Link. 5 grim consolations.

Link. Canada too!

“plot had been part of a test run with the ultimate goal of putting explosive devices on planes bound for the United States and Canada”

“GRU, increasingly reliant on criminal proxies, often hired over the internet, to carry out acts of sabotage … “think the Russian intelligence services have gone a bit feral”

Link. First Apple came for the photo geek. But hardly anyone looks at pictures, so fine.
Then Apple came for the music listener. But hardly anyone listens to music, so fine.

I’m surprised Final Cut Pro is still a thing.

Link. For me Siri is more useful.

Link. The future is hard to predict, except when it’s inevitable.

Link. “The “Mudsills” were dull drudges whose work produced the food and products that made society function. On them rested the superior class of people, who took the capital the mudsills produced and used it to move the economy, and even civilization itself, forward. The world could not survive without the inferior mudsills, but the superior class had the right—and even the duty—to rule over them.”

Heather Cox Richardson

Link. Neat example of the struggle between preservation and discovery. Researchers desperately want to try for DNA.

Link. Most (probably all) of the cybersecurity industry has been penetrated by China, but only one speaks of it.

“this is a security research community which is patriotically aligned with PRC objectives … But they’re not averse to making a bit of money on the side.”

Link. “…. finance executives had told him that they liked making people jump through hoops”

It’s nice to see a casual NYT biz article that starts with the truth.

Link. Demonic attack is haloperidol territory.

Link. “They don’t understand the deeper issues that hurt them – and neither major party is in a hurry to enlighten them. It’s better that they don’t know.”

Dyer correctly points out that if not for abortion Trump would win readily.

He almost gets to my “mass disability” concept but dares not go there.

Link. “When autonomous vehicles are able to operate in Minnesota winters they will also be able to converse about quantum field theory, exotic mathematical geometries, politics in the Maldives, art history, and their latest contributions to classical music.”

Just putting down a marker.

Link. Evolution is not deterred by complexity, redundancy, or contradiction.

“plants were creating a “pseudo-virus,” Jin said — little packets of RNA that infect a cell and then use that cell’s machinery to churn out proteins”

Link.

Link. Seeking a reformulation that would incorporate spacetime.

Link. “We hired AI trainers to browse the web and create short, fact-seeking questions and corresponding answers”

I wonder if they used “Amazing Turk”

“… there is a lot of room to improve the calibration of large language models in terms of stated confidence”

Link. I was curious and Perplexity pointed to this 2013 article where it was Number 10. Down from Number 3 in 2020. It’s usually a contributing cause. In 2024 suicide might push it out of the top 10. Seniors over 85(!) have top rates.

Link. Damn, this stuff is wild. 50% reduction in knee pain, nothing else but replacement comes close. Also, **FINALLY** word is getting out that OA is not “wear and tear”. Effect appears to be related to inflammation reduction and to maybe act at the joint (see also Alzheimer’s).

Personally I have impressive OA and remarkably little OA pain — and I have trouble keeping weight with my normal exercise addiction. I suspect GLP-1s wouldn’t help me much. But for most of the world …

Link. Great results. Real world unlikely to do as well but even 25% reduction justifies early replacement. New techniques make it work.

Link. Lowe doesn’t get easily excited, but unless some really bad side-effect shows up most people will be on GLP-1s within ten years.

Link. Derek Lowe, scientist and journalist, writes his Harris endorsement. This one line stood out for me because I think we all need to get real about what we are working with and will always be working with. People are often pretty bad.

Link. In a Scandinavian sample 1/6 had active infections at time of death and that probably understates mortality. The 541AD Justinian plague killed about 40 million and contributed to collapse of Western Europe.

Link. If Bezos will do this he’ll do anything to WaPo needed to preserve his power. Much as Musk has with X. WaPo’s only hope is a new owner.

Link. As we learn more we discover that “continent” is debatable. Not surprising.

“There are basically only two major continents,” Dr. Rime said. “Antarctica and everything else”

Link. My earlier prediction that in a Musk-Vance regime Elon’s sperm would be sold in pharmacies was not well received.

Musk’s eugenics concerns do not get taken seriously. Neither do his AI concerns.

Link. “Polarization raises the stakes of politics, giving cover to any politician inclined to flout democratic norms, because almost nothing could persuade members of their party to vote for the other side”

Parliamentary systems may be less fragile.

Link. Meanwhile Blogger never changes and still works about as well as it ever did.

Link. Not bad AI performance, but not good enough. This time the humans hold, and medical imaging AI was expected to beat the wetware.

Link. Cancel today. If Bezos sells the paper you can rejoin. You are canceling the automatic renewal. Remember the hidden cancel button fakeout WaPo uses.

Link. I agree.

“an issue to which higher-education white-collar workers shamefully have turned blind eyes and deaf ears, and to which ivory-tower think tanks have tried to defuse”

Link. Example: https://bit.ly/4ffO6Mk

Link. “… has been teased by an OpenAI executive as potentially up to 100 times more powerful than GPT-4”

Next is to combine with o1.

Link. Sounds like worthy of consideration.

Link. When you cancel WaPo don’t be fooled by their hiding the second button. Scroll down. If you don’t see a cancellation email they fooled you

It cancels renewal. In case Bezos exits.

Link. Personal issues.

Link. “… In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up.”

She quit her job and became a hero.

Link. Lots of times data doesn’t support a researcher’s expectations. The good ones publish. The worst one’s change the data. This isn’t as bad as changing the data, but it’s bad.

Link. Apple going Boeing.

Link. Going Boeing.

Link. HEIC looks like a dead end too. Maybe we should just do DNG RAW.

Link. Best explanation of holographic cosmologies I have read.

Internals modeled by “conformal field theory”, a variation of QFT.

Link. In a few months we should learn if any work.

Link. True that independents don’t read.

Link. More subtle than I imagined.

Link. “There are no canonical “best” XML tags that Claude has been trained with in particular, although we recommend that your tag names make sense with the information they surround.”

Should work with any LLM.

Link. Pharmacy Benefit Managers owned by CVS discriminate against local small pharmacies.

Link. Article explains how it can be funded — most often by city residents though usually the cost is hidden.

Link. Is Apple a terrible place to work now?

Link. Despair restored?

Link. Lots of illuminating commentary in this Tsai roundup.