ReHacked vol. 328: Orwell Diaries, NTSB Report on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 and more
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Orwell Diaries 1938-1942 #history #rabbithole
George Orwell's domestic and political diary entries, posted 70 years to the day after they were written
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Investors snap up growing share of US homes as traditional buyers struggle to afford one - ABC News #economy #society
Real estate investors are snapping up a bigger share of U.S. homes on the market as rising prices and stubbornly high borrowing costs freeze out many other would-be homebuyers.
Nearly 27% of all homes sold in the first three months of the year were bought by investors -- the highest share in at least five years, according to a report by real estate data provider BatchData.
Between 2020 and 2023, the share of homes bought by investors averaged 18.5%.
In-Flight Separation of Left Mid Exit Door Plug, Alaska Airlines Flight 1282, Boeing 737-9, N704AL #aviation #safety
We determined that the probable cause of this accident was the in-flight separation of the left MED plug due to Boeing’s failure to provide adequate training, guidance, and oversight necessary to ensure that manufacturing personnel could consistently and correctly comply with its parts removal process, which was intended to document and ensure that the securing bolts and hardware that were removed to facilitate rework during the manufacturing process were properly reinstalled. Contributing to the accident was the FAA’s ineffective compliance enforcement surveillance and audit planning activities, which failed to adequately identify and ensure that Boeing addressed the repetitive and systemic nonconformance issues associated with its parts removal process.
Underwater turbine spinning for 6 years off Scotland's coast is a breakthrough for tidal energy | AP News #engineering
Submerged in about 40 meters (44 yards) of water off Scotland’s coast, a turbine has been spinning for more than six years to harness the power of ocean tides for electricity — a durability mark that demonstrates the technology’s commercial viability.
Keeping a large, or grid-scale, turbine in place in the harsh sea environment that long is a record that helps pave the way for bigger tidal energy farms and makes it far more appealing to investors, according to the trade association Ocean Energy Europe. Tidal energy projects would be prohibitively expensive if the turbines had to be taken out of the water for maintenance every couple of years.
Executed Chinese prisoners likely used in UK exhibition - The Art Newspaper #world
An exhibition of preserved human corpses in Birmingham may have included political prisoners executed in China, according to British parliamentarians.
Speaking in the House of Lords on 12 January, Lord Alton of Liverpool said that the cadavers used in an international touring show called Real Bodies, which was seen at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham in 2018, “were probably people who had been executed” in China.
A German court has ruled that Meta must pay €5,000 ($5,900) to a German Facebook user who sued the platform for embedding tracking technology in third-party websites — a ruling that could open the door to large fines down the road over data privacy violations relating to pixels and similar tools.
The Regional Court of Leipzig in Germany ruled Friday that Meta tracking pixels and software development kits embedded in countless websites and apps collect users’ data without their consent and violate the continent’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
SUSE launches new European digital sovereignty support service to meet surging demand | ZDNET #software
Wary of the US government and tech companies, the European Union (EU) has seen a surge in support for open source and Linux. In the last few months, local EU governments, including the city of Lyon in France, the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, and Denmark, have begun their move to Linux and open-source software from Microsoft Windows and Office. Now, Luxembourg-based European open-source powerhouse SUSE is offering extensive support to businesses and governments that want to keep their IT infrastructure inside the European Union.
How do airplane toilets work? | Popular Science #engineering
The laws of physics—and specifically the ideal gas law—dictate that the contents of a region with relatively high pressure will tend to flow into a region with relatively low pressure. Flushing the toilet on an airplane opens a valve between the pressurised cabin and a tank that remains at atmospheric pressure. That process creates exactly this sort of pressure differential.
In other words, “when you flush the toilet, you’re basically opening a valve to the outside, and the pressure differential sucks away whatever’s in the bowl,” Crossley says.
The beauty of the system is that it doesn’t require vacuum pumps or other complications to create the pressure differential. It simply makes use of the existing difference in pressure between the aircraft’s interior and exterior at altitude. Of course, this requires that there is a pressure difference.
Neanderthals operated prehistoric “fat factory” 125,000 years ago on German lakeshore | Archaeology News Online Magazine #nature #history
Neanderthals in central Germany 125,000 years ago employed an advanced method of food preparation, according to a recent study: systematically stripping fat from the bones of large animals using water and heat. The practice, uncovered at the Neumark-Nord 2 archaeological site, shows that Neanderthals had a much more advanced conception of nutrition, planning, and resource management than previously believed.
ChatGPT users' privacy threatened by mass surveillance #privacy
Millions of Americans share private details with ChatGPT. Some ask medical questions or share painful relationship problems. Others even use ChatGPT as a makeshift therapist, sharing their deepest mental health struggles.
Users trust ChatGPT with these confessions because OpenAI promised them that the company would permanently delete their data upon request.
But last week, in a Manhattan courtroom, a federal judge ruled that OpenAI must preserve nearly every exchange its users have ever had with ChatGPT — even conversations the users had deleted.
On Dyson, techno-centric design and social consumption #design
Design follows technology
Technology, innovation and advancements can solve problems that make our lives easier and more enjoyable. When working with new technology, designers act as interpreters between the tech and their users – ensuring that users can understand how to use the technology, that it fits their needs, etc.
Dyson tends to adopt an extreme attitude to technology compared to other consumer brands: the technology comes first. That approach worked well for the first wave of innovation for Dyson, giving them a product functionally superior to their competitors. But they then decided to codify that approach into their brand DNA.
The celebration of progress and technology have featured in a number of design movements like Futurism and High-Tech. Showy, impressive and novel, “technology-first” or "tech-push" design may be influential but is cursed to never get the balance right between celebrating technology and user needs. Technology is only useful to the extent that it is, well, useful.
Not smart vs. stupid | Seth's Blog #life
Not smart is a passive act, remedied with learning, experience and thought.
Stupid is active, the work of someone who should have or could have known better and decided to do something selfish, impulsive or dangerous anyway.
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