A friend whose child recently applied to NYU downloaded the hacker’s ZIP file of liberated data (canonical link; it may be that this has been getting updated with additional redactions) and found his child’s name and other identifiable characteristics.
A dark web user claimed responsibility for briefly hacking New York University’s website Saturday, and replacing it with what appeared to be student test scores and an apparent racial epithet.
Instead of the usual images of college athletes and the Greenwich Village campus, the site featured a black background with green writing showing a message along with charts of what were purported to be SAT and ACT scores and GPAs for students in 2024, divided by race.
“On June 29 2023, racial affirmative action in college admissions was ruled illegal,” the female hacker’s message reads. “Computer N–gy Exploitation (CNE) reveals NYU continued anyway.”
My friend and his computer-oriented son played around with the data and found an interesting pattern… kids from their local high school were in the database as having applied early with certain SAT scores and GPA. The database showed that they were rejected (perhaps for being white, since their qualifications were above the medians for admitted precious Black applicants). In conversations at school, the kids claimed higher SAT/GPA numbers than they reported to NYU and the kids didn’t mention having applied to NYU (i.e., they kept their rejections secret).
What does it take to be accepted? My friend and his son found a good athlete from a Maskachusetts public high school. His (weighted GPA) was 4.15 and his SAT score was 1550. He’s the wrong kind of Brown (Indian), apparently, and was rejected.
The data download arrives as CSV files, but don’t try opening in Excel. The files are around 3 GB in size:
Whatever the test scores of the carefully-curated-by-skin-color NYU admittees. they can all be on the #RightSideOfHistory (link) with the NYU Queer Union:
I recently caught up with a friend who bailed out of Brooklyn in August 2020. He retired in 2019 after a couple of moderately successful startups (by NY standards, not by NVIDIA/OpenAI standards). He, his wife, and two kids (now 6th and 8th grade) moved to a beautiful historical downtown of a small city in Spain (population 220,000) that is 30 minutes from the beach (admittedly cold/wet for most of the year; he’s not fighting it out with expat Brits on the Mediterranean coast).
He pays $1400/month for a five-bedroom apartment that is 180 square meters (1940 square feet) and children attend public school (as in Maskachusetts, and unlike in Florida, they teach to only one level. There is no gifted education and the teachers’ attitude to a kid who says everything is easy is “That’s great; you won’t have to work hard”. Nobody obsessively preps to gain admission to university). I asked about the cost of living, specifically health insurance:
Expats are required to get private health insurance, but that doesn’t mean what Americans think it means. In New York, my family’s insurance cost me about $25,000 in 2019. Here, it’s currently about $3,500. Point of comparison: a couple of years ago, I had a heart attack. The public hospital treated me (even though as an expat, I’m not part of the national healthcare system) and billed me afterwards. My private insurance informed me that because I’d gone to a public hospital, I had zero coverage. The total bill for ER admission, an ambulance ride, angioplasty with two stents, and three days in the coronary ICU came to about $3,000.
Mid-range cars are similar, but replace all the above-average-size ones (pickups and full-size SUV’s) with below-average-size ones (compact cars like the Audi A1 or Skoda Fabia). Since those cars retail between €20k – €30k, I’m guessing that brings the average price down. Not sure what a Tacoma or Suburban costs these days.
Groceries are way cheaper than the US — or at least than NYC. I don’t really know what food costs outside New York. I bought apples yesterday for about $1/pound; I think in New York it’s a lot more. A sandwich and a beer come to about €5; a prix-fixe lunch menu (very common here) runs €12 – €20; wine is €2 – €3 a glass; but an entree at dinner could go as high as €30, depending what you choose. Of course, you can pay more if you try; there are fine-dining restaurants that cost far more.
There is nothing that he misses about Brooklyn and his friends who are still there say that the quality of life in many Brooklyn neighborhoods and also in Manhattan has deteriorated dramatically. The heart attack is cautionary. He’s younger than I am and his lifestyle must be vastly superior and more relaxed.
Pierre Poilievre, the potential replacement for Mx. Trudeau as Canada’s leader, recently highlighted this chart showing the stagnation of the Canadian economy from an individual’s perspective (the economy grew with the population, though, so politicians had more money to spend every year). Let’s look at Japan, a frequent example of a worst-case outcome for Population Doomsayers and Open Borders advocates:
Japan is right in the middle of this chart, with superior economic performance compared to immigrant-rich nations such as Canada, Germany, the UK, Australia, and France. In other words, Japan retained their language and culture, supported a growing fraction of the population that is elderly, and managed to achieve substantial per-capita GDP growth despite a falling percentage of the population being of working age.
There is a Scientific consensus that immigration is the only viable path to prosperity, especially for countries with low native birth rates and high median age. Yet the above chart, especially the bar for Japan, is completely inconsistent with Proven Science (TM).
Circling back to Canada, Aporia has some interesting charts on this best-case scenario for immigration.
Unlike in the US or Europe, where most immigrants are either illegals, refugees or persons brought in through family reunification, Canadian immigration is designed to be selective. Most permanent Canadian immigrants are granted that status through employment, while the (supposedly) temporary immigrants comprise about one-third students. I say “supposedly” because this group makes up a full 7.3% of the entire population of Canada, and there’s no plan or real mechanism to remove them from the country. Note that Canada has birthright citizenship, giving “temporary” immigrants an easy path to permanent residency and citizenship through anchor babies.
Unlike most countries, Canada has imported humans who do better on academic tasks than its natives do. Given the correlation between academic performance and later earnings, Canada’s economy should be doing quite well.
Canada chucked its culture, value system, and religion in hopes of achieving economic growth. What they achieved instead is a society of incel males living in apartments:
Despite the miracle of 2SLGBTQQIA+ Science, apparently it isn’t practical for an incel male to produce a baby:
Canada will thus have to double down on immigration in order to keep its politicians supplied with taxpayers. Support for this program is particularly confusing to me with respect to Quebec. The Québécois fought for two centuries to preserve their distinctive culture, religion, and language. In the past 10-20 years, though, they gave it all up because of their passion for open borders. Is there any scenario in which a Muslim from India would want to learn French, convert to Catholicism (punishable by death, traditionally, in Islam), and follow Québécois customs? If not, Quebec is guaranteed to lose its distinctive character and will become just another poorer-than-anywhere-in-the-US random assemblage of humans, cultures, and religions in which the English language is the only thing that people have in common.
Loosely related… a friend’s comment: “Canada will obliterate us in this kind of trade war because they are already poor and are happy staying that way.”
I was recently asked to provide advice for a teenager with a $600 budget for a camera to take pictures of horses at horse nerd events. This girl is not interested in photography as a gadget fondling activity, but she needs a lens with a reasonably long reach. It’s the same situation as a soccer parent. There used to a category called bridge camera, in which a single high-quality lens was mated to a reasonably large sensor. Olympus was a pioneer in this area with the beautiful E-10 back in 2000, which had a 35-140mm/2-2.4 (35mm equivalent) lens and a camera built around it. I wrote a review of the E-10 in 2001. This category flourished for a while, but seems to have died in favor of absurdly long-range zooms in front of tiny mobile phone-sized sensors (i.e., probably worse image quality than an iPhone 16 for most images because Apple’s camera software is superior to what the camera companies themselves have made) or massive overkill on both sensor size (“full-frame” or at least four-thirds) and system complexity (interchangeable lenses for people who want just one lens). The problem with a sensor that is too big is that it forces the lenses to be too big and heavy. The problem with a sensor that is too small is that image quality is compromised, especially in lower light conditions.
Here’s what I wrote…
There is no point in carrying a camera with a less than “1 inch” sensor (nowhere near one inch in size!). Most of the cheap point and shoot cameras have sensors that are the same size as mobile phones so the image quality isn’t any better than on a phone. The compact cameras that offer insane telephoto limits, e.g., 3000mm, have these tiny sensors and, therefore, a tiny lens will yield a high 35mm equivalent focal length.
Your friend needs at least a 200mm equivalent telephoto. The best current camera that meets these specs is the Sony RX10 IV, but it costs $1700 (35mm equivalent: 25-600/2.4-4). The original RX10 (original review), which doesn’t have as long a telephoto reach, is available for $469 used in excellent condition from MPB, which is a reputable company. So your friend should probably get this. When it is time to move on, the camera can likely be sold for at least $400 (It was $1300 when originally sold).
At f/16, the sensor won’t be getting much light so the ISO has to be cranked way up unless it is very sunny out.
I can’t figure out why the 25-year-old Olympus concept is carried on by just one company (Sony). Why isn’t the market crowded with $600 1″-sensor bridge cameras wrapped around high quality 24-200mm lenses? They could be branded “SoccerCams”. Is it because the average consumer can’t be educated into realizing that sensor size is relevant? A camera with a reasonable size sensor will never be able to offer “83x optical zoom” the way the Nikon P950 does (can it be that the 1/2.3″ sensor, mobile phone size, of this camera actually produces great pictures somehow?).
Maybe this is just another data point to support the rule “If Philip likes the idea it will be a business disaster”?
Separately, at least once every year I have to publicly beg Apple to make a camera or two! So let this post be the 2025 request. A Sony RX10-spec camera with iPhone software and interfaces for direct uploading to social media would be amazing. Also, perhaps, a pocket-sized one-inch sensor camera like the Sony RX100 (latest version has a somewhat crazy 24-200mm lens that is f/16 maximum aperture at 200mm; maybe a very high quality 24-105 would be better).
We sent out a Christmas card that was postmarked West Palm Beach, December 23, 2024. The destination was Brooklyn. It was returned as undeliverable (my friend moved) on March 18, 2024, nearly three months after being mailed. An opportunity for DOGE?
If the USPS were eliminated completely, I wonder if Amazon or UPS would replace it by installing a print-on-demand system for creating junk mail in their existing trucks. The trucks would go from house to house, as they already do now for packages, and drop junk mail, plus the occasional first class communication, on doorsteps. If the junk mail printer also stuffed everything privately into an envelope maybe this could replace mailing physical documents in most cases, e.g., medical bills and bank statements. The bank would pay UPS/Amazon to print out the statement right at the point of delivery.
Separately, the folks in West Palm Beach were stamping outgoing mail with a snowman. The most recent snowfall in Palm Beach County was January 19, 1977 (that was the only snowfall on record, though I guess we could attribute the lack of snow since 1977 to Climate Change).
The Righteous accuse Florida of being deficient in drag shows, especially drag story time for toddlers at the public libraries. Ocala, Florida, however, is home to a permanent drag show: the pet-friendly Don Garlits Museum of Drag Racing.
Here’s Wile E. Coyote’s dragster, which used “a rocket system from the NASA lunar program” and accelerated from 0-140 mph in one second. Four seconds and 352 mph in the quarter mile.
It seems that Don Garlits got his start in the 1950s in Tampa, Florida and was successful in 1957 with Swamp Rat I (8.23 seconds in the quarter mile):
Nerds will appreciate the engine room, which includes some cutaways:
For aviation enthusiasts, one of the best engines in the museum is a 2000 hp Allison V-12 from a P-40 fighter plane, purchased after WWII for $50.
The turbine engine in this 1993 Pontiac might be from an aircraft, but unfortunately few details are provided:
An adjacent building houses antique cars. Here’s an interesting example of how durable automotive paint is: a 1936 Ford with 72,000 miles (driven only during summers on Cape Cod; maybe for 25-35 years?) that has never needed repainting.
Adolf Hitler’s legacy is honored with a 1950 VW bug and a 1974 Karman Ghia:
We’re informed that our economy is inflation-free, so take $375 down to the local car dealer and ask to drive away in a new car:
After the museum, take a walk or bike ride on the 110-mile Cross Florida Greenway, built on the corpse of a Spanish canal idea from 1567 that was finally killed by Richard Nixon in 1971 partly due to efforts by Marjorie Harris Carr. To traverse the entire 110-mile trail requires a mountain bike, I think, because only about 35 miles is paved. The Florida Coast-to-Coast Trail (250 miles and 88 percent complete) is better-suited to a hybrid or road bike. It is about 50 miles south of the Greenway.
Downtown Ocala is small, but fun, and was the home of an important 1890 political movement (Ocala Demands). Unfortunately, like in most of the U.S., suburban sprawl with strip malls is how the once-walkable city grew. On the other hand, one can’t beat this vape shop’s name: Smocala.
Of course, Ocala is better-known for horse power (below) than horsepower, but I think the Don Garlits Museum of Drag Racing is worth a visit if you’re checking out The Villages.
This year, we arrived early to the race, scheduled for International Day to Combat Islamophobia. We traveled by Cirrus, an example of the kind of technology that has enabled all of the world’s religions and cultures to mix on a regular basis. Here’s the old mule at 8:10 am:
I purchased tickets in advance (12 and under free) and we caught a ride from the FBO to within a few steps of the entry gate at the Seven Sebring Hotel, thus giving us plenty of time to catch the 8:50 am grid walk (outdoors, but so crowded that it was sometimes tough to make headway). Computers and telemetry are critical, apparently:
It would be fun to get one of these just to remind young people that they will never learn how to drive a manual transmission (unfortunately, not available on the cheaper CT5-V, which still has way more than enough horsepower for street driving).
Here’s a different style of Cadillac:
For working class Republicans who appreciate the world’s finest screwdrivers, a car sponsored by Wiha:
For Democrats, TDS Racing (also great for pilots: “Fear the TAF” (terminal area forecast)):
Crowdstrike, the DEI-committed company that is famous for having reduced the U.S. economy to a crawl, sponsors a 180+ mph LMP2 car:
The Iron Dames Porsche was branded this year as “Women Driven by Dreams” and the car, to be driven only by people identifying as “women”, was covered in painted-on Post-It-style notes.
“Break Barriers and Spread” is perhaps a truncation?
Check out “I want to get a car” at the top of the tire below:
Also note the “To never change for anyone” dream. Wouldn’t most humans be improved with at least some amount of change?
Here’s my favorite dream:
Ford had a pavilion right next to the grid and anyone who registered got a free baseball hat (confiscated by my 15-year-old daughter) and the right to use their top deck:
Here’s the view from the top deck, just as the race was getting underway. I was still recovering from my disappointment that nobody nearby agreed to take a knee with me during the National Anthem (sung beautifully by a Sebring local whose name I didn’t catch).
iPhone 5X works pretty well from this deck:
There are no drinks or bathrooms on the Ford viewing deck so we departed after 45 minutes. A small museum is next door and displays a 26 horsepower Crosley Hot Shot that won the first race at the track, in 1951, because of engine size-adjusted scoring.
The Corvette pavilion featured a cutaway ZR1 (1064 horsepower to get you to Publix at 233 mph, but you lose the front trunk so there is no place to put the groceries as there would be on a regular Corvette (194 mph) or Z06 (195 mph)) and cutaway twin-turbo ZR1 engine:
A 1/5th the price of previous title holders, this is the fastest production car around some of the world’s racetracks (example), but I still wouldn’t want a ZR1 due to the lack of storage space. A street car needs to serve a transportation function, in my opinion. (The ZR1 can’t function as a Sebring competitor; it has twice as much horsepower as allowed in the GT Daytona classes.)
Here are a couple of Corvettes going underneath the Corvette bridge:
Some folks doing the race right…
A potential clue as to why nobody would kneel with me during “The Star-Spangled Banner”: a Deplorable flies a custom “DOGE” flag:
The fan guide distributed at the entrance suggests turn 13 for pictures with the airport in the background, but that would work only if you were on top of an RV or a top of some kind. The grandstands at Turn 3 have a pretty good view:
One of the best views is from a bridge near Turn 5. The non-sidewalk side faces the track. You’re not supposed to stand there because you’re at the edge of a somewhat busy road, but people do anyway. The Iron Dames perhaps forgot to include a dream of “stay on the track” and, therefore, the proudly all-female-driven Porsche made an off-track excursion. This was the only off-track driving that I personally saw. The Iron Dames finished #11 in their class, more or less in the middle (still an occasion for celebration, though, under Are women the new children?):
Another photo from this bridge, with an Oshkosh-sponsored Corvette in the lead:
(Sponsored by the U.S. government contractor, Oshkosh Corporation, selected despite an apparent lack of experience to build the next generation USPS delivery truck ($6 billion project, started in 2015, that has thus far yielded 93 trucks)).
We left before the 10:10 pm end of the race, but it seems that the Corvette team isn’t doing well compared to previous years. Porsche won 1st place in the GTD Pro race, while the Corvette factory team finished 7th and 9th (some electrical system problems were apparently to blame). The independent teams racing Corvettes didn’t finish higher than 8 in the GTD class (won by a Mercedes-AMG car). Porsche won the GTP (fastest purpose-built race car class), both 1 and 2 spots, while Cadillac managed 4.
Fewer people leaving the city and more foreign newcomers have helped erase pandemic losses, new census data shows.
In the depths of the coronavirus pandemic, hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers packed up and fled, raising the possibility that the ravaged city had entered a long-term slide.
New York’s population has yet to fully recover, but new census data released on Thursday reveals that it is finally growing again after a steep drop. It reached 8.48 million in July 2024, up from 8.39 million in July 2023.
The city grew by about 1 percent, gaining 87,184 residents between 2023 and 2024 — largely because of a steady increase in newcomers from other countries — while at the same time fewer residents left for elsewhere, according to the census data.
Native-born Americans on net are continuing to leave New York City. Via a non-replacement process (since Replacement Theory has been proven false), their places have been taken by migrants.
Separately, trust the government’s numbers, unless you prefer some other numbers:
City officials had challenged [official U.S. Census Bureau] figures, saying the number of migrants and other people living in group settings like shelters had been underestimated. More than 200,000 migrants have passed though the city’s shelters since the spring of 2022.
Robinson has figured out that the big money in helicopters is government and medevac (also government, since Medicare and Medicaid pay). Consequently, they’ve released the R88, a machine big enough to serve as an air ambulance (government pays) or firefighter (government pays) or police (government, obviously, and oftentimes air taxi for bureaucrats). Here’s what it looks like:
Never in the history of humanity has there been a single-engine helicopter that could carry two pilots and 8 passengers underneath a two-blade rotor system.
Let’s have a look at the Bell UH-1 (“Huey”), which first flew in 1956 and of which more than 16,000 were built. The Huey had…
two pilots
seats for 11 passengers
a single engine (700 hp in the prototype; 1100 hp by 1960)
a two-blade rotor system
What did the first Hueys cost? $250,000 (source). Adjusted from 1960 into today’s mini-dollars… that’s $2.7 million.
The Robinson R88 is surely an improvement over the Bell in many respects. There are LCD screens in front and a modern autopilot to “pitch in” (so to speak). It may also be more reliable and cheaper to maintain (I hope!). But it’s kind of interesting that there hasn’t been more of an improvement in specs or cost after nearly 70 years.
