Israel’s Juristocracy – Moshe Cohen-Eliya
In early 2024 and at the height of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, the Israeli Supreme Court published the most important ruling in its history. By a narrow majority of 8 to 7, the Court struck down the constitutional amendment to “Basic Law: The Judiciary.” This amendment did not apply the “unreasonableness” doctrine to ministerial […]
Court Finds No Coverage for Loss Caused by Water Back Up Through a Storm Drain
In Carrico v. Stillwater Ins. Co., 23-CV-349-RAJ, 2024 WL 308106 (W.D. Wash. Jan. 26, 2024), the Western District of Washington considered competing motions for partial summary judgment in a property damage case involving a winter storm, where large amounts of rain and melted snow backed the drain up and the force of the water pushed […]
The AI wars heat up with Claude 3, claimed to have “near-human” abilities
Enlarge / The Anthropic Claude 3 logo. On Monday, Anthropic released Claude 3, a family of three AI language models similar to those that power ChatGPT. Anthropic claims the models set new industry benchmarks across a range of cognitive tasks, even approaching “near-human” capability in some cases. It’s available now through Anthropic’s website, with the […]
How To: Bring Video Game Characters to Life
3D printing has been a game changer in the cosplay world. Learn techniques from our resident cosplayer to turn digital models into physical costumes. Updated on October 4, 2022 by Alec Richter In the past, creating an object based on a video game was difficult, time intensive, and generally accomplished by hand. My background in 3D printing […]
Do lightning nodes charge fees for their own channels?
My node has a bunch of channels. If I want to make payment, then by definition it will find a route that goes through one or more of my own channels. Are the current lightning implementations smart enough not to charge a fee for that? In a sense it doesn’t matter because the fee goes […]
How to Protect Yourself Against Tax Scams
Who else loves tax season besides accountants? Scammers. It’s high time of year for online risks here in the U.S. with the onset of tax season, where scammers unleash all manner of scams aimed at taxpayers. The complexity, and even uncertainty, of filing a proper tax return can stir up anxieties like, Have I filed […]
BlackRock’s spot Bitcoin ETF surpasses $10B in AUM, faster than any other to date
BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) now has more than $10 billion in assets under management (AUM), according to data from CoinGlass. Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas noted that IBIT is one of just 152 exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that have reached the $10 billion mark. Currently, roughly 3,400 ETFs exist in total. He observed that IBIT […]