The same day Trump bought a Tesla, automaker moved to disrupt trade war - Ars Technica
In an unsigned letter to the US Trade Representative (USTR), Tesla cautioned that Trump's tariffs could increase costs of manufacturing EVs in the US and forecast that any retaliatory tariffs from other nations could spike costs of exports.
Honey, did you leave the car on? I think it is sending unsolicited notes on trade policy to the White House again.
Trump makes flurry of posts as global markets fall amid fears of US recession | Donald Trump | The Guardian
After US markets closed – with the S&P down 2.7%, the Dow Jones down 2%, the Nasdaq down 4%, and shares in Elon Musk’s Tesla seeing their worst day since late 2020, falling 15 points – Trump’s account was posting ads for The Apprentice, the 2000s reality show that rescued him from financial oblivion and set him out on the road to political power.
Another day another win for the Donald. /s
We’re teaming up with Qwant to build a European search index
Currently, we rely on a mix of both Google and Bing libraries to provide you with answers to your searches. Starting in 2025, our new index will be added into the database pool to serve results in both the French and German language. We are starting small and in the home countries of both Qwant and Ecosia respectively.
Good timing. I recently switched the default search provider on my iPhone to them.
Can I Run This LLM?
Find out if your computer can run popular Large Language Models
The Brutalist, 2024
Watched on Friday March 7, 2025.
Developer sabotaged ex-employer IT systems with kill switch • The Register
Lu created what the Feds described as a kill switch – more like a dead man's switch, perhaps – that would lock every employee out of their accounts if his credentials were ever revoked, and named the code IsDLEnabledinAD, as in "Is Davis Lu enabled in Active Directory."
When his position was eventually terminated on September 9, 2019, the kill switch was activated and thousands of employees around the world were locked out of the network, causing hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage, it is said.
Kitchen foil and Algerian markets: What happens when your phone is stolen in London?
These days, he said, “tracking options are getting fewer” as thieves have got smarter. Now, as soon as they grab a phone from the hands of an unsuspecting individual, they tend to put it into airplane mode or into a metal wire-lined faraday bag which blocks the device’s GPS and phone signal. Less professional thieves wrap them in kitchen foil.
Fearing Retribution, Trump Critics Muzzle Themselves - The New York Times
Mr. Trump ran in 2024 promising retribution against his enemies and has quickly sent menacing signals from the White House. He revoked the security details of high-profile critics like Gen. Mark A. Milley, a retired Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman who faces death threats from Iran, and said he would pull the security clearances of lawyers at a prominent law firm who are representing Jack Smith, the special counsel who investigated him.One prominent first-term critic of Mr. Trump said in a recent interview that not only would he not comment on the record, he did not want to be mentioned in this article at all. Every time his name appears in public, he said, the threats against him from the far right increase.
The type of free speach, where you get death threads if you insult slightly contradict the dear leader.
Trump meets Gorbachev impersonator
The former head of Kazakhstan’s intelligence service, Alnur Mussayev, recently claimed in a Facebook post that Donald Trump was recruited by the KGB in 1987, when the 40-year-old real-estate mogul first visited Moscow.
The allegation would, if true, be a bombshell. Mussayev provides no documentary evidence —but then how could he? He alleged that Trump’s file is in Vladimir Putin’s hands.
Inspired by this I looked for some news reports about Trump in the eighties, found one mentioning he was to be visited by Gorbachev in New York.
Mr. Trump lost no time in deciding how to guide the Soviet leader through his Fifth Avenue tower, saying he would start by showing off the peach-colored marble in the tower's shopping atrium. ''I'm going to show his wife the stores,'' Mr. Trump said.
But of course the real story is much dumber than that:
Trump told reporters that the Russians had called him and said that Gorbachev wanted to tour Trump Tower. However, Gorbachev never showed. Instead, Trump was tricked into meeting a Gorbachev impersonator who showed up at Trump Tower at the behest of A Current Affair.
Looks like Trump was onto it quite quickly, see minute 1:30. Guess he knows his russian leaders.
The Authoritarian Regime Survival Guide
The text below, dubbed the “Authoritarian Regime Survival Guide”, was published in social media in January 2017 in a series of improvised, spontaneous tweets, which reached 3 million views within one month. Their common element was their trademark signature, “- With love, your Eastern European friends”, and the accompanying hashtag #LearnFromEurope.
Source: https://verfassungsblog.de/the-authoritarian-regime-survival-guide/
The Day of the Jackal, 1973
Watched on Tuesday March 4, 2025.
Lebensmitteltransparenz
Informationsportal zu Grenzwertüberschreitungen und Verstößen in der amtlichen Lebensmittel- und Futtermittelüberwachung
Für das Land Nordrhein-Westfalen werden Ihnen an dieser Stelle alle Informationen im Sinne des § 40 Abs. 1a des Lebensmittel- und Futtermittelgesetzbuch – LFGB zentral und transparent angeboten. Die Informationen werden von den zuständigen Behörden (Lebensmittelüberwachungsämter der Kreise und kreisfreien Städte; LANUV) in eigener Verantwortung eingestellt.
https://www.lebensmitteltransparenz.nrw.de/
achievements on 05.03.2025
A Complete Unknown, 2024
Watched on Tuesday March 4, 2025.
achievements on 04.03.2025
achievements on 03.03.2025
- StudentLanguste won the Commencing Mission achievement in METAL GEAR SOLID - Master Collection Version
- StudentLanguste started the game METAL GEAR SOLID - Master Collection Version
- StudentLanguste won the Together Forever achievement in Far Cry 5
- StudentLanguste won the Saving Sheriff Whitehorse achievement in Far Cry 5
achievements on 02.03.2025
achievements on 01.03.2025
Local audio transcriptions with whisper-cpp
If you want to do audio transcriptions on your machine, here is a bunch of scripts that show how to do it with whisper-cpp.
I found the transcription results to be better than what youtube et al generate automatically. On my M1 MacBook Air the transcription is mostly faster than real time.
install.sh:
#!/bin/bash
brew install whisper-cpp ffmpeg wget
download-model.sh:
#!/bin/bash
wget https://ggml.ggerganov.com/ggml-model-whisper-large-q5_0.bin
transcode-to-wave.sh:
#!/bin/bash
# Check if an argument was provided
if [ -z "$1" ]; then
echo "Usage: $0 <input_file>"
exit 1
fi
# Extract filename without extension
input_file="$1"
base_name="$(basename "$input_file" | sed -E 's/[^a-zA-Z0-9]//g')"
output_file="${base_name}.wav"
# Run FFmpeg command
ffmpeg -i "$input_file" -ac 1 -ar 16000 "$output_file"
whisper-transcribe.sh:
#!/bin/bash
if [ "$#" -ne 2 ]; then
echo "Usage: $0 <wav_file> <language>"
exit 1
fi
WAV_FILE="$1"
LANGUAGE="$2"
if [ ! -f "$WAV_FILE" ]; then
echo "Error: File '$WAV_FILE' not found!"
exit 1
fi
MODEL="ggml-model-whisper-large-q5_0.bin"
echo "Transcribing '$WAV_FILE' to language '$LANGUAGE'..."
whisper-cli \
-l "$LANGUAGE" \
-m "$MODEL" \
--output-txt \
--output-vtt \
--output-srt \
--output-lrc \
--output-words \
--output-csv \
--output-json \
--output-json-full \
"$WAV_FILE"
echo "Transcription completed!"
achievements on 28.02.2025
achievements on 26.02.2025
achievements on 23.02.2025
achievements on 22.02.2025
- StudentLanguste won the Like A Bird achievement in Far Cry 5
- StudentLanguste won the Fashion First achievement in Far Cry 5
- StudentLanguste won the Only You achievement in Far Cry 5
- StudentLanguste won the Extra Crafty achievement in Far Cry 5
- StudentLanguste won the Saving Deputy Hudson achievement in Far Cry 5