biogas producers to ethanol refineries, as they fight over their fuel’s market share.

Of note, the biomass industry, which creates fuel from wood pellets, forestry waste, and other detritus of the nation’s lumber supply and forests, also wants to be approved for future eRIN opportunities.

This fuel source has a questionable track record of being a climate solution: The industry has been linked to deforestation in the American South, and has falsely claimed they don’t use whole trees to produce electricity, according to a industry whistleblower.

The EPA did not answer questions from Grist as to why eRINs were not approved in its recent announcement.

“The EPA will continue to work on potential paths forward for the eRIN program, while further reviewing the comments received on the proposal and seeking additional input from stakeholders to inform potential next steps on the eRIN program,” the agency wrote in a statement.

Ben Lilliston is the director of rural strategies and climate change at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. He said he supported the EPA’s decision to not approve biogas-created electricity for EVs.

“I think the jury is still out around biogas from large-scale animal operations about how effective they are,” Lilliston said.

He wants more independent studies to determine what a growing biogas sector under the eRIN program would mean for the rural areas and communities of color that surround these facilities.

Predominantly Black and low-income communities in southeastern North Carolina have been exposed to decades of polluted waters and increased respiratory and heart disease rates related to the state’s hog industry, which has recently cashed in on the biogas sector.

In Delaware, residents of the largely rural Delmarva peninsula have become accustomed to the stench of the region’s massive poultry farms. These operations now want to cash in on their waste with the implementation of more biogas systems in a community where many residents are Black or immigrants from Haiti and Latin America who speak limited English, according to the Guardian.

“I think that our concern, and many others’, is that this is actually going to increase emissions and waste and pollution,” Lilliston said.

Aaron Smith, a professor of agricultural economics at the University of California, Davis, said electricity produced from biogas could be a red herring when it comes to cheap, clean energy.

“There’s often a tendency to say, ‘We have this pollutant like methane gas that escapes from a landfill or a dairy manure lagoon, and if we can capture that and stop it from escaping into the atmosphere, that’s a win for the climate,'” Smith said. “But once we’ve captured it, should we do something useful with it? And the answer is maybe, but sometimes it’s more expensive to do something useful with it than it would be to go and generate that energy from a different source.”

Smith’s past research has found that the revenue procured by digesters has not been equal to the amount of methane captured by these systems. In a blog post earlier this year, Smith wrote that taxpayers and consumers are overpaying for the price of methane reduction. He found that the gasoline producers have essentially subsidized digester operations by way of the state’s low-carbon transportation standards. To pay for this, the gasoline industry offloads its increased costs by raising the price of gas for consumers.

“I think we do need to be wary about over-incentivizing these very expensive sources of electricity generation under the guise of climate games,” Smith told Grist.

Subscription users of X, formerly Twitter, will need to send a selfie and copy of ID to an Israeli verification company.

X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, will now require X Blue users to submit a selfie alongside a photo of a government-issued ID, according to a report by PC Magazine.

The user’s personal information required by the verification process will be handled by Israeli company AU10TIX software which will store the information for up to 30 days.

said the data collected from a user’s profile will be used “for the purpose of safety and security, including preventing impersonation”.

Many X users were unhappy with the choice of the company to store user data, pointing out its employees’ links to Israeli intelligence. Others expressed their discomfort with giving a company their data when so many data breaches have been reported in the past.

AU10TIX helped to create the identity verification systems for airports and border controls in the 1980s and 90s before expanding, with the growth of the internet, into what it describes as “digital spaces” in 2002. It now boasts several high-profile clients such as Uber, PayPal and Google.

Elon Musk, who acquired Twitter in October 2022, appeared to have completed ID verification on August 1, suggesting that the ID verification system is already operational and could therefore appear publicly soon.

Verification was then extended to any account with a verified phone number and an active subscription to an eligible Twitter Blue plan.

On April 1, Twitter announced it would begin removing its legacy verification programme and removing legacy verified checkmarks.

These changes led to fears that impersonation would be easier on the platform and hand false credibility to accounts that spread misinformation.

In response, the platform, introduced gold and grey checkmarks, used by verified organisations and government-affiliated accounts, respectively.

In July 2023, Musk announced that Twitter would be rebranded as X.

The latest X verification process, which requires a selfie and a government-issued ID, is part of a drive to add an additional layer of security against impersonation and fraud.

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/1927197

Hey everyone, check the Linguist

• you can translate texts offline (with sent no one single byte to a Google and stay private)
• a lot of features and flexible configuration
• dictionary + history for learn languages
• it is are hackable - you can write code to use your own translation service

Replace the word stop with keep whenever applicable

The future is here, robots are out here parking our cars, cleaning our floors, and now delivery food and groceries to communities across America. But if we’re to succeed in this new robot-run world, we need to learn to live with our autonomous friends, and not keep robbing the little delivery robots.

Because that’s what’s happening in some communities that have started rolling out delivery robots to carry out grocery runs and drop off takeout orders. According to Autoweek, businesses in Los Angeles and Greenville, NC, have reported thefts from their delivery bots.

The LA delivery robots operate across West Hollywood and were built by a company called Serve Robotics. So far, operators in the area have reported the theft of goods from these robots, such as food. As Autoweek reports:

Early on delivery robot developers have tried to allay commercial customers’ concerns over the potential for theft from robots, showcasing locked compartments and plenty of surveillance tech on the robots themselves, in addition to loud sirens. After a honeymoon period of sorts early on in the pandemic where robots were generally left alone, this is no longer the case, and sirens aren’t stopping acts of theft and vandalism in all cases.

The robberies aren’t limited to California, and reports have also emerged of vandalism affecting GrubHub robots operating on the East Carolina University campus in Greenville, NC. There, robots have been found flipped upside down and have even been discovered in a creek.

In order to protect the bots, they are equipped with all manner of surveillance tech. But actually prosecuting people for stealing from these machines is proving much trickier than it is for people who shoplift from a physical store.

Despite the crimes falling under the same legislation for theft and vandalism, Autoweek reports that the low priority for police forces investigating such incidents means prosecution for these crimes remains unlikely.

Still, while the spate of robberies appears to be spreading, robot operators across the country say their little worker bots are still managing to hit a 99.9% delivery completion rate.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/08/microsoft-ai-suggests-food-bank-as-a-cannot-miss-tourist-spot-in-canada/

The organization has been collecting, purchasing, producing, and delivering food to needy people and families in the Ottawa area since 1984. We observe how hunger impacts men, women, and children on a daily basis, and how it may be a barrier to achievement. People who come to us have jobs and families to support, as well as expenses to pay. Life is already difficult enough. Consider going into it on an empty stomach.

China is the world’s biggest manufacturer of renewable energy equipment and is making plans for how to dispose of it once it stops working

China, the world’s biggest renewable equipment manufacturer, will set up a recycling system for ageing wind turbines and solar panels as it tries to tackle the growing volumes of waste generated by the industry, the state planner said.

China has ramped up its wind and solar manufacturing capabilities in a bid to decarbonise its economy and ease its dependence on coal, and it is now on track to meet its goal to bring total wind and solar capacity to 1,200 gigawatts (GW) by 2030, up from 758 GW at the end of last year.

But as older projects are replaced and decommissioned, waste volumes are set to soar, with large amounts of capacity already approaching retirement age, posing big environmental risks.

To cope with the challenge, China will draw up new industrial standards and rules detailing the proper ways to decommission, dismantle and recycle wind and solar facilities, the National Development and Reform Commission, said on Wednesday.

The state planning agency said that China would have a “basically mature” full-process recycling system for wind turbines and solar panels by the end of the decade.

Photovoltaic (PV) panels have a lifespan of around 25 years, and many of China’s projects are already showing significant signs of wear and tear, China’s official Science and Technology Daily newspaper said in June.

The paper cited experts as saying that China would need to recycle 1.5 million metric tons of PV modules by 2030, rising to around 20 million tons in 2050.

The problem of waste from the renewable energy sector has become a growing global concern. Total waste from solar projects alone could reach 212 million tons a year by 2050, according to one scenario drawn up by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) last year.

I need me some VST plugins to fuck around with but I'm not spending ~$100 per plugin. I can find some shitty torrent trackers on search engines but they tend to not have what I want and/or are filled with malware.

Holy shit. It's so much worse than I originally thought, especially the allegations of employee abuse and sexual harassment.

EDIT: Here's a secret recording of the company meeting that happened after Madison left due to harassment: https://old.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/15t1mzn/mandatory_meeting_the_after_madisons_departure/ One of the top guys makes a sex joke... At a work meeting on sexual harassment.

It reached 476% of its funding goal! I was worried it wouldn't make it to completion for a bit. really excited for this.

it calls into question LMG's ethics and business practices. what they did to the waterblock company of two people is obscene. they reviewed the only viable prototype the company had on incompatible hardware, trashed the product in the review, then sold the product act auction to a potential competitor. they effectively destroyed the company and in the WAN show said that they couldn't retest the product properly because it would have cost $500 - not of Linus's time, but of his employees. it's such a callous way to behave that I literally cannot fathom it.

the sheer scope of the data errors from rushed video production are the icing on the cake.

also anyone else remember the company paying out settlements to former female employees for what was suspected to be sexual harassment, forcing them to sign NDAs?

capitalist enshittification continues on and on.

Spoiler

1938

Zenith Radio Nurse

The Radio Nurse was the first electronic baby monitor. Manufactured by the Zenith Radio Corporation, it went on sale in 1938. The product was developed by Zenith executive Eugene F. McDonald, and designed by Japanese-American sculptor and product designer Isamu Noguchi.

Although the product was manufactured for only a few years, it has been acclaimed for its design. It is still in demand as a collectible and is in many museum collections.

Noguchi also designed the Noguchi table.

Wikipedia