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security
Cormac McCarthy’s Secret Muse Breaks Her Silence After Half a Century: “I Loved Him. He Was My Safety.”
When he was 42, Cormac McCarthy fell in love with a 16-year-old girl he met by a motel pool. Augusta Britt would go on to become one of the most significant—and secret—inspirations in literary history, giving life to many of McCarthy’s most iconic characters across his celebrated novels and Hollywood films. For 47 years, Britt closely guarded her identity and her story. Until now.
culture
SF election analysis: Money can’t buy you competence
Why did Daniel Lurie win? Why did Prop. D lose so badly? And how did Connie Chan survive when Dean Preston fell?
san-francisco
You Too Can Donate A Kidney And Still Be A Normal Cool Guy Who Pounds Brewskis | Defector
Last month in a Manhattan hospital, I got my kidney yanked out. A few weeks later in Los Angeles, I went to a show, drank two tallboys of Modelo, wobbled through a crowd of aging goths, got a ride to a bar, and walked home uphill. Donating an organ is a major life decision, but […]
dudes-rock
Exit Right - Dissent Magazine
Trump has remade Americans, and to defeat Trumpism requires nothing less than the left doing the same.
Who is Michael Moritz, and what does he want for San Francisco?
Doctors told the billionaire donor he should be gone by now. Instead, he's just getting started — and spending millions to remake the city.
That San Francisco is governed by a strong-mayor system is a “point of view,” in Moritz’s book. “And I just don’t happen to share that view.”
Moritz was born on Sept. 12, 1954, in Cardiff, Wales. His parents, Alfred and Doris, were German-Jewish refugees, and his father was a classics professor at the University of Cardiff.
Fabulous wealth did not appear to be in the cards, as Moritz went the route of the typeset drawer, heading into journalism.
In 1984, he penned the influential book “The Little Kingdom: The Private Story of Apple Computer.” By 1986, he was hired on by Sequoia Capital, and a storybook career ensued. He got in early on many of the companies on your phone: Google, Yahoo, PayPal, YouTube. As well as the phone itself — Apple.
Asked if he sees contradictions in his philanthropic and political giving, Moritz says he doesn’t. “The thing that gets lost on a lot of people,” he says, “is that the political stuff is a tiny percentage of the charitable giving. It takes a village, and it’s difficult to seek perfect alignment. I don’t worry about occasional overlaps.”
The jarring misstep by Moritz’s TogetherSF was, dutifully and thoroughly, covered by Moritz’s San Francisco Standard. If nothing else, Moritz could take solace that his journalists took him seriously when he told them at all-hands meetings that his own activities were fair game for reportage.
He also thinks Farrell will “be more forceful about getting uniformed officers on the street, which is the most effective, cheapest way to make everybody in San Francisco feel a lot safer.”
Democratising publishing
Thoughts on open source governance and how to create trust within technology, communities, and media.
Chinese sanctions hit US drone maker supplying Ukraine
Beijing’s move leaves California company rushing to find new battery providers
James Vincent · Horny Robot Baby Voice: On AI Chatbots
Some of the pessimism surrounding AI chatbots stems from a belief that humans, like computers, can be hacked: that our...
artificial-intelligence
Electromagnetic Fault Injection - Circuit Cellar
A Closer Look Electromagnetic Fault Injection (EMFI) is a powerful method of inserting faults into embedded devices, but what does this give us? In this article, Colin dives into a little more detail of what sort of effects EMFI has on real devices, and expands upon a few previous articles to demonstrate some attacks on […]
The Disappearance of an Internet Domain
How geopolitics can alter digital infrastructure
technical
news
poetry
Skydio Under Fire: Industry Experts Slam US Drone Maker's Tactics
The US drone industry is in turmoil as professionals criticize Skydio's marketing and lobbying efforts. The controversy, unfolding on LinkedIn, centers on
Roar Shack, baby: Enter Mid-Market's new experimental music hub - 48 hills
Local duo The Living Earth Show launches a revitalizing series of live collaborations in the old Mr. Smith nightclub.
Venture-Backed Trumpism | Ben Tarnoff
Silicon Valley, strictly speaking, does not exist. Its geographic boundaries are fluid and contested; even the places considered central to it are oddly
tech-and-socialism
The Empathy Punishment
A woman hurled a burrito bowl at a Chipotle employee. Then a judge made her walk in the victim’s shoes.
Amazon reveals first photos of the new Prime Air delivery drone
The newest Prime Air drones will deliver to customers in three U.S. locations as well as cities in Italy and the UK by the end of 2024.
Amazon’s troubled drone delivery program faces latest challenge in Texas: Annoyed residents
Amazon is seeking FAA approval to expand its drone delivery service in College Station, Texas, but many residents aren't too happy.
Meet a Facebook Engineer: Jason Prado
In a male-dominated field like tech, it's nice having someone like Jason. Jason Prado is a software engineer at Facebook, but he's a...
Leaked Documents Show Nvidia Scraping ‘A Human Lifetime’ of Videos Per Day to Train AI
Internal emails, Slack conversations and documents obtained by 404 Media show how Nvidia created a yet-to-be-released video foundational model.
Facebook's Shrimp Jesus, Explained
Viral 'Shrimp Jesus' and AI-generated pages like it are part of spam and scam campaigns that are taking over Facebook.
SF’s oddest diner that famously never closed — has shuttered
The SF diner that bragged, “We never close,” the 24-hour Silver Crest Donut Shop on Bayshore Boulevard near Bernal Heights, is now boarded up.
Tailscale
We don’t talk a lot in public about the big vision for Tailscale, why we’re really here. Usually I prefer to focus on what exists right now, and what we’re going to do in the next few months. But let’s look at the biggest of big pictures for a change.
OPINION: stop studying cybersecurity because of me
im trying to get u into activism, not college
All Power to the International Working Class - Statement on the Republican National Convention - Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)
The 2024 Republican National Convention marks the consolidation of the American Right around Donald Trump and his fascist agenda. Despite months of media fanfare over various alternative candidates, Trump easily secured the nomination with over 98% of the vote. By contrast, the Democratic Party is bitterly divided over whether Biden should withdraw. For his Vice…
Scalpers Work With Hackers to Liberate Ticketmaster's ‘Non-Transferable’ Tickets
Scalpers have reverse-engineered how Ticketmaster creates tickets, and are now generating and selling them on their own parallel infrastructure.
