Sugoi & Yokunai

Amazon is struggling as the cost of AI intensifies. Everyone acts like providing AI for free is so easy. The public is now conditioned to think that it's going to be like online search. But supporting those AI datacenters is not cheap. Something's gotta give. I would have thought that profits from Amazon retail would help support this, but I guess not.

Heck, even OpenAI is going to Google for support to keep their systems going. I guess Microsoft hasn't been able to deliver. What's going on?

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I have not heard of New Weird fiction before. But I like it. I like Old Weird, too, but they never classified those books as such. There should just be Weird Fiction or Disturbing Fiction. I don't think Powell's Books is using this category, though.

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Nice review article on reserveratrol. It's probably not the lifespan extender everyone was hoping it would be, but that anticancer, anti-inflammatory and neuro- and cardioprotective effects are still beneficial. I didn't know resveratrol had activity against Staph aureus and rotavirus diarrhea.

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Here's an interesting fact about global life expectancy over the centuries:

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A lot of people are upset about the loss of NPR, but it's important to remember what kind of a station it had become. I got tired of hearing the left-wing propaganda, too, and hated that it was supported by tax money. I remember the Jay Leno joke about listening to the radio to get caught up with what was going on regarding the war in Iran. In the morning he'd listen to Fox News and heard how we were winning, and then going home he'd listen to NPR and heard how we were losing. We don't need paid propaganda. NPR used to be fun, with Car Talk, Thistle and Shamrock, and Prairie Home Companion. Then it slowly became politicized and all the fun shows were just ways to poke jabs at conservative thought, while ignoring liberal idiocy. Not sad to see this go down finally.

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Oregon unemployment continues to increase. No surprise.

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Could it be this simple? 

The new results show that some gut bacteria, in certain states, produce imidazole propionate, a simple molecule with six carbon atoms, eight hydrogen atoms, two nitrogen atoms, and two oxygen atoms (C₆H₈N₂O₂). This compound enters the blood, interacts with immature white blood cells, and triggers an inflammatory reaction in the arteries, which promotes the buildup of fatty plaques.

Well now at least we have a target. But fighting atherosclerosis may look quite different. Perhaps we can have rich food again.

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Another marker of Portland decay.  Well, the Broadway Tower is going back to the lender.  The ground floor restaurant has closed. What will become of the empty building?

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What's behind the GenZ Stare? I've seen this look, and thought maybe it was just me. It's basically a look that says "I don't give a s**t about what happens."

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More than half of teens use chat AI for emotional support. Not only is it sad that this is happening, but think of the privacy concerns. Those companies have a treasure trove of information on these kids. Maybe it'll come back to haunt them later.

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Why is ChatGPT driving some people insane? So ChatGPT Psychosis is a thing now?

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Another report on California's SB 549. People are waking up. People voted overwhelmingly for Senators Ben Allen and Sasha Perez. I guess they really do deserve what they voted for.

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Portland is becoming a socialist city. This is why nothing improves and the city spirals downward.

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Oregon hospitals are going to get hit harder than most states. The old Tuality Hospital acquisition is now coming back to bite them. What an albatross it is. And Providence has their Seaside hospital, which will be a drag. All the hospitals will likely see a downturn now, just some worse than others.

Oh, and more Legacy nurses are joining the union. Just the thing to add more headaches to Legacy administration.

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"...A Portland Business Journal report notes that employment in Oregon’s burgeoning nonprofit sector now threatens to surpass the state’s total manufacturing employment base."
"The state’s nonprofit workers earn more ($70,596) than the average private business employee ($69,905)."
So Oregon's main economy will soon be NGOs. But as "the non-profit sector is heavily reliant on grants", this is likely to end soon. This is where Oregon's budget goes, and why people often say "What happened to the money?" when nothing changes.

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Oregon news media is drying up. Modern journalism doesn't pay anymore. You can tell by the quality of articles you see these days.

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Mayor Keith Wilson is sticking to DEI, even though it will cost the city around $387 million, because he refuses to eliminate racist and woke policies and sanctuary status. OK, then, you made your decision. Watch the city go down.

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Oregon state employees are going to get AI training. It doesn't say what they will learn, but I bet it will be just how to use ChatGPT.

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That's just cruel. Employees at King (makers of Candy Crush) will be replaced by the AI tools they helped train.

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What Caused the 'Baby Boom’? What Would It Take to Have Another?  It's not too difficult. People need to be financially comfortable. It's hard to feel like taking on marriage when you're financially struggling and have low self-esteem. Plus, the dating pool is crazy these days. Saw this on X today:

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What's contributed the most to the obesity epidemic? It's the food that people eat. Avoid ultra-processed food. But improving muscle bulk wouldn't hurt either. 

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Half of homeless people have experienced traumatic brain injury. I'm not surprised. And we're supposed to let these people make decisions for themselves? For a lot of them, this is how they got to be where they are. The sooner it is realized that we need to make the decisions for them, the better we'll solve the homeless problem.

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AI will cause harm, but it's worth it. That's what Jensen Huang says. And society will have to get used to robots everywhere. Gotta get American manufacturing going, too. Agree fully. It's not going to be easy but it will be necessary. But we also have to solve the energy problem.

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This study was promoted as showing the caffeine prolonged survival. Indeed, the authors conclude that caffeine is beneficial for chronological lifespan through AMP kinase, but it also synergizes with other genotoxic agents to increased DNA damage sensitivity (huh?). I'm OK with the former, but do I want the latter. Caffeine inhibits TORC1, just like rapamycin, and so that may be how it prolongs survival. It's not clear to me what the impact it's effects on DNA damage are. I'll still drink coffee until their figure it out, though.

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Japan recently set the record for the fastest Internet speed – 4 million times faster than U.S. broadband. I still chuckle remembering that some wag publicly states that 9600 bps was the theoretical limit to how fast the Internet could be. Yeah, sometimes it pays to ignore experts.

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The aluminum adjuvant in childhood vaccines was shown to be harmless. Well that's good, because I got it.

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If you ask Grok to show you a picture of a group of average Americans, it consistently shows you what looks more like average Baltimore. Or Detroit. That's the way it's been trained, I guess.

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What age is old? It seems to be getting later. That's great news for this ronin, who is probably considered old by anyone's definition.  Shikata ga nai.

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Asians are avoiding traveling to the U.S. now. So ironic – they have little to worry about. Meanwhile the U.S. will get unbridled in-migration from the Middle East and Central America. They're not scared.

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I agree. If you want facts, Perplexity is probably the best chatbot to use.

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People can't stop talking about the Intel layoffs, which will hurt Oregon. Someone pointed out that Multnomah County has the hospitals and Washington County has Intel, Nike and the datacenters. Everyone is hurting, though, but it may be that they will hurt differently, and at different rates. Each will pursue different strategies. I think the hospitals will be the most vulnerable, however.

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A great joke has been played on those whose homes burned down in the Palisades fire. Their tax money will be used to build low income housing in their neighborhood. How's that for adding insult to injury?

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The Fred Meyer in the Gateway district is going to close. They aren't saying why, but we know. More unemployed that the state has to support. Decreased tax collection for Multnomah County. Another empty building that will be a blight and a target for graffiti and vandalism. 

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Apple Maps is going to let you store your locations and let you track yourself. Kinda like what Google does, but this is not done surreptitiously and is under your control.  I'm not sure how useful this would be for me, but apparently some people like this feature.

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Don't let a Soham Parekh fool you with a VPN. Anyway, that's the message. So VPN providers will need to make their services even more undetectable. ProtonVPN was supposed to have done that with their Stealth protocol, but it kept getting detected, and even they recommended their Smart protocol.

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Can your brain run out of memory?  Of course it can – it's not an infinite resource. Sherlock Holmes had an interesting theory of memory:

This guy writes about how he keeps up with AI developments, and lists a long list of blogs. It would be so time consuming to have to read everything. One must just try to read as much and as frequenty as possible, and check out HackerNews and Lobste.rs. Maybe Reddit, but that source has too much chaff and not enough wheat. Nothing worthwhile is easy.

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O'Keefe Media Group catches Johnson & Johnson lead scientist admitting to scientific recklessness when it came to the COVID-19 vax. Science went out the window after 2020 and the public continues to suffer from this.

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Hmmm.Francesca Gino is suing to maintain her innocence in the data fraud case.

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The Pearl District neighborhood is upset that a homeless shelter is being built there. I'm willing to bet that at least 90% of them are Democrats. And that they mostly support the stance that "if only the homeless had homes, the problem would be solved". Keith Wilson is now just fixated on a number – 1500, and he doesn't care if he destroys Portland in the process. Imagine evenly distributing toxic centers of crime, garbage, graffiti, and fentanyl folders scattered in every neighborhood of the city. Way to go, Keith. Burn it to the ground, won't you? The City of Beaverton is already seeing degradation because, thanks to TriMet, the criddlers won't stay in Portland. And Beaverton's mayor seems to be building more shelters to welcome them. 

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Intel's layoffs are sparking concern amongst Washington County leaders. Democrats are so used to viewing business as their piggy banks to fund their latest wasteful programs, and now it looks like they'll have less revenue. Plus they have to support all those newly unemployed with the reduced tax base. And all the other businesses that depended on the patronage of Intel employees will suffer, too. KGW has a nice video on all the problems facing Portland and Oregon state. It doesn't look good, and it's probably now too late for the state to do anything. So they'll continue to spend money to make sure the criddlers are comfortable with their mobile services, including coffee services, blankets, tents, etc. Let the protestors make noise and riot near OHSU waterfront and the Mirabella retirement condos. Graffiti returns after every clean-up. There's gunshots and apartment fires and theft. What a mess Portland is.

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Even the homeless in Portland are amazed that the city has spent $97,000 per person on them.  He guessed it was around $50. 🤣

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What would happen if the Trailblazers left Portland? It would probably kill off chances that the MLB would want to start a franchise here, that's for sure.

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Kiro is Amazon's entry into the coding assistant arena. We'll see. Claude Code is what people still think is best, although Google bought Windsurf.

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The James Gunn Superman film bombed in China.  Now I really don't think I'll see it.

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Demand for Indian coders has collapsed. All those techies that invested time and money into coding now finding that their skills are not needed anymore. Unfortunately, the schools such as Indian Institute of Technology are not able to create new classes for the students, because exactly what will be in demand is still unclear. Really unfortunate waste of all that brain power.

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I've posted before (20 Aug 2024) on the aging process before accelerating at certain ages, but this article provides additional details. It's from Michael Snyder's lab at Stanford again, and this time, instead of two ages of rapid aging, there are now three ages: 40, 60, 80 years. Paper here. They used a fruit fly model, studying the Smurf phenotype, and found that by modifying certain transcription factors, they could delay aging transitions in females, but not males. What underlies the human transitions is still not clear, and we don't know what causes these changes. Snyder's group suggests that it might be the result of accumulated insults were subject our body to, but also lifestyle changes at these ages, like a decrease in baseline exercise levels, etc. I'm going to exercise more – I've gotten more sedentary as of late. 

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Scott Alexander reviews melatonin. It's a unique "drug" for which there has been a lot of studies, but these studies haven't translated into solid usage recommendations. It's all over the place, and this makes me think that just looking at natural levels in body is not something that we can easily manipulate. Taking the drug at 5 pm or 7 pm seems counterintuitive, and in all my experimentation I haven't found that anything I do makes any difference at all. Do I dream more? I can't say. Whether I take melatonin or not, I can't say I notice any difference. Interesting that melatonin has been associated with hair follicle growth stimulation. Paper here and here. But you have to apply it topically, which is kind of messy.

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I've said from the beginning that the Internet should be off-limits to children. It's because of crazy laws like this. Age-verification is not only difficult to implement but also a breach of privacy and is a waste of time. I doubt that young kids are going to Michael Ellsberg's site to get their jollies, anyway. To keep kids away from harmful material, it's going to take something like Black Mirror's Shut Up and Dance episode. Chilling.

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230 new viral genomes have been identified. These are a part of 200 newly-discovered giant viruses in marine environments. I think I was better off not knowing about this.

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Cops use a version of ChatGPT to generate reports that does not audit or keep usage logs. Perfect for doing this for which you want to hide accountability and transparency. Who designed this?

Then there's Grok 4, which if it detects that you are requesting something illegal, will snitch on you and notify the FBI, FDA (huh?) and the media. It turns out that OpenAI and Anthropic LLMs also do this, but far less often. Use local models, baby. 

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The plastic surgeon who faked COVID-19 vax cards had his case dismissed today. I understand what the surgeon did, and the reason behind his actions. Never before did the government force a nation to take a medicine, especially one as novel and untested as the mRNA vax. But falsifying medical records is wrong. He should have had to pay a nominal fine only. The proper way of resolving this would have been for brave and powerful politicians to stand up for what was right and prevent this from having to happen. Alas, it did not, and Dr. Michael Moore created his own suboptimal solution. This shouldn't happen again. Lots of things associated with COVID-19 shouldn't happen again.

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Oregon is one of the worst states to do business in. In CNBC's study, for the cost of doing business, Oregon ranked 43. For business friendliness, Oregon ranked 47. You seeing this, Tina?

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And now, apartment arson is a thing in downtown Portland. Criminals are caught but are let go. Who wants to invest in this city? Are you seeing this, Keith Wilson?

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Oregon’s biggest counties depend on international migration for population growth. 

This isn't something to brag about. I'm not reading about international migrants bringing in millions of dollars to invest locally.

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Corruption. An Oregon lawmaker pushed to fix his road with wildfire recovery money. Politicians doing what politicians do. This is why we need for more wildfire recovery money? Doesn't sound like it's helping to put out any fires.

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Stem cell treatment can help hearing loss. This treatment doesn't depend on the OTOF gene. The treatment is called Rincell-1, and is intended to regrow damaged nerves in the cochlea and allow them to start sending signals to the brain again.

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Some discussion about succession at Apple. Will Tim Cook step down? If so, I hope he's replaced by someone with more ambitious vision of the future. Someone who can bring us interesting technology like Steve Jobs did. Instead of just "thinner with more pixels" and new emojis. Tim sure loved him some emojis, didn't he? And someone who will ditch the pandering to the gay and BLM crowd.

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Zink is a python library that supposedly wraps around your data and anonymizes it before submitting it to a public LLM. It's not that easy to use, and I don't see many people wanting to go to the trouble of using it. But the article highlights the temptation for people to just give an LLM like ChatGPT all their data, which lets it train on it, making it forever public. Who knows if the data will be sanitized first.

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What happened when some techies decided to help medical AI tools use more diverse data? There was no market for it. Either they didn't have the money to pay for it, or they didn't think it was important enough. Sad.

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This writer thinks that coffee shops should embrace remote workers. Extend the time these workers can be allowed to be there. Add quiet spaces, collaborative areas. Uh isn't that what offices are for?  Looks like this person doesn't mind working in an office, as long as it's not the office of the company that the writer works for.  Maybe offices just need to change into something different from cubicle farms. Rather than build office space for people who just want to work in a different office. But how do you plan for how big you need to make it? This is something that sounds great in the conception stage, but falls apart when you consider the details. You'd hate to own a large space that's barely occupied, and you have an espresso and snack bar ready to serve, but there's not enough traffic. Just work at your office, man. That's what it's there for.

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Holy fck! Intel is going to lay off 2400 workers, not 500.  That's going to make a big impact in Hillsboro and Orenco Station. Another piece from the Jenga stack that is Oregon's economy. 

And Higgins Restaurant announced today that they are very near having to close permanently because they can't make a go of it. 

Yeah, that's on Portland. And if you manage to stay open, you will pay higher taxes for the privilege.  Doom Loop.

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Anthropic is bleeding out. Claude Code is popular but

Anthropic is very likely losing money on every single Claude Code customer, and based on my analysis, appears to be losing hundreds or even thousands of dollars per customer.

How can you continue to operate if your product bleeds you dry? I'm glad I'm not the only one puzzled by how this works.

But if you do want to use Claude Code, check out this site, which shows you a good system prompt to use to get the best output.
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Yep, it looks like the sh*tposters were right: Gavin Newsom is going to build low-income housing in Pacific Palisades. Can't have nice things anymore, Californians. Better get used to it. 

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Grok is trash now. People are saying that before it outputs a response, it checks to make sure that what it says is consistent with Elon Musk's opinions. No one is going to trust Elon's Grok4.

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Cool. If you have a M4 Mac Mini, you can upgrade its memory with a solderless kit.

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I haven't used Spotlight since I tried it when it first came out with OSX Tiger. It was lousy and I could never find stuff. I've been looking for something like the old Magellan Navigator. But I see that Apple has been working on it. Today I noticed, however, that if I have a file called something like "my-secret-stuff.txt" Spotlight won't find it if I don't type the file extension, too. So you have to know what kind of file it is, or Spotlight will not find it.

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Some articles about gabapentin and pregabalin have come out. It can work wonders short-term, but long-term, it causes problems. Long-term gabapentin causes cognitive deficits. Paper here. Then there's a report that long-term use of pregabalin is addictive.

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There's something ironic about AI taking the jobs of employees at Indeed.com and Glassdoor.com. They'll know how to get another job, I'm sure.

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Even The Economist realizes that the European asylum system isn't working. Really? It took you that long? I think it's too late for Europe now. There's too many migrants to do a Trump-style eviction. You'd definitely need an army, and in the process of removing them, the migrants will destroy everything in the city on their way out. No more nice things anymore.

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Wow, PARP1 inhibitors may be effective in treating EBV-associated lymphomas and carcinomas. Talazoparib would make a potentially effective maintenance therapy.

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I'm not going to see James Gunn's Superman. Gunn wanted to make a political statement about immigrants in this movie. He made Kal-El's parents evil instead of protective and loving, and removed the statement about "the American Way". The SFX are cheesy and Lex Luthor was terribly miscast. There are too many side characters, causing confusion, and what the hell happened to Green Lantern? And Superman is not the invincible Man of Steel – he gets beat up quite a bit. Superhero movies need to be directed by someone like Sam Raimi, Christopher Nelson or the Russo brothers.

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Two interesting articles on EVs:

• Why Your EV Won’t Fill Up In Five. There are good reasons why won't be seeing those EVs that recharge in 5 minutes and go for 1800 miles on a single charge, anytime soon. Yeah, wouldn't that be nice? Well it would take 7.2 megawatts—per car to charge that fast. Using monster cables. Want to live next door to someone who has that installed. Better move your house to the far side of your lot.
• Why Americans Can’t Buy the World’s Best Electric Car. The Chinese have an EV called the BYD. It only exists because of generous government subsidies. Supposedly it's better than Tesla, in that it can "rotate 360 degrees in place and operate in water like a boat over short distances". It can charge in 5 minutes (but what's its range?). And it sells for $10,000. I still don't trust Chinese engineering.

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Intel CEO says it's too late to compete in AI, as the company continues to shed staff. What a metaphor for the city of Portland. I wouldn't have believed in 2000 that this would the state of Intel.  Then I read this. Wow, Pat Gelsinger was basically unavailable every Thursday so he could space out on company time.

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Nifty. Google Veo can now turn an image into a short 8 second video.

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So now vector search is passé? It was the darling of AI a couple of years ago. But similar ≠ relevant, and relevant is what really matters. So we're back to lexical search.  Man, things change so fast.

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StackOverflow is unveiling their new self. Will it bring people back again? Well, maybe the AI bots will have new things to scrape.

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Tech workers really want to work from home. They're willing to take lower pay to make it happen. But those jobs that can be done at home as likely the ones that someone else can do with AI. One person is convinced that AI will take people's jobs after all, and we'll just become project managers, overseeing someone else's work. It's a new paradigm.

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Big Pink's new buyer wants to spiff up the place and attract people to come back to the building. What he doesn't realize that it's not the interior decoration that people didn't like. It was that it was in the middle of downtown Portland, and you have to negotiate the city streets to get there. Good luck, man.

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What a waste.  Why did the city of Portland need a Chief Equity Officer? Now there's money the city can save by cutting it.

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Watch out! Browser extensions may be spying on you. They use your computer to surreptitiously scrape the web on behalf of its clients. The llist of extensions is here.

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Even low doses of CBD (cannabidiol), like 5 mg/kg can harm your liver. I don't use this stuff, but a lot of people think it's safe.

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Here's a nifty thing – an e-paper digital picture frame that lets you display pictures, but doesn't require an A/C outlet.

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Nice post, that basically echoes the sentiment, dance as if no one is watching. You've seen it, I'm sure. I blog, even though I'm sure no one is reading. Except you. 

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I posted this earlier, and this article is an update. Deoxyribose sugar gel is still effective in stimulating hair growth in balding mice. Still waiting for the efficacy study in humans.

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Huggingface just released this cute little robot, which hey call Reachy Mini. It could teach enterprising youth to learn Python. Here's a video of it in action.  As long as this is not a wiretap device, like Echo or Alexa.

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If you've had a kid who is now about 20 years old, you probably know Steve from Blue's Clues. Here's a very engaging interview of him by Rainn Wilson. Steve Burns gives off the vibe of Tony Stark, but a more caring and authentic version, and that's what gives him his charm. He was able to engage kids without acting like a gay uncle, as some other kids show characters do. Being Steve definitely changed him, but in a nice way, and he sounds like he had finally found himself.

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