frenzy | Network

This is going to majorly PO American auto makers! Breaks my little heart. But that wasn't the reason for the deal.

Biden put a 100% tariff on Chinese electric vehicles and Canada followed suit. China's cars are very wide in range in features: some are utter crap, some make a Tesla look like a Tonka, but Tesla hasn't really been updating their cars like they should. And above all, Chinese EVs are VERY inexpensive! How? Cheap labor, possibly even prison labor. But as a result of these prices, China has greatly reduced their use of fossil fuels and EV sales are soaring over there.

When Canada put in the tariff, China retaliated with a high tariff on Canadian canola seeds, a major farm export. With this drop in the EV tariff, China is dropping theirs from 84% to 15%. There were other items taxed in China's retaliation, I suppose those are still being negotiated.

But here's the telling bit: "Carney [Canadian Prime Minister] said China has become a more predictable partner to deal with than the U.S, the country’s neighbor and longtime ally.

“Our relationship has progressed in recent months with China. It is more predictable and you see results coming from that,” Carney said.

Carney hasn’t been able to reach a deal with U.S. President Trump to reduce some tariffs that are punishing some key sectors of the Canadian economy and Trump has previously talked about making Canada the 51st state."

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2026/jan/16/canada-cuts-chinese-ev-tariff-100-exchange-lower-canola-tariffs/

https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/01/16/2112255/canada-reverses-tariff-on-chinese-evs

If you could change one life-changing event in the life of someone important to you, would you?

I know there's a philosophy that experiences make you who you are and you shouldn't wish them away, but I have a few friends who have been through what I feel is a disproportionate and unfair amount of tragedy in their lives. Partner suicide, early death of parents, sudden loss of physical health, financial hardship, homelessness. I don't think any one person should have to go through all of those before the age of thirty. And yet. Here we are. So yes, I absolutely would change that for certain people if I could.
Which do you think is easier to do, being friends for many years, or being life partners for many years?

Uh, neither? Both take work! You have to listen and try to empathise and forgive and communicate. All relationships require effort, and if they don't, someone is being used.
Have you ever walked away from someone you considered a friend?

Yes. It's not very pleasant. But occasionally necessary for the sake of self-preservation.
If you had to choose between telling the truth and hurting a friend or lying and making them happy, which would you choose?

Barring a handful of exceptional circumstances, most of which involve an immediate threat to life, lying and making them happy. Life is difficult enough without intentionally causing pain.
Which would you rather hear--the truth which will hurt, or the comforting lie?

The comforting lie, if it comes to that. I'd hope it wouldn't, most of the time. I'd like to believe that truths can be delivered kindly, most of the time.

Yesterday, I took a day off from work! The weather ended up being absolutely gorgeous after two straight weeks of rain and atmospheric rivers, so I took a daytrip though downtown and to the Vancouver Aquarium.

( adventures below! -- this entry is mostly pictures )

Just a minor issue!

From the article: "The bug appears to be tied to Secure Launch, a security feature that uses virtualization-based protections to ensure only trusted components load during boot. On systems with Secure Launch enabled, attempts to shut down, restart, or hibernate after applying the January patches may fail to complete. From the user's perspective, everything looks normal – until the PC keeps running anyway, refusing to be denied life.

Microsoft says that entering the command "shutdown /s /t 0" at the command prompt will, in fact, force your PC to turn off, whether it wants to or not."

It hasn't affected my two Win 11 computers, haven't powered up my laptop in a month, so it hasn't updated. I would expect this will be updated with next month's Patch Tuesday release, but they may release an out of schedule patch to fix it.

Of course, make sure all your documents are saved before issuing that shutdown command or you may risk losing information.

And all computers will shut down when you pull the plug out of the wall or bus strip.

https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/16/patch_tuesday_secure_launch_bug_no_shutdown/

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/01/16/2144202/patch-tuesday-update-makes-windows-pcs-refuse-to-shut-down

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Current Mood: nostalgic

Orson Scott Card has a substack.

Lisa LeBlanc, the banjo rock artist recently got honoured with Chevalière de l’Ordre Des Arts et des Lettres by France. the song below is an example of her art, and has a certain level of smart sarcastic wit that is missing in other locally produced folk music.

For those not skilled in the ways of chiac the song translates to Today, my world is shit with an enumeration of the reasons why.

Watch on YouTube

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Current Mood: drained

Assortment of black and white speech bubbles

Welcome to the weekly roundup post! What are you watching this week? What are you excited about?

Three works new to me, all from various TTRPG Kickstarters. 2026 feels kind of light on upcoming books.

Books Received, January 10 to January 16

Poll #34090 Books Received, January 10 to January 16

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 28

View Respondents

Which of these look interesting?

View Answers

Invincible – Superhero Roleplaying (Alpha) by Adam Bradford & Tomas Härenstam (July 2026)
9 (32.1%)

Fabula Ultima Bestiary by Emanuele Galletto (May 2026)
4 (14.3%)

Arkand: City of Wave and Flames by Johan Sjöberg (April 2026)
5 (17.9%)

Some other option (see comments)
2 (7.1%)

Cats!
24 (85.7%)

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Current Mood: infuriated

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Current Mood: stressed

( Read more... )

Dear Diary,

Christmas and New Years came and went. I loved all the holidays. However, I had a very hard time financially because my check was reduced for a few months. I was severely depressed only getting $25 a week from Mom. I could only afford rent at the time and that hurt. However, on the bright side I did learn that I could actually live on $25 a week since I was so blessed. Mom helps to put a roof over my head so I am okay. I am very blessed to have food stamps as well. My food stamps has been a wonderful blessing. I've been able to buy coffee, chicken and dozens of frozen meals. I'm very blessed. I actually have some money still left over on my food stamps card. I've been able to buy my own food and that has helped me feel independent.

The bad news is the bus system in Jacksonville is cutting off allowing rides in cars. The disabled community has to go back to relying on faulty buses that do not have a reliable transportation system. In other words, they are late getting you everywhere and they are late picking you back up from places. Working is not looking appealing at all. I think I may say that to the job search company I've been emailing. I hate to do it but money is very important. I hate that I can't work but that's what it's looking like.

Anyway, I'm just glad I'm blessed. Sorry about the complaining.

Love,

Kathryn Rose

1. Song banned from Swedish charts for being AI creation: (tags:AI Sweden music )
2. Why Greenland's natural resources are nearly impossible to mine: (tags:mining Greenland )
3. Who wants to be a Chinese Empress? (I had no idea that games like this existed!): (tags:games china videos )

1) Creative afternoon with paint

2) Sunshine! It makes such a difference to my mood ^^

3) Clean bedlinen for tonight

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Posted by David Gerard

https://pivot-to-ai.com/2026/01/16/workday-sued-for-ai-powered-hiring-discrimination/

https://pivot-to-ai.com/?p=6898

We talk a lot here about abuses of generative AI. But good old-fashioned machine learning has plenty of use cases to abuse people. When you want to say it wasn’t you — it’s the computer that says no.

If you’ve applied for a job in the US recently, it was probably through an outsourced HR portal. Workday rents its fabulous AI product HiredScore to HR departments across the US. Workday is huge — 65% of the Fortune 500 uses Workday.

You can feed a resume to HiredScore and it’ll reject any applicant the employer probably can’t be bothered with! If you ever got a machine rejection in minutes, it was HiredScore or something very like it.

HiredScore just happens to have what looks very like a track record of discriminating against older or non-white or disabled applicants. And Workday’s getting sued over it. [WSJ, archive]

This doesn’t mean Workday intended HiredScore to discriminate. But machine learning systems are notorious for being trained on data that’s horribly biased, then implementing the bias. If HiredScore was trained on data from biased hiring, that’s what it learned.

And the companies can absolutely be held liable.

Derek Mobley, who is highly qualified but also happens to be over 40, black, and with a disability, got a lot of machine rejections. So he sued Workday for mechanised illegal discrimination. [case docket; second amended complaint, PDF]

Mobley didn’t sue individual employers — he sued the company selling the bias laundry as a product.

Workday said it just sold HiredScore, it was the companies who did alleged bad things with it. But Workday runs the software and, for this case, they acted as an agent to the employers.

So if a vendor sells access to a bias machine, you can totally go after them.

Mobley’s case was allowed to go forward as a federal class action in May 2025. Judge Rita Lin in the Northern District of California ruled: [Order, PDF; CNN]

The proposed collective need not be identical in all ways, because its members are alike in the central way that matters: they were allegedly required to compete on unequal footing due to Workday’s discriminatory AI recommendations.

(To be clear, that’s not a ruling of discrimination. That’s the judge saying the claim is solid enough to go forward.)

This case being against Workday doesn’t stop anyone from going after the employers themselves. Workday had to produce a full list of their customers for the plaintiffs.

If you want to join the case as a member of the class, the sign-up page just opened this month. If you’re in the US and you applied for a job through almost any major corporate portal between 2019 and 2024, you may want to have a look. [Notice; Yahoo! News]

Video — Podcast

https://pivot-to-ai.com/2026/01/16/workday-sued-for-ai-powered-hiring-discrimination/

https://pivot-to-ai.com/?p=6898

I just realized I've been mostly awake for going on 21 hours. I just could not get to sleep Thursday night, and though I've planned to take naps at various times Friday the plans have always gang agley. Dinner also failed, despite an abundance if foodz acquired on the virtual shopping trip. Only two substitutions badly chosen by the store this week, but I forgot to order one of the most important items I wanted, which will lead to further disruption of my plans, such as they were.

Oh, Safeway's website was a complete turd all morning, and crashed twice, being down for more than an hour during exactly the time I wanted to be using it. They seem to be getting worse all the time. Are they already scraping the bottom of the Zoomer barrel for tech talent? Could be.

Very slightly good weather news: after a long stretch of dry, unseasonable mildness, there could be showers on the 28th, 29th and 30th. Maybe it will turn to actual rain. But it's a long way off, so nothing is certain yet. Those showers are more likely to vanish altogether than turn into actual rainstorms. Mixed feelings for me, of course. The mildness is going to keep my utility bill down, but the absence of water could bring problems later on.

Damn, I can't keep my eyes open. Must sleep.

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Network

Canada cuts tariff on Chinese EVs from 100% to 6%!

The Friday Five on a Saturday

sea lions screamed at us.

Recent Win 11 update causes some PCs to refuse to shut down or hibernate

Snowflake Challenge

Today I Learned

Banjo Rock?

Huxleyenne's Theme Hits

Speak Up Saturday

Books Received, January 10 to January 16

Multi Fandom Icons

FUCK

Heated Rivalry rec

Beavis and Butthead #20

update

Interesting Links for 17-01-2026

Saturday 17/01/2026

DCU FEMSLASH COMMENT FEST

Workday sued for AI-powered hiring discrimination

52/322: Must

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January 2026