Phil Spencer just confirmed that Microsoft wants to release an Xbox handheld. He also said that the company is still working on an Xbox mobile store and exploring more studio acquisitions.

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Amazon is shutting down Freevee, its ad-supported video streaming platform formerly known as IMDb TV. All of its content is already available on Prime Video.

The post Amazon is Shutting Down Freevee After Moving its Content to Prime Video appeared first on Thurrott.com.

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.

It's good to have a record of the things you posted and when you posted it. On August 12 of this year, I tweeted this: "When the NYT makes Trump sound like a reasonable candidate that a sane person might vote for, remember this day." I included a screen shot of the front page of the NYT on Jan 7, 2021. One in three Trump voters still watch mainstream news, which follows the lead of the NYT, and if they had been straight with us, perhaps enough people who like Trump's style would have realized the danger, and voted in a conservative way, ie to conserve the Constitution. Because of how they covered it, we now get to re-run the 2016 experiment all over again.

But, as Heather Cox Richardson points out in Jon Stewart's weekly podcast (a must-listen) -- we have more experience too, and perhaps will know better how to deal with Trump and know that his bark is often worse than his bite. I have to say as the new reality sinks in, I'm not as scared as I was on Election Night last week or even Election Night in 2016. A lot of people will sell out this time who didn't before. But the problems of climate change have gotten worse in the intervening years, and people feel it in their bones, pocketbooks and fears. You think inflation was bad? This will be far worse and it's happening now, and nothing we can do at a human scale will make it go away.

We're dealing with a very unusual drought in the eastern US now. Fires are breaking out where we never used to have them. Yeah this shit is real, and even people who don't believe in science are feeling it.

As someone once said, you should never waste a good crisis. A lot of other people feel compelled to move. Unfortunately some are moving to the wrong place, as they always do. Making change isn't easy, but is possible, if you understand how people move. As they try to figure out what the Dem's failed at, that's it.

Skate to where the puck will be, not where it was, as another famous philosopher once said. And people don't listen to their friends, they listen to their competitors (which I said, sadly, but then put that fact to use to get various standards to fly by without debate). There is a method to human madness, in other words, imho.

Award-winning cannabis cultivator Aeriz has debuted a carefully crafted lineup of four new cannabis strains…

Artist Christina Spann considers art a conversation or a symphony…

Vittorio D’Onofri has been snapping photos of muxes — those who were registered as male at birth but identify as female or neither male nor female — for more than 20 years…

Zomato chief executive officer Deepinder Goyal took to social media to congratulate rival food delivery platform Swiggy on its stock market debut on Wednesday. The Sriharsha Majety-led company listed on the bourses with an 8% premium over its IPO price.

The expansions are expected to be completed over the next 24 months, with phase 1 of the total expansion at Indri plant of malt and ethanol reaching completion in early 2025. At its Indri plant, the company is expanding its warehousing infrastructure to accommodate over 1 lakh barrels.

Indian retailers are preparing for the upcoming winter shopping season despite a slowdown in consumer spending. They are ensuring ample inventory to avoid missing sales opportunities. While demand for winter wear has been unpredictable in recent years, retailers remain optimistic about sales. They are hoping for a strong winter to boost sales of seasonal products.

As part of its strategy to enter the premium whisky market -- that is witnessing the fastest growth in the alchoBev segment -- IGL will distribute and sell select Amrut brands in the premium segment across markets in north India.

Apparel exporter Gokaldas Exports posted an 18.77% rise in consolidated profit at Rs 28.16 crore for the quarter ended September 30, mainly led by exports. The company had posted a net profit of Rs 23.71 crore for the same quarter a year ago.

India's wholesale price index rose to 2.36 percent in October. Food prices increased, pushing retail inflation to a 14-month high. The Reserve Bank of India held its benchmark interest rate steady. The central bank maintained its inflation forecast for the fiscal year at 4.5 percent. Food price volatility remains a concern for inflation and economic stability.

The size of the deal is estimated at over Rs 1,300 crore. With the transaction, both Bharti and DMPL will receive shares of ATFL as consideration and will become public shareholders of ATFL post the transaction. Additionally, ATFL (through DMFPL) will acquire an exclusive, perpetual license for the Del Monte brand in India.

Operating revenue remained largely unchanged at Rs 1,430 crore compared to Rs 1,426 crore in FY23. The company, which secured its maiden fundraise last year, saw a 40% surge in employee benefit expenses at Rs 71 crore, while finance costs rose nearly 50% to Rs 29.5 crore. Total expenses increased to Rs 1,460 crore from Rs 1,432 crore in FY23.

The festive season brought good news for the technology sector. Sales of tech products and durables saw a significant rise. Air conditioners, laptops and smartphones were popular choices among shoppers. This growth was fueled by new features, discounts and a preference for premium products. Interestingly, most of the sales happened before Diwali, indicating a change in consumer behavior.

In a blog post on Wednesday, the company said the new Amazon Haul storefront will mostly feature products that cost less than $10 and offer free delivery on orders over $25.

For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the LORD that hath mercy on thee. Isaiah 54:10

Texas indie-rock quartet Swimming With Bears reflects creativity and resilience on formidable anthem “Patient Disguise,” weaving pain and loneliness into an air of euphoria and vibrance.  Juxtaposing contrasting emotions with…

Swedish singer-songwriter Amelie Aldner shares a special moment with her new song, "Touch Me." This song feels like a warm hug on a cold night in Sweden. "Touch Me" gives…

Last Grasp's newest single, “Creature of Your Kind,” is the captivating music you’ve been waiting for. This Florida-based project, started by Matthew DeFeis in 2021, continues to explore and innovate…

UK rapper/songwriter/educator BREIS (pronounced breeze) returns with a new informative and enlightening single, "Gimme Dat" that breaks down the dynamics of the music industry. Backed by producer Soliheen's plucky synths…

With a depth of up to 160 feet, the temperature inside the network of tunnels and chambers hovers between 68 and 72 degrees all year round, with humidity sitting at a comfortable 40 percent. Thanks to the miners' use of an extraction technique called the "room and pillar method," the enormous underground cavities left behind are supported by 16-foot pillars; the space is open, regular, and, expansive enough to accommodate nearly anything that can fit through its above-ground, drive-in entrance ramps. from Since the '60s, Ford Has Stored Cars Underground in a Kansas City Cave [Hagerty]

Micron Overdrive v1.0 Max for Live Audio Effect Overdrive is an amplitude-based audio effect ...

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Like many people here in the United States, my spouse and I are not happy about the recent election here. But we did not get here without precedent; for example, the Nixon administration and Spiro Agnew specifically were very aggressive in demonizing the press as political enemies for reporting on the corruption rampant within that administration. What are some good videos we can watch with other (sympathetic) family members to help them understand the historical underpinnings of our current situation? Some examples of the sort of thing I am talking about below the fold:

Stanley Karnow's Vietnam: A Television History

BBC's Oppenheimer

American Experience's series on LBJ

So 20th century (and earlier, especially slavery/slavers' rebellion related) US history with a political bent, even if politics isn't the main thrust. As always, thanks in advance.

My desktop computer accesses the internet via cable connection. Years ago, my son connected a router to my desktop computer so that I could use my laptop via the router. My laptop will no longer connect to the internet via the router. The router seems to have died from old age (everything is blinking and it looks okay ... it's like the lights are on but nobody's home), and so I've decided to disconnect it, but I don't know what steps I need to take to do so.


I clicked around on my laptop and encountered a diagram that shows the laptop is active, and the diagram has an arrow that points to a router icon and shows that the router is active, and there is an arrow that points to a globe icon and shows that the worldwide web is NOT active.

I assume that I should assume that the router has died, and so I want to disconnect the router to get it out of the way. How do I do this?

Is it a matter of just unplugging the router and all of the connections? If I do this, will my desktop that is connected to the internet via cable still be able to access the internet without the router, or do I need to somehow tell my desktop that the router is gone and that it needs to start using the cable, instead, now?

I'm usually quite successful finding answers via YouTube tutorials, but I have had not luck with this so far.

So, in a recent question, someone used ChatGPT to identify someone's 'remember this book' and I thought 'huh, I wonder if ChatGPT can identify my so-far-unsolved remember this book?' So I threw in the text from my previous Ask and ChatGPT came up with a plausible sounding response -- "The Road to Rio: A Journey Across the Americas" by Australian journalist and author, John A. Lee -- but now I can't find any evidence that that person or that book exists. Is it a hallucination or can you help me find it?

Here's the full text of the ChatGPT response:

It sounds like you're recalling "The Road to Rio: A Journey Across the Americas" by Australian journalist and author, John A. Lee. The book is a travelogue that covers Lee's hitchhiking journey across both North and South America, in the post-World War II era. While the exact dates are not always clear, the references to events like the opening of the Alaska Highway strongly suggest a timeframe that fits the 1940s, with a focus on the era immediately following the war. The connection to Prince George, British Columbia, in the narrative also helps to date the book as being closely tied to the time when the Alaska Highway was opened, which makes sense given the events you've described.

As for the mention of a dog and the author's travels through various parts of the Americas, including the Darien Gap and eventually reaching Brazil, this sounds like it aligns with the broader scope of Lee's journey and the adventures he experienced during his time on the road.

This book, while not as widely known today, was quite popular when it was first published and is still cherished by those interested in mid-20th-century travel writing, particularly for its unique perspective from an Australian author exploring the Americas. Your memory of finding it at the University and its plain orange binding might indicate it was a reprint or an edition from the 1950s or 60s. Does this sound like the book you're thinking of?

When I asked it where I could find the book, it told me that it might have been wrong and just gave me general ideas for searching. I tried WorldCat and couldn't find it. Can you? Or is ChatGPT wrong?

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Agenda: Overview of Reinvestment Housing Incentive Districts (RHIDs); Lead and Copper Rule Revision Project Update; Floodplain Management and Community Rating System (CRS) Program Annual Update; 2024 Street Maintenance Update; City Manager Briefing View full agenda online at https://cityofmhk.com/Ar....

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Taken From Emily's New Coaches.

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SECRET W* NFAC No.5436-79 Approved For Release 2007/02/08 : CIA-RDP83BO1027 000200030009-4 MEMORANDUM FOR: See Distribution 10 October 1979 SUBJECT : Alert Memorandum on Pakistani Plan for an Early Nuclear Test We are preparing an Alert Memorandum on Pakistani plans for an early nuclear test....

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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with Sharon Horgan, creator and star of Bad Sisters, about the show's second season.

Birds descended from the dinosaurs, but researchers have known relatively little about how the bird's brain took shape. An 80 million-year-old bird fossil that sheds light on that mystery.

President-elect Donald Trump has announced he will nominate Pete Hegseth, a Fox News host and Army veteran to be his secretary of defense. The 44-year-old Hegseth came as a surprise.

Fire officials say they've stopped the spread of the deadly Jennings Creek wildfire that's burning in rugged terrain on the New York-New Jersey border. But drought is causing more fires.

American author, activist, lesbian, teacher, anthropologist, and working-class escapee, Dorothy Allison, died November 6th, 2024. She was 75 years old. In her honor, Arlene Zaucha shared the radio program she […]

The post In Memoriam, Dorothy Allison (Author, Lesbian, Working-class Escapee) appeared first on KKFI.

Framer Motion is now independent. Introducing Motion, a new animation library for React and all JavaScript environments. Here's what it means for you.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42105869

A look into the wonderfully complex world of modular