Alpha Schools, opening this fall in the former GEMS Academy in Lakeshore East, says its AI-driven model can help students learn core academics in just two hours a day, freeing up time for workshops, unique projects and learning various life skills.

Well that is a little hard to believe. I have a feeling that these kids will be woefully unprepared for college…

The school will serve 100 students in kindergarten through eighth grade, with plans to expand in the future

Oh my. I’m sorry, these kids will be woefully unprepared for high school. They will crash and burn when they get dumped into a totally different learning environment with kids whose parents can’t afford $55,00 per year for elementary school tuition.

Don’t count on it. These things don’t just zip along in their orbits. LEO is crowded. They have to maneuver to avoid collisions… a lot.

Over the past six months, Starlink satellites have been increasingly performing collision avoidance maneuvers. According to a report filed by SpaceX with the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC), SpaceX broadband satellites were forced to avoid more than 25 thousand times from December 1, 2022 to May 31, 2023. And since their launch in 2019, the total number of maneuvers has reached 50 thousand.

If Starlink or any other mega-constellation company loses control of their satellites for any reason, there could be collisions. A recent study (Note: PDF) suggests that a sufficiently powerful CME could cause a runaway Kessler Syndrome in as little as 2.8 days.

I’ve been twitchy about Lenova since they got caught selling computers with a rootkit that reinstalled crap-ware that users had uninstalled. A user would uninstall useless software from their computer, and when they rebooted, the rootkit would kick in and reinstall the bloatware.

The “rootkit"-style covert installer, dubbed the Lenovo Service Engine (LSE), works by installing an additional program that updates drivers, firmware, and other pre-installed apps. The engine also “sends non-personally identifiable system data to Lenovo servers,” according to the company. The engine, which resides in the computer’s BIOS, replaces a core Windows system file with its own, allowing files to be downloaded once the device is connected to the internet.

But that service engine also put users at risk.

In a July 31 security bulletin, the company warned the engine could be exploited by hackers to install malware. The company issued a security update that removed the engine’s functionality, but users must install the patch manually.

They had previously been caught selling computers with adware installed on them.

Earlier this year, the computer maker was forced to admit it had installed Superfish adware over a three-month period on new machines sold through retail channels. The adware had the capability to intercept and hijack internet traffic flowing over secure connections, including online stores, banks, among others.

Users were told they should “not use their laptop for any kind of secure transactions until they are able to confirm [the adware] has been removed,” security researcher Marc Rogers told ZDNet at the time.

It was thought as many as 16 million consumers and bring-your-own-device users were affected by the preinstalled adware.

Yep. This has only been an issue for nearly a decade.

The Strava Heat Map and the End of Secrets

The revelations began unspooling at a rapid pace after Nathan Ruser, a student studying international security at the Australian National University, began posting his findings via Twitter on Saturday afternoon. In a series of images, Ruser pointed out Strava user activities potentially related to US military forward operating bases in Afghanistan, Turkish military patrols in Syria, and a possible guard patrol in the Russian operating area of Syria.

Other researchers soon followed up with a dizzying array of international examples, based on cross-referencing Strava user activity with Google Maps and prior news reporting: a French military base in Niger, an Italian military base in Djibouti, and even CIA “black” sites. Several experts observed that the Strava heatmap seemed best at revealing the presence of mostly Western military and civilian operations in developing countries.

Be careful doing that. It takes a fair bit of water, but Water Intoxication is a real thing. It can make you quite ill and even be fatal.

Drinking too much water dilutes your blood and decreases the electrolytes in your body, especially sodium (hyponatremia). As a result, water moves into your body’s cells and causes them to swell. When you get too much water in your brain cells, it increases pressure on your brain and affects how it works. This leads to changes in your awareness, movement and behavior (altered mental status). Water intoxication is also potentially fatal.

…

The amount of water that causes overhydration varies. It’s important to understand how your body uses water to know how much is too much for you. Your body removes excess water through your pee. In a day, this equals about 32 to 64 ounces (about 1 to 2 liters). In some people, water intoxication symptoms can develop after drinking about a gallon (3 to 4 liters) of water over an hour or two.

I read it as a joke, and a good one, in my opinion. He’s asking a supposedly thinking machine to explain a passage about thinking machines being used to enslave people.

In the modern era, the US president doesn’t need to actually have a justification for starting a war, just the possibility of profit.

Same way he drew the axe that’s floating in the air by his left hand. I assume he’s telekinetic.

Perjury (lying under oath) is punishable

Lying to Congress, under oath or not, is a crime, however, when that happens, all Congress can do is refer the matter to the DoJ for prosecution. As you can imagine, the DoJ would do nothing in this case. There is no other mechanism for enforcement.

Idiocracy is really not a good metaphor for current times. In Idiocracy, the president went looking for a solution by finding the actual smartest person that they could find. That is kind of the opposite of the Trump administration. Frankly, as movies go, I think the Running Man might be a little closer. A TV show host with insane levels of power in government, including having the justice department under his thumb, using violent entertainment to keep the masses distracted from the fascist horrors going on around them matches fairly well with modern America.