Link. Lyft / Uber say it’s not their problem.
Monthly Archives: April 2023
Mike Lindell loses arbitration, told to pay $5 million in ‘Prove Mike Wrong’ election-fraud challenge.
Link. “He was the only expert who submitted a claim, arbitration records show.”
$5 million lying on the floor and one guy picked it up. The actual data sounds like pure garbage.
Resveratrol: “The entire sirtuin/longevity area appears to be a steaming pile of artifactual results, overinterpretation, and publication bias, which is why it’s 2023 and nothing useful has come of it yet after all these years”
Link. 700 million vaporized — along with many academic careers wasted.
“Before ChatGPT, Michelle used Google for many hours each week. But after, her use of Google has plummeted more than 50 percent.”
Link. Google spent much of the past 10 years as a parasite on the web as their search tools got worse and worse. Now comes the price.
“The world is at an AI “inflection point,” one expert said, and it’s time to step on the gas to “terrify our adversaries.”
Link. This was an easy prediction.
“if a thief watches you enter your passcode, then steals your phone, they can flick the Recovery Key option on (Settings > Your name > Password & Security > Account Recovery > Recovery Key), and you are then stuffed.”
Link. If a guy pulls a wrench on me, much less a gun, he gets my passcode. And I’m screwed.
Some good workarounds mentioned.
“Three prominent First Amendment lawyers uniformly agreed that Fox’s settlement was record-setting, massive, and would be too painful for the network to ignore.”
Link. I get why Fox and the MAGA want to spin this.
US Fall 23 Covid Boosters for 65+ (if healthy)
Link. Other nations use 75 or 80. Apparently under 65 are doing quite well.
See the websites that make AI bots like ChatGPT training sites: “… b-ok.org No. 190, a notorious market for pirated e-books that has since been seized by the U.S. Justice Department. At least 27 other sites identified by the U.S. government as markets
Link. Straight out theft is one way to get quality material. OTOH publishers are kind of satanic.
COVID probably increase risk of DM in men: “Men were 22 percent more likely to develop diabetes, compared with unexposed individuals.”
Link. Twice risk if more severe COVID. Biologically plausible given ACE-2 on beta cells. I didn’t realize Hep C effect was so large. Other viruses similar and we know Type I DM is mostly post-viral.
COVID vaccines yearly: “Pfizer and Moderna have pledged to offer the shots at no cost to those who lack insurance.”
Link. Kudos merited. Biden admin negotiated with CVS and Walgreens for admin.
Precision Fermentation: Eating bacterial products.
Link. First I’ve heard of this but seems logical and inevitable.
Israel: “the country’s integration into the Middle East style of politics is making great progress”
Link. Yet another collapsing democracy.
“donors are now bailing, because it looks increasingly as if DeSantis’s intolerance and conspiracy theorizing weren’t a political show — they’re who he really is.”
Link. It was ok for donors if he was faking it, but it appears DeSantis is genuinely bitter and hate filled.
“the effort to restrict transgender rights has supplanted same-sex marriage as an animating issue for social conservatives at a pace that has stunned political leaders across the spectrum”
Link. The GOP “threw everything against the wall” until they found something to animate their dispirited base.
“A popular method of teaching, known as “balanced literacy,” has focused less on phonics and more on developing a love of books and ensuring students understand the meaning of stories”
Link. 20y ago the science was pretty clear and I figured phonics would be back by 2003. I never dreamt we’d be still be screwed up in 2023. Teacher unions and Dems own this debacle.
The End of Computer Magazines in America.
Link. “what’s most striking about this chart is Computer Shopper’s utter collapse … Once a 1,000-page (!!!) monthly behemoth”
I felt the doom when BYTE died. There were so many very thick monthlies.
“they dramatize the ethical collapse of today’s Supreme Court, and clarify why its current members won’t or can’t correct the situation.”
Link. Roberts historic reputation is sealed. One of the worst leaders of SCOTUS and we have seen some real stinkers.
“Clarence Thomas is the epitome of the right kind of affirmative action working the right way.” Few words could sting him more.
ChatGPT for iOS: S-GPT 1.0.2 Brings Date and Time Awareness, Integration with macOS Services Menu, Passthrough Mode, Better HomePod Support, and More
Link. You need to read the manual.
Laura Jedeed dissects Matt Taibbi as only a fan can and explains what killed him as a journalist.
Link. “Crawl across all the broken glass you want. Eat maggots, bleed yourself dry: I’m a writer too, I get it. That’s not your sin. Your sin is writing a one-dimensional story.”
Laura, self-exiled from her beloved Twitter, explains why she can’t do Mastodon. (I agree.)
“if you’re a used bike bargain hunter then early 21st-century cyclocross bikes should be on your radar”
Link. Gravel before it’s time.
China’s ChatGPT crisis: it’s too honest.
Link. Hard to block only the parts that the Party dislikes. “Please summarize the Tiananmen Square uprising in 4 paragraphs.”
“Republicans have total control of legislatures in 28 states … It is Republican-run states, many experts say, that are taking extreme positions on limiting voting and bending or breaking other democratic norms”
Link. In typical NYT style the top 1/3 of column implies a bipartisan problem. More than half of American states are non-democracies or heading that way and they are mostly GOP.
Japan does little for citizens locked up by China on fake charges.
Link. Contrast Canada.
Work in the gig economy: a high price at the low end.
Link. Living and dying by 5 star reviews. Information asymmetry without union or regulation means workers will lose.
The GLP-1 “glutides”: “There’s evidence that multiyear use is associated with an increased risk of medullary thyroid cancer, an effect that can be seen histologically in rodent models as well. “
Link. OTOH they may help with some impulse disorders and addictions and may have a use in schizophrenia.
“It may be hard for normal human beings — I’m sorry, I mean non-economists — to appreciate the awesomeness, the historic nature of last Friday’s employment report.”
Link. “The overall unemployment rate is only 3.5 percent; we haven’t had that spirit here since 1969. Black unemployment is at a record low. There’s good news everywhere you look.”
“Some 97 percent of Ukrainians surveyed now say they believe they will win the war”
Link. I would have said that was an impossibly high number.
On Russia’s failed attempt to take out Ukraine’s power: “Repair work that might have been expected to take 260 days of work, he found, had been completed in just 40.”
Zuckerberg lays off 30% of Meta workforce.
Link. A shock to Millenials but not to older staff. Bain consulting creating the kill lists. Employees think the Metaverse Is dumb.
More ways in which Apple Photos kind of sucks and wants to discard your family photos.
Link. Remember – Tim Cook killed Aperture.
“while the parents of the shooter believed their child should not own any guns, particularly while receiving treatment for an unspecified emotional disorder, there was no law in Tennessee that could have allowed them to confiscate any weapons”
Link. Repeal the 2nd.
Whacko Arizona House Rep evicted … with GOP votes?!
Link. That’s unexpected.
More keyless car theft: “The way CAN Injection works is to get into the car’s internal communication (i.e. the CAN bus) and inject fake messages as if from the smart key receiver, essentially messages saying “Key validated, unlock immobilizer”. In m
Link. Web sites sell break-in kits for as much as $5000. The electronics in them cost about $10.
“mostly these cars are destined for export, sent via shipping container to places in Africa”
Maybe we should go back to keys.
Chinese Cinema – the Selfless Party and the Ugly American
Link. Pretty much what one would expect.
Microsoft’s ChatGPT box: “10,000 graphics cards and over 285,000 processor cores”
Link. I think this is a training platform but article is unclear.
GPT-4 gets a B on final exam for Aaronson’s Introduction to Quantum Information Science. The wolf is here.
Link. Without doing the course. About average for the brilliant undergrads who dare this class. Likely would do better with Mathematica plug-in.
Also got an A in Bryan Caplan’s Labor Econ midterm. After losing his bet Caplan said: “AI enthusiasts have cried wolf for decades. GPT-4 is the wolf. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.”
#AI #chatgpt4 #beafraid
Lokiarchaeum ossiferum of the elusive Asgard archaea … holds clues to the evolution of complex, eukaryotic life.
Link. Recent seafloor discovery
Importing tweets to Micro.blog
Link. “importing an archive of your tweets to Micro.blog. This is available to all paid subscriptions and can be accessed on the web under Posts → Import”
“So why were scammers still sending such obviously dubious emails? In 2012, researcher Cormac Herley offered an answer: It weeded out all but the most gullible.”
Link. I’m sure this has occurred to many of us (it did to me), but it’s weird that it’s still not widely understood. Current tech favors predation on the cognitively impaired but LLMs open new markets for more sophisticated attacks. (Cognitive scientists theorize human cognition was driven by deception use and detection.)
De Fiets is Niets: how the Netherlands built a bike-pedestrian ideal.
Link. Fascinating reading. It is annoying that sometimes the NIMBY are right. This is why politics is messy.
“Mesenchymal stem cells and transforming growth factor-β were found to be the most important downstream effectors regulated by miRNA in OA.”
Link. Not a surprise. I do wonder about retrovirus like gene expression. Even birds seem to get something like OA though, so it would be a long ways back.
Laura Jedeed quits Twitter – again.
Link. “I started going back “just to promote my work” which was a bit like an addict doing “just a little bit of cocaine”; soon I was posting full-time again.”
Mastodon’s social conventions are too constraining for Laura — and it’s still too tech. There really isn’t an easy Twitter alternative.
“As soon as the papers were signed, Lee told Grant his men were starving and asked if the Union general could provide the Confederates with rations. Grant didn’t hesitate. “Certainly,” he responded, before asking how many men needed food. He took Lee’s an
Link. Grant was among the most astounding of our leaders.
A market oriented approach to managing rail safety.
Link. A third alternative to litigation and micro- regulation.
SR-71 Disintegration: “imposed forces on the airframe that exceeded flight control authority and the Stability Augmentation System’s ability to restore control”
Link. “time from event onset to catastrophic departure from controlled flight was only 2-3 sec”
1966 test pilots had interesting work days.
RSV vaccines arrive and more vaccines for more diseases are coming.
Link. 30y of painstaking work + COVID pays off big time.
COVID bumped NYC 2020 death rate by 50%
Link. I suspect 2022 will be below baseline. Big jump by our standards but small compared to 19th century epidemics.
“Taibbi did this by assuming that when someone at Twitter noted information came from CIS, they must have meant CISA, and therefore he appended the A in brackets as if he was correcting a typo”
Link. They are soooo dumb.
The Atlantic tries to figure out MTG: “a system he invented called the “Taylor Effect”—which purports to predict the stock market based on the gravitational fluctuations of Earth”
Link. Bob Taylor was a successful entrepreneur, MTG’s father, and quite nutty. I highly recommend this brief and ambitious essay. MTG, like Ginni Thomas, is a natural born cultist: the cults change but the person remains.
“if we maintained really high antibody titers to every pathogen we saw, we wouldn’t be able to pump our blood because it would be so full of protein”
Link. Why titers fall. Obvious, but I didn’t think of that. Vaccines against respiratory viruses prevent severe disease but not infection.