Sugoi & Yokunai

The Efficiency Moat: Why China Is Beating the U.S. on AI… And Everything Else. It can be painful to compare China and the U.S. in terms of construction. On the one hand, you have California and Hawaii which take forever to build high speed rail. Then you see what China can do. I know it's is an AI video, but I bet it's not too far from the truth.

––– 凄い –––

How to estimate the hypotenuse of a right triangle without having to use square roots. Doesn't work as well when a = b.

––– 凄い –––

Handwriting but not typewriting leads to widespread brain connectivity: a high-density EEG study with implications for the classroom. I write far less than I used to. With AI, people will even type less than they used to.

––– 良くない–––

RSS may make a comeback because of agents. Whatever the reason, it's good that RSS is making a return. Although I've moved beyond RSS, since its rules are too strict. Sometimes they stumble on simple ampersands, sometimes not. And all that messy CDATA crap.

––– 凄い –––

Why Star Wars went so wrong. No, it's not that it felt like homework. It's because it went woke. Nobody wanted the Star Wars universe to feel like a New England liberal arts college faculty lounge. America's Other Pandemic is still smoldering, but at least it's not blazing like it was a few years ago.

––– 良くない–––

There's still a lot of fakery in AI. Filipino virtual assistants are behind LinkedIn’s “thought leadership” content mill. Good ol' third-world labor. What would we do without them?

––– 良くない–––

Even their soldiers? Gen Z soldiers' plastic surgeries strain Korea's military readiness. What a strange society.

––– 良くない–––

Someone applied the Drake equations to show why it's highly improbable that he'll get a girlfriend. Rationally, this would apply to the vast majority of people. Yet here we are. (Although fertility is indeed declining.)

––– 良くない–––

Democratic city council member Rob Saka is now concerned that Mayor "Like-bye" may not have been a good choice. Really? You realized this when?

––– 良くない–––

No more Hawaii trips for Home Forward. "This is the role of a public official and not a corporate executive”.

––– 良くない–––

Seatte's building more of that tiny-home goodness. And here's what living next to one of these is like.  Toilet odor! Chlorine gas! Gas masks! Irreversible knee damage!  And yet, "Trudy Benjamin said she doesn’t have any problem with tiny homes."

Well, well, well. Looks like we got ourselves a real liberal, here, eh?
––– 良くない–––

The Oregonian discovers that overtime pay is out of control in Multnomah County, especially with the police.

And the city of Troutdale may 'run out money' if it continues to contract with the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office for law enforcement service, mayor says. 

Defund the police, they said. Because too many minorities are getting arrested, they said. And no one had the guts to oppose this.

––– 良くない–––

'We're facing layoffs': Portland homeless services at risk under budget plan. Is the Homeless Industrial Complex imploding? Looks like the non-profit scam is finally coming to and end.

––– 凄い –––

Japan team has 1st successful engine test for Mach 5 aircraft, eyeing 2-hr trips to US. This would be great. So maybe 1 hour trips to Hawaii? I would love it.

––– 凄い –––

Several years ago, there were reports that ARB drug like losartan might increase the efficacy of chemotherapy against pancreatic cancer. Even improve survival. I thought it was one of those one-off research findings that wouldn't reproduce and would get forgotten. But ARB drugs can potentiate the effects of olaparib, a PARP inhibitor, which is used in cancers of the pancreas, prostate and ovary.

––– 凄い –––

The proportion of men who attend college has really dropped off in recent years. And if you are a woman who doesn't attend college, your likelihood of getting married is about 50-50. Times have changed.

––– 良くない–––

University of Arizona students boo Eric Schmidt’s AI cheerleading during commencement. He's accused of not reading the room. But other college commencement speakers have been booed, too, while discussing AI. When I was a college student, I knew I didn't know everything, and when the university invited a speaker, it was assumed that some successful person was going to share words of wisdom. Not these kids. Good look on the job hunting.

––– 良くない–––

Scientists “bottle the sun” with a liquid battery that stores solar energy. The solar industry desperately needs an efficient way to store energy, not just feed it back into the grid. Maybe this will be a start.

––– 凄い –––

AI Rings on Fingers Can Interpret Sign Language. The signer would have to wear 7 rings, but the concept is nice.

––– 凄い –––

Chat on the major frontier platforms is not private. I know that, but others may not.

––– 良くない–––

The title is misleading – scientists are making some progress in identifying which neurons encode certain memories, but there's no device yet that allows one to erase memories. But here's something interesting:

Keep a portable game player with you at all times.

––– 凄い –––

KatanaPDF. Free PDF Editor. Runs in your Browser. This actually works. I tried to send the developer some money but after clicking Pay, the spinner just spins and spins. Get that fixed!

––– 凄い –––

People are working on devices that will prevent you from being recorded in public. It's becoming commonplace, and a nuisance as well as a privacy invasion. I can understand when law enforcement needs it, but not pranksters, "influencers" or just nosy nerds.

––– 良くない–––

Multnomah Village rally opposes plan to shift Safe Rest Village to recovery-only model. Portlanders are upset when these shelters are made to actually help people that need it, transforming from 'being just a low-barrier shelter where people can “come as they are,” into a recovery-only model that would likely add strict eligibility requirements'. Isn't that what taxpayer money is paying for? Recovery, not just a place to come and crash whenever, on the taxpayer dime.

––– 良くない–––

Oregon law can prevent mergers and acquisitions that degrade healthcare in the state. However it hasn't exercised this ability, and mergers and acquisitions have negatively impacted healthcare, especially in rural areas. Doctors are pawns in a game of mega-corporations now. It's not as rewarding to be a physician anymore, and one doesn't want to practice in an environment where one is close to burnout.

––– 良くない–––

What problems do Portlanders think are most important? So many things to be depressed about.

––– 良くない–––

Who’s moving to WA, and who’s leaving? There's some White flight. Mostly younger folk. The middle-aged and older folk are leaving. Native Washingtonians are leaving, being replaced by foreign immigrants. They say it's the tech industry. If so, why the White flight? I don't like it.

––– 良くない–––

The 48-Hour Cancer Binder. This post is both a fascinating inside look at how to use ML tools to design targeted drugs – a must read for anyone looking into pursuing this field. But it's also a great insight into organizing a hackathon team, divvying up tasks based on domain expertise, and working together to achieve the design goal.  A major part of success is being able to present your idea effectively, creating a great pitch. Apparently, not doing so is why these guys didn't win. 
BTW, there already is a drug that targets the FGFR receptor, erdafitinib, used for urothelial cancer, and I suspect it was designed in a similar way.

––– 凄い –––

Apparently working for Meta is a horror-show. I remember when working there was prestigious. Now, it's a nightmare.

Speaking of fear and horror, I just read about this condition (Urbach-Wiethe syndrome) where your amygdala gets inactivated by progressive calcification. You live without fear. Much of meditation and stress reduction techniques is training to learn to control signals from the amygdala. We need to have a little bit of fear, but in some cases, it can get in the way.

––– 良くない–––

This makes no sense. India Missed Out on AI and Now Its Run as Market Darling May Be Over. It seems like 80% of the AI articles, podcasts and YT videos are by Indians. Many workers in tech are Indians. How could they miss out on AI? They practically developed AI! Did all the graduates of IIT leave the country? How did their business leaders let this happen? 

––– 良くない–––

It's true. Google Maps no longer shows the destruction that happened after the massive Pacific Palisades fire. Check it out. It's like it never happened. Lahaina, on the other hand, shows the aftermath. Why did Google choose to revert back? Very strange.

––– 良くない–––

Here's a fascinating look at how the New Testament changed as it was copied over and over throughout the centuries. Imagine being tasked to copy that book by hand.

––– 凄い –––

Why birth rates are falling everywhere all at once. This theory posits that:

But the data shows that across broader society, the number of people finding partners and having children is declining despite intentions. This is notably pronounced among the least well off, and accompanies mounting loneliness and dating frustrations.

And even when couples can afford to move into their own place, they are increasingly likely to separate. In several countries, people who move in together are now more likely to split up than to have a child, a sharp reversal of the historical norm. 

Dissatisfied with purely economic explanations, researchers are beginning to point the finger at a new culprit — the digital devices and platforms that play an outsized role in young people’s lives across the world.

The number of births fell first and fastest in the areas that received high-speed mobile connectivity earliest. The authors argue that smartphones have transformed how young people spend time with one another, sharply reducing in-person socialising and leading to the collapse in their fertility.

In country after country the birth rate plunged after the introduction of smartphones, no matter what the previous trend was. The younger the age group, the more pronounced the downturn — a mirror image of smartphone usage patterns.

“If you spend lots of time socialising with your peers in the real world, your standards [for a potential partner] are anchored in the real world. If you spend your time on Instagram, your standards are anchored to an artificial sense of what is normal.”

So when you see what the ideal man or woman is on the Internet, the real life person standing in front of you just doesn't pass muster. You want the unattainable. Anything less just doesn't cut it anymore.

––– 良くない–––

A lot of people, it seems, are finding that they have high unauthorized Google API expenses. Even after you set spending caps. Sometimes you find that Google automatically upgraded your tier. How did this come about? Hacking? It's not clear, and Google is trying to sort it out. But it kinda sucks some of the fun out of AI coding, doesn't it?

––– 良くない–––

Scientists Say They’ve Invented a Serum That Activates a Dormant Ability to Regrow Lost Limbs in Mammals. This was shown in mice, through the sequential application of FGF2 and BMP2. Now do it in humans. 

––– 凄い –––

The search for the next James Bond actor has begun. Not crazy about the candidates listed, but oh well. It should be this AI-generated character.

––– 良くない–––

University of Washington is going to have a separate graduation ceremony for undocumented students. Of course they will.

––– 良くない–––

Is downtown Portland on the verge of a comeback? Here’s what locals think. One guy sees the homeless and his "heart breaks for them". He thinks that the reason for the slow decline of the city since 2020 is insufficient housing, and that adding more will drive people to live in the city. Well, Portland’s Housing Authority Sits On 955 Empty Apartments.  The number of vacant affordable housing units in Portland reaches 10-year high. The vacancy rate in downtown and SW Portland has increased 28% YoY. There are enough homes – no one wants to move in!! 

Sometimes I think that there wouldn't be any progressives if people were just better informed.

––– 良くない–––

SeaPort airlines offers TSA-free service to Portland, Seattle, Spokane from Redmond. It's like NetJets. Too bad it's located in Redmond, Oregon.

––– 凄い –––

Seattle considers state of emergency due to all of the 2SLGBTQIA+ refugees from Texas . I thought this was funny. No panic when illegal aliens and foreign TPS holders invade the Pacific NW. But when it comes to LGBTQ, it's suddenly an emergency. "And Texas is happy to have that crowd gone." I'll bet.

––– 良くない–––

How many government employees does it take to move three homeless people? Kevin Dahlgren exposes the Homeless Industrial Complex. Of course it takes a lot of people. Who will just kick them out and let them relocate somewhere nearby. But hey, the City did something, right? Rinse repeat. This is the HIC. The problem is now so big that it requires organized response, which means more money and people who have jobs to do. Which must be funded by taxpayers. And government grants.

––– 良くない–––

Sound Transit has a $35 billion funding gap. Dems everywhere love mass transit. They love to build it. Expand it. Even when it doesn't pencil out.

––– 良くない–––

AI research papers are getting better, and it’s a big problem for scientists. Fakery has to be dealt with firmly. Or else the whole industry of science publishing will need to be changed radically. Science is not well-served by AI slop.

––– 良くない–––

New credit card readers on Seattle transit charging untapped cards. It seems that the credit card readers are way too sensitive, no? People can get RFID-blocking wallets for their credit cards. They even make RFID-blocking cards themselves, which are about the same size as credit cards. They generated blocking signals when they detect the radio frequency that these readers send out.

––– 良くない–––

This guy started to get bizarre emails with strange subject lines. It turns out that they're generated by email agents from others. I don't get them probably because I haven't been targeted by these script kiddies. But this portends what we can expect when more of these idiots sent their agents out into the wild, scraping data and using it to target people with their stupid emails.

––– 良くない–––

Just what society needed: 3-D animated ads on trucks. Nice distractions. I'm sure there won't be any accidents happening because of the distraction.

––– 良くない–––

The Fix for Homelessness? Get Rid of All the Big Money to 'Fix' Homelessness. More people are realizing that NGOs don't want homelessness to go away, or else they won't have a business. NGOs are what progressives form to stay employed. They get grants, pay themselves a salary, and do absolutely nothing. Meanwhile the homeless are nurtured and their lifestyle cultivated. I recall when the homeless started out in cardboard boxes. Now they have the latest tents from REI. Where they can continue to use drugs, with paraphernalia provided by the city in the name of "harm reduction". They should not be given camping equipment and gear. They should be taken off the streets and plugged into social services and rehab under involuntary commitment. But no one has the guts to enact this in the major Northwest cities.

––– 良くない–––

Hawaii skirts the Citizens United v FEC Supreme Court ruling by passing their own local law that forbids corporate spending on election. Now, only the labor unions can spend money to influence the elections. Sounds fair.

––– 良くない–––

Oregon SoS says state is ‘going to defend’ mail-in voting as Election Day approaches. Back in 2010, Chris Dudley won on election night, but the winner wasn't declared until the next day, after more ballots were counted and then Kitzhaber miraculously won. They said it was because ballots counted in the major Blue cities took longer to count. Uh huh. Then there is the situation of early ballot submissions. Preliminary results from these ballots aren't announced to the public, but the ballots are opened and processed by election officials. We've seen how crooked some election officials can be in other Democrat states. How secure are they in Oregon? After seeing what happened in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Georgia, I am not confident that mail-in ballots are safe and secure. Then there is the documented practice of utilizing the situation of the homeless population to target ballots. Shelters can receive them for the homeless and supposedly the homeless person has to sign the outside of the envelope. But that's not a very difficult obstacle to surmount is it? And we know that some ineligible voters got ballots they shouldn't have. And Tom Fitton's Judicial Watch sued to get Oregon to clear their voter rolls of 800,000 inactive voters (roughly a quarter). They say that these people didn't get ballots, but who really knows? Why did they stall on this? So much of the vote-by-mail system relies on the integrity of the postal system, the chain of custody and signature verification. Knowing that a ballot came from a certain zip code might influence an election official. Ballot curing could be asymmetric, i.e. only Democrat ballots get cured promptly before the deadline. Drop boxes from certain zip codes might get treated differently from those in the big cities. Oregon law allows ballot harvesting, too, and this can be used by corrupt harvesters, who might "forget" to turn in a ballot or discard it if it's for the wrong candidate. 

We just need to get back to voting the old-fashioned way. It might not be as convenient, but it's a lot more honest. 

––– 良くない–––

The proposed layoffs accompany a host of other measures that Cudd says the university is using to bridge the deficit. These include savings from vacancies and retirements (estimated at roughly 48 employees and $7.2 million in savings) and eliminating cost-of-living increases for unclassified unrepresented staff and university administrators. Notably, the university is also raising tuition—Cudd said the university’s board had approved a roughly 5% increase at its last meeting. 

Imagine being a business that insurance companies contract with to issue medical denials to doctors, so insurance companies can save money. That's EviCore. 

EviCore markets itself to insurance companies by promising a 3-to-1 return on investment — that is, for every $1 spent on EviCore, the insurer would pay out $3 less on medical care and other costs. EviCore salespeople have boasted of a 15% increase in denials, according to the investigation, which is based on internal documents, corporate data and dozens of interviews with former employees, doctors, industry experts, health care regulators and insurance executives. Almost everybody interviewed spoke on condition of anonymity because they continue to work in the industry.

How do these people sleep?

––– 良くない–––

Why Was the Discovery of the Jet Stream Mostly Ignored? Because the Japanese discoverer published his findings in Esperanto. 🤦🏻‍♂️ This story is interesting because Japanese WW II balloons carrying bombs drifted to the Pacific NW, and started a fire in the Siskiyou National Forest. 

What will go down as the best physics of this century? Here's a few good candidates.

––– 凄い –––

The newest AI boom pitch: Host a mini data center at your home. Who knows? It might cut down on heating costs.

People Would Rather Have Nuclear Power Plants In Their Area Than AI Data Centers. Some day, they'll have both. 

––– 凄い –––

The Chinese have got us by the short and curlies. The U.S. was supposed to shut down foreign-made routers by 2027 for security reasons. But doing that will shut down America's network security system. So it's been pushed back to 1 Jan 2029. At least.

––– 良くない–––

Just what America needs, huh. Cannabis Use Disorder Strongly Linked to Major Depression, New Review Finds.

––– 良くない–––

Sleep linked to slower ageing: huge study pinpoints the right amount. Six to eight hours.

––– 凄い –––

Bitcoin trader recovers $400,000 using Claude AI after getting 'stoned' and losing wallet password 11 years ago — bot tried 3.5 trillion passwords before decrypting an old wallet backup. Yeah he was ecstatic about it. Another reason not to get stoned.

––– 凄い –––

There's a reason why some people have a policy never to negotiate with terrorists. Instructure's payment to hackers will just keep them in business doing it again. This wasn't the first time Instructure was hacked. You think they'd learn at least. They should fire their IT people.

––– 良くない–––

The myelin sheath is not just the insulator nerves. It also regulates neuroplasticity. Myelin is what makes white matter in the brain look white. 

––– 凄い –––

Yay, Portland State. Researchers at that unlikely university came up with an effective malarial agent that hits the parasite at multiple stages in its development. PSU – who would have thunk, huh?

––– 凄い –––

Diseases can spread between apartments via shared ventilation. Another reason why homeless shelters are just a bad idea.

––– 良くない–––

Governments Influence AI Chatbot Responses by Controlling Online Information Sources. This is much like how some pranksters made chatbots say that their CEO was the sexiest bald man alive. Chatbots are so malleable.

And here's a company that sells "authenticity" at a price. Here you can "buy" an influencer persona that will sell your product for you. Everything can be fake in the AI world.

––– 良くない–––

Browsers Treat Big Sites Differently. At first I thought this was something nefarious, but the reason for this is because websites cater to Chrome, and don't look as good on other browsers. So rather than wait for website developers to fix their websites, browsers just implement fixes quietly, and do it in a way you'd never notice, unless you were a browser nerd.

––– 凄い –––

No, CNN you are wrong. You cannot "reverse much of the damage alcohol has done to your body". Acute intoxication will fade, but damage to your brain and liver are irreversible. In fact, the attempts by the liver to regenerate are what cause cirrhotic nodularity and hepatocellular carcinoma.

I hate when opposition to the mRNA vax gets painted as opposition to ALL vaccines. Like this article by Derek Lowe, who should know better. Derek was and is a champion of the mRNA COVID vaccine. Yeah, there was efficacy data on the ancestral strain, but that efficacy rapidly petered out by the time the delta stain came on the scene, and that's what the coronavirus experts predicted what would happen all along. It's the reason why there has not been a successful vaccine against that type of virus. And Derek chooses to direct a blind eye to all the data highlighting the dangers of that vax preparation. Why there was so much censorship, as Alex Berenson experienced.  And I can't believe Derek is convinced by Moderna's mRNA flu vaccine study, which Alex debunked so well. He thinks RFK Jr just doesn't people to have vaccines at all. What crap!

––– 良くない–––

Epic Pencil lets you annotate on your screen, like you can in apps. Could be handy during video conferencing.

And hush makes you realize how commoditized voice transcription is now. The app uses OpenAI's open source whisper API model, which they made public in 2022 under the MIT license. So there is no "dictionary" like there was in voice dictation apps of the olden days. It needs Apple's metal GPU API to make it run with reasonable latency, but it may still be long enough to be annoying (~6 sec). Everything stays on the machine. It's all local. And it doesn't have Apple 60 second time limit. It's push-to-talk once you install it and works everywhere. Whisper is said to be more accurate than Apple's dictation anyway.

Free-Scene solves a problem that I've had with AI videos, namely that they are too short. You can just capture a single short scene. Yeah, I could use iMovie to stitch videos together, but this app does it for you. Input the prompt and it will create a single video with all the individual videos stitched together. 

––– 凄い –––

It's sad how people have abandoned StackExchange. It's a ghost town now.

––– 良くない–––

What happened to the car designed for women, by women? I thought this was going to be an article that would just ridicule "the car designed by women, for women". But actually some of the ideas are good and make sense. I don't like the plain, minimal design approach, though. The exchangeable seat covers makes sense, but it's much better to have seats that are just easier to clean. But this car sure gets its looks from Volvo than Jony Ive.

––– 凄い –––

If you're a web designer and want to capture the look that your target audience would expect to see, this website is for you. It's called who are you?  It captures the look and feel of some many websites that cater to different interests.

––– 凄い –––

Oops. A major microplastics finding went out the window. Lesson: check controls first before publishing.

––– 凄い –––

Oregon enables students to skip state tests and it’s undermining improvement. Well, you can't improve what you can't measure.

––– 良くない–––

Laika's Wildwood teaser portrays a Portland that doesn't exist anymore. No homeless tents. Safe to drink from Benson Bubblers. Saturday Market and Burnside plaza is filled with nice things. You can't have this world if you don't want to come down hard on crime and drug use, and continue to endorse harm reduction and shunting your economy to supporting the criddler lifestyle.

––– 良くない–––

Even the Metro Chamber of Commerce opposes expanding the Arts Tax. People are saying it should just be eliminated completely. It's not 2012 anymore. Art isn't a priority. The people can spend the money more wisely.

––– 良くない–––

Propser Portland tells the city that they want their Old Town property back. Revitalization ain't going to happen.

––– 良くない–––

Portland is about to close nearly 450 shelter beds, as homelessness rises. It was a waste of money.  Can you believe that there is a "sober section of the Reedway Safe Rest Village"? What's the rest – the wasted section? The fentanyl section? Good grief.

––– 良くない–––

Google is launching GoogleBook, a laptop with Gemini AI built-in. I'll pass. 

But Google is also "re-imagining" the mouse pointer. It's using AI to predict the context of the mouse pointer to interpret your voice command properly. This is getting closer to the technology seen in the old Corning video A Day Made of Glass. Hard to believe that was made 15 years ago, which the iPhone was still in its ascendancy.

––– 凄い –––

This is the Gillian Tett article that is making the rounds. I just found out about it recently.

Ouch. I guess the fears were true. People can pass the tests and get their degree, made possible by chatbots, but they lack the skills that the degree is supposed to signify that they possess.

––– 良くない–––

All the demons hiding in your AIs. I wasn't aware of this, but with the frontier models, there does appear to be a tendency for them to be attracted to certain topics. So much so that Codex for GPT-5.5 had to explicitly tell the LLM not to focus on such topics. Some are relatively benign but some are disturbing. What is the origin of this behavior? They are called demons or attractors, but whatever they are, people don't talk about them much. It's just swept under the rug. The Loab attractor is intriguing, and would make a great horror story, except that you'd have to explain it first, and that would away much of the punch. People would just think it was too outlandish to be plausible. The Wikipedia article on Loab is even more disturbing. 

––– 良くない–––

It's good to see that the prevalence of dementia has been decreasing over the years. The data is from northern Europe. Hopefully it reflects efforts to improve brain health. But whatever it is, it's better than the alternative. 

––– 凄い –––

Mozilla had a head start on all the other tech companies. Why did it not thrive?  I still think the ouster of Javascript creator and Mozilla co-founder Brendan Eich in 2014 for specious reasons, was a major reason for its downfall. Brendan has done well enough afterwards, but probably could have done more for Mozilla if he stayed. Waste of talent.

––– 良くない–––

ShotGlass looks to be a great video screen capture app that I'll probably download.

––– 凄い –––

Everything tech eventually gets sleazified. Some browser extensions exist just to collect and sell your data. This is an add for LayerX, which purports to protect you from this. I wish they listed all the apps they knew about that were bad players.

––– 良くない–––

How embarrassing. Beware what you tell your AI chatbot. It’s not a shrink – it’s a snitch. How many people don't know this already?

––– 良くない–––

Alzheimer's disease drugs don't do very much. And yet they cost a lot. Profit for the drug companies.

––– 良くない–––

The New York Times Got Caught Using AI Hallucinations in Its Reporting. Yes, this is a very big deal, and shows how far the once-great newspaper has fallen. Enshittification happened there, too.

And AI killed the 133 year old honor system at Princeton. 

Back then, however, academic dishonesty was constrained not only by codes of conduct but by the amount of effort it required. A student who wanted to cheat had to go to the trouble of finding someone who would let them copy their answers.
The internet and the shift to doing work on computers rather than by hand dramatically lowered the barriers to cheating. 

So now, there will be proctors during in-person exams.

Yeah, Princetonians weren't necessarily more honorable. It was just that nobody wanted to let someone else benefit from their efforts. 

––– 良くない–––

Washingtonians are upset that their so-called 1% property tax cap will also go bye-bye.

––– 良くない–––

40%-plus of Portland residents are considering moving. If it weren't for low-interest mortgages that some people want to hang on to, it would be higher.

––– 良くない–––

Mayor Bye-Bye has a problem. Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson’s budget deficit nears half-billion dollars, raising threat of taxes and layoffs. 

And Seattle-area prices jump nearly 5% from a year ago. And of course, Seattle Times blames it all on Trump. Of course.

––– 良くない–––

Starbucks cuts more jobs in Seattle. 61 more corporate jobs cut. And they still say they aren't moving their corporate HQ from Seattle. Yeah, right. Still think the rumors are "like, super-overblown", Mayor Bye-Bye?

––– 良くない–––

Survival of Patients Diagnosed With Cancer During the COVID-19 Pandemic. You can tell that the authors struggled for the right wording. They didn't want too sound to harsh on the doctors or policy makers, who may already harbor suspicions that they did the wrong thing. Those were dark times for cancer patients. Treatments were delayed and rescheduled. We see now that much of the fear was overblown. How can we learn from all of this, and strive for a more measured and informed response to pandemic threats like this. 

Today, Dr. Marty Makary resigned as FDA Commissioner. He's going to be replaced by...a lawyer? If Makary opposed fruit-flavored vapes, why was he overruled? It's too bad because he was a sane voice against the mRNA vax. Maybe Big Pharma pushed him out.

––– 良くない–––

Harvard Study Finds Wind Turbines Will Cause More Warming Than Emissions Reductions Would Avert. The Harvard study came out in 2018 – why are just finding out about it now? The study also found that 

Ice cream isn't what it used to be. More enshittification. What was surprising is that Häagen-Dazs is now considered premium ice cream. I remember when ice cream snobs looked down on it. But it's actually more true to the original than Tillamook ice cream, a local favorite. And now I have another reason to avoid Ben and Jerry's ice cream, besides their politics.

––– 良くない–––

Have you noticed geeks walking around with half-opened laptops? Here's why. They're running agents. This is getting out of hand, no?

––– 良くない–––

Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems may have a connection to zero-knowledge proofs. I saw Amit Sahai's name in the article. He did a nice video some time ago explaining the mechanics of zero-knowledge proofs to where you could understand them.

––– 凄い –––

It finally happened. Coursera and Udemy have completed their merger. This is a great way to educated about a lot of stuff. Hope this makes their offerings even better.

––– 凄い –––

I thought this was a joke. Some Swedes are promoting a program where you can get doctors to "prescribe Sweden", that is, a short stay in the country to relax and escape. If they're going to do this, they'd better reverse their immigration policy, which is rapidly ruining the Swedish culture and experience. Pretty soon, it won't be any different from staying in downtown Portland or Seattle, which would be a lot cheaper.

––– 良くない–––

Chinese-born AI researchers are increasing in the Bay Area. 

Holy crap.

––– 凄い –––

A drug called tofersen can help some patients with ALS. Tofersen is an antisense oligonucleotide of a mutated superoxide dismutase, SOD-1, commonly associated with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. It has to be administered intrathecally.

––– 凄い –––

Digg is now trying to be an AI news aggregator company. Give it up, already. News aggregators are so yesterday. Besides, news is personal. I may not like the news feeds they select to get their news from. The company is clearly adrift.

––– 良くない–––

True State of Oregon under a Democrat Supermajority:

What are Portland voters concerned with most?
Oregon Democrats have genius political strategy: raising the gas tax heading into the midterm elections
Oregonians push for universal childcare, as report shows costs can exceed $20K annually. Why do we have to pay for other people's childcare? It seems to be a "Learing Center" grift. It's a business model for people who can't find employment any other way. 

Shock poll: 59% Portlanders dislike Kotek. Just imagine what the numbers would be outside of the Blue cities. 

––– 良くない–––

Garry Tan is CEO of Y Combinator, and he recently described a peripheral brain that he created from OpenClaw and Hermes Agents. He obviously put a lot of work into it, but what struck me was the amount of stress he must be going through. He doesn't go into detail regarding his "hard period" but it made be wonder what people are going through these days. How many need therapists to get through the day? His Gbrain tool that he crafted seems to be even better than a therapist. He uses frontier models as his LLM, and I wonder what precautions he has taken about how his content is being handled on the other side. But the drive to create a "thing" that understands you well is elemental. We all strive to find that something or someone.

––– 凄い –––

Claude Mythos found a CVE (common vulnerability and exposures) in FreeBSD dating back to around 2000. It was not detected and was copied over and over, until being detected now. This is scary. 

“Before the meeting even starts,” he told DealBook, “when I see that A.I. note taker pop up, I’ll just say: ‘Hey, Mike, Jim, Barbara, I see the A.I. note taker popped up. I’m going to turn it off and kick it out of the meeting.’”

This happens more and more. “Everybody and their mother is using these things,” Gifford said. “Executives are using them, boards are using them, nonexecutive businesspeople are using them.”

The EU becomes the latest authority to signal that VPNs are next, after launching its age verification app — here's how VPNs went from a necessity security tool to circumvention software that needs to be restricted. They want the foot in the door. So they can erode privacy more, bit by bit. Like they erode free speech. If they want to verify age, this guy's protocol is best I've seen so far.

––– 良くない–––

Anthropic adds religious input from these religions: Sikh, Hindu, Jewish, and LDS to round out their ethics. Uh, what are we building, guys?

––– 良くない–––

Scientists Engineer Blood Clots That Stop Severe Bleeding in Seconds. Native coagulation targets plasma proteins or platelets. RBCs are just snagged secondarily. This technique modifies RBC membranes to enroll them in the clotting process. Clever, but don't let it get away. Stay local. The hemostasis-thrombosis system is like a chemical bomb in our bodies, ready to go off at a moment's notice. Just like the histamine system. If these systems were systemically activated, we'd die instantly. Just like what happened in Piedmont, NM in the Andromeda Strain movie.

––– 凄い –––

Not just Apple. Tesla and SpaceX are going to invest in Intel. Gotta get me some Intel stock. Wow, what a turnaround.

––– 凄い –––

Typing Is Being Replaced by Whispering—and It’s Way More Annoying. The best solution would be intelligent enhanced typing. Error correction that guesses correctly, and fixes what you type instantly. Dictation is not quite the best solution.

––– 良くない–––

Chewing gum releases microplastics in your mouth. It's everywhere.

––– 良くない–––

Lament from a mathematician who wants to contribute to math, but knows that attaining the status of the greats is beyond reach. I just saw that this post is from 15 years ago. Hope that person found something to work on.

––– 凄い –––

inMusic is going to acquire Native Instruments. inMusic already owns Akai, Moog, Denon, Numark, Rane, and M-Audio. I hope this means that more sounds (especially from Moog) will be available through Native Instruments.

––– 凄い –––

Apple promised a smarter Siri, but a lawsuit says it didn’t deliver—and you can get up to $95 back. But only if you bought your iPhone between June 10, 2024, and March 29, 2025. Darn.

––– 良くない–––

‘Nowhere near a done deal’: Portland leaders buck pressure as clock ticks on Moda Center. The city can't afford to do this. But they will be pressured to do it anyway, so Tina Kotek and the state don't lose face. Meanwhile, every month that goes by, the city looks less and less attractive.

––– 良くない–––

Oregon teachers protest Nike over tax breaks, factory wages.

About two dozen teachers protested Saturday in front of Nike’s downtown Portland store, demanding the sportswear company pay more Oregon taxes to fund public education.

Gimme some!––– 良くない–––