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Viridian Introduces Engineered Reclaimed Hardwood Line

Viridian Reclaimed Wood introduces a new line of engineered reclaimed hardwood flooring in four different species, according to Viridian co-owner Joe Mitchoff.




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Rickland Orchards CLVR Bars

Rickland Orchards, a B&G Foods brand, has launched CLVR Bars.




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Richard Dunning (2007)

Richard Dunning is on the Middleware Assisted Take-Up Service Team at Eduserv. Richard facilitated a workshop session on "Athens, Shibboleth, the UK Access Management Federation, OpenID, CardSpace and all that - single sign-on for your Web site" with Andrew Cormack and Andy Powell.




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Richard Brierton (2010)

Richard Brierton has been working in the Web team at the University of Sheffield since 2003 - initially as a Web Developer, and since 2007 as head of the web team. Since graduating with a degree in Multimedia Technology (video, animation, web etc), he has run through a wide-range of activities at the university - web development, design, usability, server setup and administration, improving resilience of systems, video streaming, collaboration tools plus a whole host of other things he cares not to mention. The team also spend a lot of time working with their Web Marketing team on cross-cutting work! Current fads are creating an editor community; training up the web editor community; upgrading/replacing their CMS; increasing user support and buy-in, most of which he'll be talking about at the conference. Richard will be giving a plenary talk entitled "Replacement CMS - Getting it right and getting the buy-in", part of the Doing the Day Job session.




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Transit Diehard King County Council Member Claudia Balducci Is Running for King County Executive

On Wednesday, King County Council Member Claudia Balducci announced her candidacy for King County Executive. Her announcement came the morning after current Executive Dow Constantine announced he would not seek reelection. by Ashley Nerbovig

On Wednesday, King County Council Member Claudia Balducci announced her candidacy for King County Executive. Her announcement came the morning after current Executive Dow Constantine announced he would not seek reelection.

Thirty-ish years ago, Balducci moved from New York into a house in Bellevue’s Lake Hills neighborhood with her then-boyfriend, now husband. She’s stayed right there ever since, not counting a brief return to New York for law school. 

Her political career began at the Bellevue City Council. She served as mayor of that mall town from 2014 to 2016. Voters elected her to the King County Council in 2016. Throughout that time, she advocated for more housing density, defended Sound Transit’s East Link extension, and pushed for improvements to the criminal legal system.

She considers housing, transit, and public safety the pillars of her campaign for King County Executive. Plus, she supports finding progressive revenue streams for the county. When we asked her if, as someone from the Eastside, she felt additional pressure from big business to oppose legislation such as a payroll tax, she responded: “No more so than somebody from Seattle.” Touche, Balducci.

Balducci views herself as a coalition-builder, someone who reaches across the aisle. The biggest difference she sees between herself and her would-be predecessor, Constantine, is her approach: Rather than solely focusing on rallying advocates to push an idea across the finish line, she believes in sitting down with people who disagree with her to reach consensus. 

“You might come out with something that's a little different than what you thought, but hopefully we start to build deeper and more lasting support, not just for that thing, but for all of government,” Balducci said.

If elected as County Executive, Balducci says her first four years in office would focus on addressing the human suffering and disorder in King County’s downtown cores without increasing the jail population. She wants to ensure that people have the services they need to help them address substance abuse, their mental health, and maintain housing. Though she headed up the King County Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention, she was not a “lock-them-up sort of person,” though she did say she’d like to see crime go down in city centers.

She also wants to focus on delivering light rail expansion projects in a reasonable amount of time. 

A Yimby Year One

Balducci found her YIMBY calling in the early 2000s, when the owners of her neighborhood shopping center, Lake Hills Village, sought to redevelop the mall due to a lack of business and businesses. But as the property owners pushed to change zoning requirements to allow a mixed-use, multistory complex Balducci says many of her neighbors came out to oppose the redevelopment. She readily supported the idea and said so in front of her neighbors. Standing up in those meetings almost two decades ago launched her political career, she says. 

On Tuesday ahead of her campaign launch, she showed The Stranger around the redeveloped lot. Shops now fill the storefronts, and the Village houses a branch of the King County Library along with a community space. The large apartments attached to the complex–many three or four bedrooms–are some of the largest in the area. None are “deeply affordable, but they're not outrageously expensive either.” Balducci’s only regret is that the property couldn’t also connect to the light rail. The complex’s large parking lot in the center makes it clear the Lake Hills community still has a car-centric, commuter mindset.

Lake Hills was the first stop on Balducci’s Bellevue Accomplishments Tour. As we drove to our next stop, she chatted about the County’s need to build more housing and Eastside developers’ need to build more townhomes on single lots instead of the giant homes she often sees built in her neighborhood. (She acknowledged those townhomes would be expensive.)

A Defender of Transit

From Lake Hills Village, Balducci whisked us off to Wilburton Station, which she reluctantly called her favorite while saying, “It’s like my children, I love them all equally.” Balducci came alive as she talked about the importance of light rail planning, and how building along the freeway can limit how much density can pop up around a station. She pointed out The Spring District, which happened to be at the end of a rainbow that appeared as the rain slowed to a drizzle. The Spring District is a sort of evolved version of what Balducci did for Lake Hill Village. A developer turned an area of Bellevue made up mostly of warehouses and parking lots and turned it into a housing, shopping, and business core, complete with a light rail station right in the center that had support from private investors. Again, Balducci acknowledged the housing in Spring District probably wouldn’t be something anyone could afford, with the cost of a cheap studio hovering around $1,994, but the project brought more housing and more jobs, all made possible because of the light rail.

Balducci explained how unlike in Seattle, many people in Bellevue vehemently opposed light rail. She fought for years to bring the option to the Eastside as a member of the Bellevue City Council, fighting not only against her fellow council members, but also those who challenged it in court. She came from a city where you could survive without a car and saw the benefit and importance of a reliable transportation system. She called building the Eastline a labor of love. 

As King County Executive, she’d have a huge say in how light rail expanded, because not only would she become a member of the Sound Transit Board, but she’d have the ability to appoint another nine members to the 18 member board. Much of her political life has been dedicated to the issue of improving and expanding transit, and as King County Executive, she says, she’d throw herself into delivering the light rail the county promised to voters as quickly and efficiently as she can.

Not Zero Youth Detention, but Less Youth Detention

Balducci has never styled herself as an abolitionist. She’s a reformer, someone who helped to change conditions at the King County Jail after the US Department of Justice found that the facility had violated people’s constitutional rights by failing to adequately protect them from harm. When the issue of the new youth jail came up, Balducci said she saw a need for an improved youth jail, a smaller one, that could be refitted as the county worked to reduce the number of kids in lock up. But she never saw the existence of the building as a problem, it's more about how the county manages the building and treats the people inside. She also stressed she supports diversion programs and upstream investments to help reduce the number of kids who find themselves on the path to prison. She said she believes in community-based diversion programs and has supported increasing funding to them.

Final Stop

Balducci ended the tour at Porchlight, a men’s shelter in Bellevue that she helped establish during her time as Mayor. The whole process involved a lot of planning, funding, and dealing with community pushback, but it resulted in a 100-bed shelter and the first permanent shelter for men in all of East King County. From there, Bellevue wanted to expand the site, eventually purchasing the property from the county and expanding it to create permanent supportive housing as well as 300 units of family housing, Balducci said. She acknowledged that this particular project may not be the best example of the coalition style governance she wants to represent as King County Executive — a lot of neighbors still had issues with the project — but in the end, many came around. 

Balducci sees herself as somebody who fights Nimby-ism wherever it sprouts. With the drop from her colleague King County Councilmember Girmay Zahilay Tuesday night, announcing he also planned to “strongly consider” a run for King County Executive, Balducci probably won’t end up the most outwardly progressive candidate in the race. However, given Zahilay’s recent retreat on criminal legal system issues, Balducci may be able to style herself as a more consistent, left voice who delivers on her promises. Plus, she’d be the county’s first woman King County Executive in the position’s 56-year history. Wild we haven’t managed to elect one of those yet.




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Amazon Makes It Harder for Disabled Employees to Work From Home - Bloomberg




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NLnet; Hardware




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Trump’s proposed tariffs, especially on China and Mexico, could hit California hard

By Levi Sumagaysay, CalMatters

Welcome to CalMatters, the only nonprofit newsroom devoted solely to covering issues that affect all Californians. Sign up for WhatMatters to receive the latest news and commentary on the most important issues in the Golden State.

A range of experts, from Nobel Prize-winning economists to an internet-famous menswear writer, have a message for Americans who voted for Donald Trump based on his promises to bring down prices: This likely won’t go how you want. 

Some voters cited the cost of living as a factor in their decision to elect Trump to a second term as president. But with inflation actually starting to ease, his proposed tariffs, which the president-elect has called the “most beautiful word in the dictionary,” could actually raise prices again.

While some experts don’t think more tariffs are a bad idea, the majority of economists and other experts who spoke with CalMatters echoed 23 Nobel laureates who warned that Trump’s policies would be worse for the economy than the ones proposed by Vice President Kamala Harris. Those economists wrote a letter last month calling Harris’ economic agenda “vastly superior” to Trump’s, and mentioned tariffs as one reason.

“His policies, including high tariffs even on goods from our friends and allies and regressive tax cuts for corporations and individuals, will lead to higher prices, larger deficits, and greater inequality,” the economists wrote.

Businesses that import goods into the country must pay the tariffs. They tend to pass on their increased costs to consumers, with some executives recently promising to do just that during their earnings calls. So economists largely view tariffs as a tax, especially on the lowest- and middle-income families in the nation. 

While tariffs could raise prices for all U.S. consumers, California could feel the brunt of the impact in part because of the countries Trump singled out during his campaign: China and Mexico. Those two countries accounted for 40% of the state’s imports in 2023.

“The port and logistics complex in Southern California is a very important part of the economy, and directly tied to the countries he threatened,” said Stephen Levy, an economist and director of the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy, an independent, private research organization in Silicon Valley. 

Trump imposed tariffs during his first presidential term, and President Joe Biden maintained some of them. During his campaign this time around, Trump said he intends to impose tariffs of 10% to 20% on all imports, and has mentioned even higher tariffs on goods from China (60%) and Mexico (100% to 200% on cars). 

Such tariffs could exacerbate California’s already high cost of living and raise the prices of cars, technology and electronic products, medical devices, groceries and more. Also, as the state saw during Trump’s first term — which included a trade war, with countries retaliating with their own tariffs on U.S. exports — California’s agricultural industry is likely to feel the effects. Trump’s proposed tariffs could also have an adverse effect on the state’s ports, which are among the nation’s busiest. 

And all of those outcomes could have a ripple effect on jobs in the state, including those in agriculture, trade and manufacturing.

What the state’s ports expect

Trade experts say it’s too early to tell how the state’s ports could be affected, though some of them also said they expect a near-term surge in activity as businesses brace themselves for tariffs by importing more goods now. 

“Long Beach and Los Angeles are two of the largest ports in the U.S.,” said Jonathan Aronson, a professor of communication and international relations at the University of Southern California, who studies trade and the international political economy. “Their traffic would presumably slow in both directions” if Trump imposes tariffs, Aronson said. Like other experts, though, he wondered if the president-elect is using the threat of tariffs as a negotiating tactic — say, to pressure Mexico into doing more to limit immigration into the United States. 

The most recent available data for the Port of Los Angeles, which is the busiest in North America and handles nearly 10% of all U.S. imports, shows that trade activity rose nearly 19% at the port in September from the same month a year ago. September imports totaled $27.9 billion, a 20% increase year over year. There’s a chance those numbers could head the opposite direction as a result of tariffs.

“Significant increases in tariffs, and the possibility of retaliatory tariffs, could have a significant impact on traffic — and jobs — at the port,” said Phillip Sanfield, a spokesperson. “We’re monitoring developments closely.”

The Port of Los Angeles says nearly 1 million California jobs are related to trade at that port.

The Port of Long Beach handles about 3% of all U.S. imports and has about 575,000 Southern California jobs tied to trade. Chief Executive Mario Cordero said, through a spokesperson, that he is waiting to see what trade policies Trump actually will adopt: “At this point we expect that strong consumer demand will continue to drive cargo shipments upward in the near term.” 

The Port of Oakland, whose trade-related jobs at both the airport and seaport number about 98,000, also expects a traffic boost at first. Spokesperson Robert Bernardo: “As a West Coast seaport, our primary trading partner is Asia, and what’s happening right now is that retailers are expecting a short-term shipping surge in advance of new tariffs.” 

Mike Jacob is the president of the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association, a not-for-profit maritime trade association whose members facilitate trade. They include ocean carriers, marine terminal operators and more. 

Jacob, too, said he is expecting trade activity to pick up ahead of whatever tariffs Trump imposes: “Given the lack of understanding of the timing, scope and scale (of the tariffs), you’re more likely than not to move cargo earlier.”

As a result of tariffs during Trump’s first term, Jacob said there was “a small bump in cargo back in 2019 that resulted in additional impacts on our logistics chain.” He said after that experience, which was then followed by pandemic-related chaos, the industry might be a little more prepared to deal with possible supply-chain disruptions.

Possible effects on manufacturing

The San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce is worried about potential tariffs on goods from Mexico. Kenia Zamarripa, a spokesperson for the group, said the CaliBaja region — which includes San Diego and Imperial counties and the Mexican state of Baja California — is interconnected, with a multibillion-dollar supply chain. The region’s logistics facilitate 80% of the trade between California and Mexico, she said.

The nation’s top imports from Mexico in September — worth at least $2 billion for each category — were petroleum and coal products, computer equipment and motor vehicle parts, according to the most recent statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Some specific products that are imported into the U.S. from Mexico through California include the Toyota Tacoma. The truck and its components are made in Baja California and elsewhere in Mexico. “Imagine taxing each component before it goes to Mexico and back,” Zamarripa said. 

She added that the region also leads in producing medical devices, and that the importance of that became apparent during the beginning of the pandemic when “a bunch of companies shut down, not knowing that a little metal piece they were producing was a vital part of a heart monitor, for example.”

Mexico’s economy minister, Marcelo Ebrard, said this week that he would hit the U.S. with tariffs if Trump imposes tariffs, though President Claudia Sheinbaum has seemed more open to negotiations.  

Lance Hastings, chief executive of the California Manufacturers & Technology Association, said he’s well aware of the disruption tariffs can cause. When Trump put tariffs on aluminum and steel imports, aluminum prices rose at least 25%, Hastings said. “I was in the beer industry when it was put in, and we felt it,” he added.

Hastings also said the anxiety around Trump’s proposed tariffs stem in part from the fact that “we’re still trying to get the supply chain back to normal” after the pandemic. Because “California is the gateway to Asia, the state would feel the impact of more tariffs first and more than everybody else,” he said.

Made in the USA

Yet there is a bit of optimism among those who think some tariffs could actually help California manufacturers. 

Sanjiv Malhotra, founder and CEO of Sparkz, a maker of lithium batteries, said tariffs could benefit his company and the rest of the domestic battery industry amid the increasing popularity of electric vehicles. 

Sparkz, which will get its materials from West Virginia and make batteries at a plant in Sacramento, “is all U.S.-sourced. Nothing is coming in from China,” Malhotra said.

During his campaign, Trump indicated he would try to roll back emission-reduction rules and said he would oppose banning gas-powered vehicles. But Malhotra, who served in the U.S. Energy Department under the first Trump administration, said that as demand for lithium batteries grows, he believes Trump’s incoming administration will understand that they “need to be made here in the U.S. so we are not dependent on China for batteries.”

Kate Gordon, CEO of California Forward, a nonprofit organization that focuses on the state’s economy, said that while it’s important to get back some of “what we’ve lost over the past couple of decades” — the nation once led in solar panels — it “needs to happen deliberately and with attention to where we’re really competitive.”

“What would be terrible would be tariffs on things where we’re no longer competitive, like parts of the solar supply chain, which have been held by China for a long time,” she said. All that would do is drive up prices, Gordon said.

Americans may say they want things to be made in the USA, but they also don’t want to pay higher prices for them, said Derek Guy, a menswear writer based in San Francisco who has covered the clothing industry for more than a decade. A few years ago, Guy wrote about American Apparel, under new ownership, offering U.S. consumers the option of paying a little bit more for clothing made here vs. similar pieces made overseas. 

“Even based on a few dollars, when someone wasn’t looking over (their) shoulder, people chose the foreign version,” Guy said. 

“A lot of manufacturing in the U.S. has long shifted toward the higher-end,” Guy said. “The kind of cheaper clothes we’re talking about (what most Americans buy) are made elsewhere.” Tariffs would raise those prices.

The price of almonds

California’s top agricultural exports include almonds, wine, dairy products, pistachios and other nuts.

During Trump’s first term as China imposed retaliatory tariffs on the U.S., California exports of wine, walnuts, oranges and table grapes to China fell, according to the University of California Giannini Foundation of Agricultural Economics.

In addition, almond prices sank, with the foundation’s researchers saying prices fell from $2.50 a pound to $1.40 a pound in 2018. That had a negative impact on an industry that generates $4 billion to $5 billion a year and employs about 110,000 people, according to the website of lobbying group Almond Alliance. 

Amanda Russell, a spokesperson for the Almond Alliance, said in an emailed statement: “In previous trade negotiations, President Trump demonstrated a commitment to supporting agriculture, and we are optimistic about continuing this partnership to address the challenges and opportunities facing our growers and stakeholders.”

Besides tariffs, another likely action by Trump that could affect the state’s agriculture industry is mass deportations — a threat that has immigrants and advocates on edge

“I can’t see any benefit to California if he goes through with mass deportation,” said Levy, the economist in Silicon Valley. “Even the threat of deportation will affect the labor pool.”




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Oura CEO Says Apple Won't Make a Smart Ring Because 'It's Hard to Do'

Oura CEO Tom Hale doesn't believe that Apple has plans to get into the smart ring market because an Apple-designed smart ring might undercut sales of the Apple Watch.


In an interview with CBNC, Hale said that Apple is likely "unconvinced about the value of having a ring and watch together," and he said that while the company is likely keeping a close eye on both Oura and Samsung, an Apple smart ring probably won't happen because "it's hard to do this product category right."

Oura recently came out with the Oura Ring 4, a product able to track movement, fitness, health, stress, and sleep. Oura is one of the most well-known companies in the smart ring space, and it first came out with a ring back in 2015.

Rumors suggest that Apple has explored the idea of a smart ring, but the company reportedly has no plans to launch one at this time. Back in October, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said that no ring is in active development.

Apple is said to be worried about cannibalizing sales of the Apple Watch because a smart ring would have many of the same features as the watch. Apple's industrial team proposed a smart ring that would be a lower-cost alternative to an Apple Watch, but Apple executives weren't interested.

Should smart rings pick up in popularity, Apple could decide to design one after all. Back in July, Samsung launched the Galaxy Ring, a device that works with Galaxy devices and tracks movement, sleep, heart rate, and respiratory rate, providing users with a daily sleep score and an energy score.

Apple has patented ring-like devices, resulting in "iRing" rumors, but Apple often patents all manner of products that never make it to launch.
This article, "Oura CEO Says Apple Won't Make a Smart Ring Because 'It's Hard to Do'" first appeared on MacRumors.com

Discuss this article in our forums




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Food aid interventions can curb climate change-induced hardship. But should they do more?




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Food aid interventions can curb climate change-induced hardship. But should they do more?

The United States foreign food aid program can be a big help when extreme weather fueled by climate change hammers communities




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Athlete Lineup Announced for 2025 Red Bull Hardline Tasmania



Asa Vermette, Vali Holl, Sam Hill, Erice Van Leuven, and Gee Atherton are all on the list.
( Photos: 5, Comments: 76 )




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IBM Boosts the Amount of Computation You Can Get Done On Quantum Hardware

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: There's a general consensus that we won't be able to consistently perform sophisticated quantum calculations without the development of error-corrected quantum computing, which is unlikely to arrive until the end of the decade. It's still an open question, however, whether we could perform limited but useful calculations at an earlier point. IBM is one of the companies that's betting the answer is yes, and on Wednesday, it announced a series of developments aimed at making that possible. On their own, none of the changes being announced are revolutionary. But collectively, changes across the hardware and software stacks have produced much more efficient and less error-prone operations. The net result is a system that supports the most complicated calculations yet on IBM's hardware, leaving the company optimistic that its users will find some calculations where quantum hardware provides an advantage. [...] Wednesday's announcement was based on the introduction of the second version of its Heron processor, which has 133 qubits. That's still beyond the capability of simulations on classical computers, should it be able to operate with sufficiently low errors. IBM VP Jay Gambetta told Ars that Revision 2 of Heron focused on getting rid of what are called TLS (two-level system) errors. "If you see this sort of defect, which can be a dipole or just some electronic structure that is caught on the surface, that is what we believe is limiting the coherence of our devices," Gambetta said. This happens because the defects can resonate at a frequency that interacts with a nearby qubit, causing the qubit to drop out of the quantum state needed to participate in calculations (called a loss of coherence). By making small adjustments to the frequency that the qubits are operating at, it's possible to avoid these problems. This can be done when the Heron chip is being calibrated before it's opened for general use. Separately, the company has done a rewrite of the software that controls the system during operations. "After learning from the community, seeing how to run larger circuits, [we were able to] almost better define what it should be and rewrite the whole stack towards that," Gambetta said. The result is a dramatic speed-up. "Something that took 122 hours now is down to a couple of hours," he told Ars. Since people are paying for time on this hardware, that's good for customers now. However, it could also pay off in the longer run, as some errors can occur randomly, so less time spent on a calculation can mean fewer errors. Despite all those improvements, errors are still likely during any significant calculations. While it continues to work toward developing error-corrected qubits, IBM is focusing on what it calls error mitigation, which it first detailed last year. [...] The problem here is that using the function is computationally difficult, and the difficulty increases with the qubit count. So, while it's still easier to do error mitigation calculations than simulate the quantum computer's behavior on the same hardware, there's still the risk of it becoming computationally intractable. But IBM has also taken the time to optimize that, too. "They've got algorithmic improvements, and the method that uses tensor methods [now] uses the GPU," Gambetta told Ars. "So I think it's a combination of both."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.




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After latest hit to helmet, Dolphins' Tua Tagovailoa says it's 'too hard' to protect himself

Tua Tagovailoa often gives fans pause by putting his head in harm's way, but the Miami Dolphins' quarterback, with a history of high-profile concussions, says it's "too hard" to protect himself in High-speed action.




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Flipkart Big Savings Days: Morphy Richards, Agaro से माइक्रोवेव और ओवन पर अद्वितीय डील का लाभ उठाएं

Flipkart के बिग बचत डेज़ Morphy Richards, Agaro के टॉप-रेटेड माइक्रोवेव और ओवन पर अविश्वसनीय बचत लाते हैं. किचन की विभिन्न आवश्यकताओं को पूरा करने वाले विश्वसनीय, हाई-परफॉरमेंस वाले मॉडलों पर भारी छूट का आनंद लें.




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Millions of Nigerians go hungry as floods compound hardship

GUBIO, Nigeria — Unrelenting price rises and a brutal insurgency had already made it hard for Nigerians in northeastern Borno State to feed their families. When a dam collapsed in September, flooding the state capital and surrounding farmland, many people ran out of options. Now they queue for handouts in camps for those displaced by fighting between extremist Boko Haram rebels and the military. When those run out, they seek work on local farms where they risk being killed or raped by local bandits. "I can't even cry anymore. I'm too tired," said Indo Usman, who tried to start again in the state capital Maiduguri, rearing animals for the two annual Muslim holy days, after years of repeatedly fleeing rebel attacks in rural Borno. The flood washed that all away, driving her, her husband and their six children to a bare room at Gubio, an unfinished housing project about 96 km northwest of Maiduguri that has become a displacement camp. Torrential rains and floods in 29 of Nigeria's 36 states this year have destroyed more than 1.5 million hectares of cropland, affecting more than 9 million people, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Climate change is a factor, as is Nigeria's poorly maintained or non-existent infrastructure as well as vulnerabilities caused by the weakening Naira currency and the scrapping of a government fuel subsidy. The cost of staples like rice and beans has doubled, tripled or even quadrupled in a year, depending on location — an unmanageable shock for millions of poor families. Mass kidnappings for ransom in the northwest and conflict between farmers and pastoralists in the central belt, traditionally the nation's bread basket, have also disrupted agriculture and squeezed food supplies. 'Hungriest of the hungry' Roughly 40% of Nigeria's more than 200 million people live below the international poverty line of $2.15 per person per day, the World Bank estimates. Already, 25 million people live in acute food and nutrition insecurity - putting their lives or livelihoods in immediate danger, according to a joint analysis by the government and U.N. agencies. That number is expected to rise to 33 million by next June-August. "The food crisis in Nigeria is immense because what we are seeing is a crisis within a crisis within a crisis," said Trust Mlambo, head of program for the northeast at the World Food Program, in an interview with Reuters in Maiduguri. With international donors focused on emergencies in Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan, Mlambo said there was not enough funding to fully meet Nigeria's growing need for food aid. "We are really prioritizing the hungriest of the hungry," he said. In Borno, the Alau dam, upriver from Maiduguri, gave way on Sept. 9, four days after state officials had told the public it was secure. Local residents and engineers had been warning that it was under strain. Hundreds of people were killed in the resulting flood, according to aid workers who did not wish to be identified for fear of offending the state government. A spokesperson for the state government did not respond to requests for comment. Zainab Abubakar, a self-employed tailor in the city who lived in relative comfort with her husband and six children in a house with a refrigerator, was awoken at midnight by water rushing into her bedroom. They ran for their lives while the flood destroyed their house and carried everything away, including her sewing machine. Now, they are sheltering at Gubio and collecting rice from aid agencies in a plastic bucket. "There is no alternative," she said. In Banki, on Nigeria's border with Cameroon about 133 km southeast of Maiduguri, Mariam Hassan lost crops of maize, pepper and then okra in repeated flooding of her subsistence farm this year, leaving her with nothing to eat or sell. "I beg the neighbors or relatives to give me food, not even for me but for my children, for us to survive," said Hassan, who has eight children. "The situation has turned me into a beggar."




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New storms and flooding in Spain threaten hard-hit Valencia again

Madrid — New storms in Spain caused school closures and train cancellations on Wednesday, two weeks after flash floods in Valencia and other parts of the country killed more than 220 people and destroyed thousands of homes. Coastal areas of Valencia were placed under the highest alert on Wednesday evening. Forecasters said up to 180 millimeters (7 inches) of rain could fall there within five hours. Cleanup efforts in parts of Valencia hardest hit by the Oct. 29 storm were still continuing, and there were concerns over what more rain could bring to streets still covered with mud and debris. In southern Malaga province, streets were flooded, while 3,000 people near the Guadalhorce river were moved from their homes as a preventive measure. Schools across the province were closed, along with many stores. High-speed AVE train service was canceled between Malaga and Madrid as well as Barcelona and Valencia. There were no reports of any deaths. Spanish weather forecaster AEMET put Malaga on red alert, saying up to 70 millimeters (roughly 3 inches) of rain had accumulated in an hour. Parts of Tarragona province in the east also faced heavy rain and remained under red alert. The forecast in Malaga delayed the start of the Billie Jean King Cup tennis finals between Spain and Poland, which was set for Wednesday. The storm system affecting Spain is caused by warm air that collides with stagnant cold air and forms powerful rain clouds. Experts say that drought and flood cycles are increasing with climate change.




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NBA: Coby White, Bulls hold off hard-charging Knicks

Coby White made three free throws with 3.2 seconds left to cap his 22-point effort, and the Chicago Bulls rallied after squandering a 22-point lead to beat the host New York Knicks, 124-123, in the NBA on Wednesday. After falling behind 90-68 late in the third quarter, New York — playing the second leg of a back-to-back — ended the period on a 17-0 run to set up an intense fourth quarter. There were 10 lead changes in the final period, the last coming on White’s free throws on a tough foul call against Josh Hart. "They called a foul, […]...

Keep on reading: NBA: Coby White, Bulls hold off hard-charging Knicks




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Dispatch, Bulwark, Liz Cheney Grifters Facing Hard Times

The dwindling Never Trump faction has nothing left to offer but contempt for Trump voters and fantasies of destroying the Constitution.




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Pistons' Tim Hardaway Jr leaves game in wheelchair after slamming head on court in scary scene

Detroit Pistons veteran guard Tim Hardaway Jr. was wheelchaired out of the game against the Miami Heat after multiple hits to the head, including slamming it on the court.



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Colts name Anthony Richardson starting quarterback in sudden switch-up: 'We’ve never lost faith'

The Indianapolis Colts are heading in a new direction with the quarterback position again, naming Anthony Richardson the new QB1 just two weeks after he was benched.



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IBM boosts the amount of computation you can get done on quantum hardware

Incremental improvements across the hardware and software stacks add up.




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What is Whoopi Goldberg’s net worth? The View host says she’s ‘having a hard time’ financially

Throughout her decades-long career, Goldberg has become one of the few entertainers to achieve EGOT status




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GOG's preservation label highlights classic games it's maintaining for modern hardware

GOG is launching an effort to help make older video games playable on modern hardware. The GOG Preservation Program will label the classic titles that the platform has taken steps to adapt in order to make them compatible with contemporary computer systems, controllers and screen resolutions, all while adhering to its DRM-free policy. The move could bring new life to games of decades past, just as GOG did two years ago with a refresh of the 1999 title Wheel of Time. So far, 92 games have received the preservation treatment.

"Our guarantee is that they work and they will keep working," the company says in the video announcing the initiative.

Preservation has been a hot topic as more games go digital only. Not only are some platforms eliminating disk drives by default, but ownership over your library is more ephemeral than it seems. After all, most game purchases are just a license, and licenses can be revoked (as The Crew players know all too well).

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/gogs-preservation-label-highlights-classic-games-its-maintaining-for-modern-hardware-231606454.html?src=rss




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Using phone? Jaywalker hit and sent flying by taxi in Orchard

A woman was sent flying after she was hit by a car on Wednesday (Nov 13) morning. The incident occurred at the junction of Orchard Road and Handy Road. In a video posted to the SG Kaypoh Facebook group, the woman is seen crossing the road while the traffic light was not in her favour.   She appears to be looking down at her phone. The driver involved in the accident did not notice her till it was too late and collided with her head-on. In the video, the woman is sent flying and lands several metres in front of the car upon impact. She manages to sit up after landing, and looks stunned from the impact.   The driver and his passenger also rush out of the vehicle to assist.  Speaking to AsiaOne, the Singapore Civil Defence Force said that the female pedestrian was conveyed conscious to Tan Tock Seng Hospital. When contacted, the police said they were alerted to an accident involving a taxi and a pedestrian at the junction of Orchard Road and Handy Road on Nov 13 at about 3.15am.




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25 Zany Feline Funnies for Hardworking Hoomans Who’re Starting to Lose the Plot

Well we have made it to the middle of the week, but that does not mean that we have done so with any semblance of sanity left. After many mindless meetings, plenty of pointless PowerPoints and what feels like billions of beat downs from your boss, there is no rational hooman who would not be fraying at the edges. And while the temptation might be to try and claw your way out of the deepening madness like a cat trying to desperately climb out of a wet bathtub, we believe it is time to lean in and embrace the madness. Which is why we made this list of zany feline funnies for hardworking hoomans who are starting to (or have completely) lose the plot.

From the derpy cat who has a penchant for staring at ice cubes in order to study thermodynamics, to the clawminal kitten who has very quickly caught on to the power of pizza, to the antithesis of Tom and Jerry in the form of the orange cat and his chipmunk best friend.




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India could save 91,000 crore rupees on import bill through biofuel blending: Hardeep Singh Puri




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Millions of Nigerians go hungry as floods compound hardship

Torrential rains and floods in 29 of Nigeria's 36 states this year have destroyed more than 1.5 million hectares of cropland, affecting more than nine million people




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How to Force Yourself to Ship (Even When It’s Hard)

It’s been a week and a half since we launched Drip’s biggest feature in 18 months, called Workflows. Had we not committed to a deadline, in public, 2-weeks prior to the ship date (when we published this post on Drip and emailed a bazillion people), I believe we’d still be adding finishing touches. It’s scary to ship. And it’sRead More →

The post How to Force Yourself to Ship (Even When It’s Hard) first appeared on Rob Walling - Serial Entrepreneur.




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Tectonic-paleogeographic implications of a detailed Cretaceous-Cenozoic exhumation history in the Richardson Anticlinorium, northern Yukon, documented by multi-kinetic apatite fission track modelling

Lane, L S; Issler, D R; O'Sullivan, P B. Geoconvention 2020 abstracts; 2020 p. 1-2
<a href="https://geoscan.nrcan.gc.ca/images/geoscan/20210002.jpg"><img src="https://geoscan.nrcan.gc.ca/images/geoscan/20210002.jpg" title="Geoconvention 2020 abstracts; 2020 p. 1-2" height="150" border="1" /></a>




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Structural geology of the eastern Richardson Mountains, Yukon and Northwest Territories: some field observations and a note of caution for palinspastic reconstructions

Pinet, N. Yukon exploration and geology 2020; by MacFarlane, K E (ed.); Yukon Geological Survey, Yukon Exploration and Geology 2020, 2020 p. 1-18
<a href="https://geoscan.nrcan.gc.ca/images/geoscan/20200527.jpg"><img src="https://geoscan.nrcan.gc.ca/images/geoscan/20200527.jpg" title="Yukon exploration and geology 2020; by MacFarlane, K E (ed.); Yukon Geological Survey, Yukon Exploration and Geology 2020, 2020 p. 1-18" height="150" border="1" /></a>




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Geomorphology of a late Wisconsin hard-bedded ice stream landsystem, Ontario, Canada revealed by high resolution LiDAR mapping

Bukhari, S S A; Sookhan, S; Eyles, N; Shi, Y; Mulligan, R P M; Paulen, R C. GSA 2020 Connects Online - Geological Society of America Annual Meeting; Geological Society of America, Abstracts With Programs vol. 52, no. 6, 2020 p. 1, https://doi.org/10.1130/abs/2020AM-357973
<a href="https://geoscan.nrcan.gc.ca/images/geoscan/20200503.jpg"><img src="https://geoscan.nrcan.gc.ca/images/geoscan/20200503.jpg" title="GSA 2020 Connects Online - Geological Society of America Annual Meeting; Geological Society of America, Abstracts With Programs vol. 52, no. 6, 2020 p. 1, https://doi.org/10.1130/abs/2020AM-357973" height="150" border="1" /></a>




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Regional subglacial quarrying and abrasion belowhard-bedded palaeo-ice streams crossing the Shield-Palaeozoic boundary of central Canada: the importance of substrate control

Bukhari, S; Eyles, N; Sookhan, S; Mulligan, R; Paulen, R; Krabbendam, M; Putkinen, N. Boreas 2021 p. 1-25, https://doi.org/10.1111/bor.12522
<a href="https://geoscan.nrcan.gc.ca/images/geoscan/20200742.jpg"><img src="https://geoscan.nrcan.gc.ca/images/geoscan/20200742.jpg" title="Boreas 2021 p. 1-25, https://doi.org/10.1111/bor.12522" height="150" border="1" /></a>




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Lower Paleozoic stratigraphy and geology, Richardson Mountains, Yukon (with stratigraphic and paleontological appendices)

Cecile, M P; Norford, B S; Nowlan, G S; Uyeno, T T. Geological Survey of Canada, Bulletin 614, 2022, 53 pages, https://doi.org/10.4095/329454
<a href="https://geoscan.nrcan.gc.ca/images/geoscan/gid_329454.jpg"><img src="https://geoscan.nrcan.gc.ca/images/geoscan/gid_329454.jpg" title="Geological Survey of Canada, Bulletin 614, 2022, 53 pages, https://doi.org/10.4095/329454" height="150" border="1" /></a>




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Textifi: How to OCR Hard Copy Printed Material Even in Airplane Mode

Textifi by Virtual Eye is a simple OCR app that doesn't require a data or wi-fi connection. The Play Store link is
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=textifi.virtualeye.iohl=en_US

the interface is straight-forward. In the top right corner is a button for turning on the flashlight/torch, and across the bottom are buttons for detecting text, copying text to the clipboard, and reading the text out loud again. There is no menu icon, and there don’t seem to be any app settings.

To use Textifi, do the following:

• Turn on the flashlight (if necessary).
• Center your phone's viewfinder over the printed page.
• Tap the Detect Text button. Recognition is fairly quick. If nothing happens after a second or two, tap the screen again.

Once text is recognized, it is read automatically. If you want it to be repeated, tap the Speak Again button, and if you want to save it, tap the Copy button, then use TalkBack's editing menu to paste the text into a notepad app.

This app’s OCR results are great, but the key is to position your camera right. I was sitting in my office at school going through junk mail. If I positioned the camera by putting my elbow on the table next to the printed page and holding my hand up in the air, results were very good, almost as good as the Eye-D app by GingerMind Technologies. With Eye-D, recognition was pretty good even if I didn’t keep the camera level; with Textifi, recognition was great if I held the camera right, but results were bad if I wasn’t careful.

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Undergraduates Hard at Work




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Arenado won't set hard deadline on negotiations

Rockies third baseman Nolan Arenado said Thursday he won't make Opening Day a hard deadline for negotiations on a possible multiyear contract.




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New York City Personal Injury Lawyer Richard M. Kenny Receives Glowing Review on Birdseye From a Happy Client Regarding the Firm's Services

New York City Personal Injury Lawyer Richard M. Kenny received a glowing review on Birdseye from a happy client regarding the firm's services. Reviews like this make us proud to do our job, day in and day out. We believe that those who've been unfairly injured as a result of another party's negligence deserve to be fully and fairly compensated for the damages they've incurred.




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The Law Office of Richard M. Kenny is proud to announce that Richard M. Kenny, Esq. has been selected as a member of America's Top 100 Personal Injury Attorneys® for 2023.

The Law Office of Richard M. Kenny is proud to announce that Richard M. Kenny, Esq. has been selected as a member of America's Top 100 Personal Injury Attorneys® for 2023.




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NYC Personal Injury Lawyer Richard M. Kenny Selected for the National Trial Lawyers Top 100

Richard M. Kenny Selected for the National Trial Lawyers Top 100. The National Trial Lawyers is an invitation-only professional organization composed of the leading personal injury trial attorneys across the United States.




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The Law Office of Richard M. Kenny is proud to announce its re-selection for membership in The National Trial Lawyers Civil Plaintiff Top 100

The Law Office of Richard M. Kenny is proud to announce its re-selection for membership in The National Trial Lawyers (NTL) - Civil Plaintiff - Top 100, an invitation-only organization that recognizes the most accomplished trial lawyers across the United States. This prestigious membership is an acknowledgment of Richard M. Kenny's ongoing dedication to excellence in civil litigation and his commitment to delivering justice for his clients.




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Frontline Source Group, Richardson Temporary Agency, joins the Richardson Chamber of Commerce

Frontline Source Group, Richardson Temporary Agency and Richardson Staffing Agency, joins the Richardson Chamber of Commerce.




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Why Is It So Hard To Serve Small Business? Blame The 90% Challenge

There is a convenient narrative about small business that we have all heard a million times.  Small business represents a huge, underserved, and highly lucrative market for finance-oriented entrepreneurs and large organizations alike. The prevailing wisdom is that these businesses run on Intuits QuickBooks, which enables them to have organized, accurate, and timely financial information at their fingertips. By all accounts, the small business market should be an easy one to serve. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Organizations big and small have struggled to serve the small business market in an efficient and effective matter, and it is all due to what we call the 90% challenge.

complete article




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New Hard Quartet: Rio’s Song

Video: The Hard Quartet – “Rio’s Song”

Directed by Jared Sherbert. From The Hard Quartet, out October 4 on Matador.

The whole idea of an indie rock supergroup is kind of ridiculous but here we are. The Hard Quartet is Stephen Malkmus from Pavement and Matt Sweeney from Chavez, both on Matador Records, plus Drag City’s Emmett Kelly and Jim White. Put ’em together and what have you got? Skibidi-Bobbidi-Boo!

The song’s good (we love the 90s!) but the video’s great. Especially if you’re familiar with the Stones’ 1981 “Waiting On A Friend” promo. They went to great lengths to capture the vibe. Director Jared Sherbert told Pitchfork, “The original staircase is now surrounded by businesses, so we shot at the nearly identical staircase next door. The St. Marks Bar & Grill is gone, and, although there was another bar in the neighborhood with almost the exact same layout, International Bar was incredibly accommodating and encouraged us to shoot there, which just felt right for this. The apartment window with the guy daydreaming has changed, but a neighbor a few doors down let us use hers.”

Sweeney captures Mick’s aura without stooping to an impression while Malkmus totally nails Keith’s elegantly wasted swagger.

Read more at Glorious Noise...




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The Groovy Little Numbers, "A Place So Hard to Find"

Always a sucker for late-80s pogo-stick guitar pop from Scotland, I cannot resist the Groovy Little Numbers, yet another late-80s pogo-stick guitar-pop outfit from Scotland.

They're noteworthy—or at least more of a curiosity than others—and differentiated from contemporaries in a few ways, however. Lead vocals were often shared by Catherine Steven and Joe McAlinden, who started the band and seem to be considered the only core members, and this boy-girl tag-team adds a twist the Pooh Sticks, Close Lobsters, the Soup Dragons, the Hepburns, and most the rest in the scene didn't have.

Additionally, while trumpets were certainly a feature of the post-Postcard Scotish sound, the way these guys laid it in was gentler, sweeter. Generally, they were gentler, sweeter, more reserved Burt Bacharach than twitchy Violent Femmes.

As you might expect, this two-singles group was a sort of power-pop incubator for at least a couple of those involved: McAlinden started Superstar and was in BMX Bandits; Gerard Love got in with Teenage Fanclub at the onset.




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'30 Dangerous Seconds', 1972 movie with Peter Hardt

From the OK Historical Society. Shot in OKC in 1972, starring Robert Lansing ('Gary Seven'), Marj Dusay ('Brain and brain, what is brain' from 'Spock's Brain'), and Peter Hardt of Fantastic Theater. Now on the main page, and favorited on the TTM YouTube Channel.




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Former KTBA DJ Stacy Richardson passes away

Photo of Stacy with other counterculture radio guys, his articles on TTM, and a link to his obituary at to Rose Hill.




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'Not So' Hard-Boiled Eggs

I recently made a dozen hard-boiled eggs, or so I thought. Despite timing the eggs exactly (I've done this so many times), and checking online on several sites to be sure the timing notations were correct, to my dismay when...