Today, being May 1, is Beltane, and in the old calendar, the first day of summer. In northern Europe, it's Walpurgis Day, and they celebrate with sweets and mead. I first learned about Walpurgisnacht after listening to Night on Bald Mountain by Mussorgsky. But today is a special day, and I can't believe that summer is already here. June 21 will be Midsummer's Day, not the first day of summer. No, that day is today. π
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Nice discussion about how the AI boom will be powered. Clearly we need better energy sources, and cannot depend on wind, solar and hydropower. It's just not feasible. It will have to be nuclear. We can have this today, but regulation is the thing that hampers its development. There's a lot of scared politicians. A society with abundant energy is a better and happier society.Β
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Worldβs first optical computing system runs billion-parameter AI with 90% less power. Very nice, but we will still need more power.
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Apparently melanoma growth is modulated by the sympathetic system.Β Β
This is interesting, but I can't think of how to use this information to treat melanoma. The work that's being done with targeted and immunotherapy is a better way to go.Sympathetic nerves, the same ones responsible for the βfight-or-flightβ response, can actually inhibit tumor growth. By releasing norepinephrine, these nerves flip a molecular switch on immune cells, preventing the tumor from recruiting the cellular allies it needs to thrive.
FDA grants early access to daraxonrasib for pancreatic cancer.Β This is a breakthrough drug, and I'm certain there will be better second generation drugs. But this is a start, finally making inroads against an undruggable target.
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Earth is splitting open beneath the Pacific Northwest, scientists say. Sounds dramatic. Hopefully it won't be. But we are overdue for the "big one".
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Well this is crap. Dangerous tapeworm never before seen in PNW live in Seattle-area coyotes. Unlike regular tapeworms, the feared one is the sheep tapeworm, Echinococcus multilocularis. This is the one you don't want to get, because it can get big and be very hard to eradicate. Plus, if the cyst is punctured, such as when an unsuspecting doctor wants to biopsy something found on the CT scan, the release of cyst contents may kill you in anaphylactic shock, and if it doesn't, all the contents of the cyst will seed your abdomen with baby aliens that will grow and form cysts of their own.Β
And speaking of horrible diseases, I saw this article titled "Man dies covered in necrotic lesions after amoebas eat him alive". Of course I had to click on it. Yeah, it's bad, although not the worst disease I've seen. (The worst is probably myiasis. If you have a weak stomach, don't do an image search for this and turn off Safe Search.) Poor guy.
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Sam Altman falls out of love with universal basic income. Well, good, since he's influential. Now he needs to convince his fellow tech mavens to abandon that concept. It's not the answer.
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Leaders in New York and New Jersey urge residents to work from home this summer because of FIFA. Is this crazy? Hurt the GDP because of a stupid game that foreigners care about? Should we have hosted FIFA? Maybe not.
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Hister is a local, private DIY search engine. It doesn't crawl the Web. You tell it what websites to index, and it will index those. And the index sits on your computer, so you better have the space for it. I don't think this is going to be useful. There are better solutions to this problem. Nice effort, though.Β
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Shed a tear for All the Sad Young Chinese Professionals. China has forbidden distribution of the app "Are you dead?"Β Because it was too embarrassing for the Chinese government that people were using it to ease the loneliness problem.
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Germany coerced Lexus to kill the remote start functionality because it was wasting energy and spewing carbon. C'mon.
And when we let the government control how cars are made, we'll get this:
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Oops. Claude Code's Entire Source Code Got Leaked via a Sourcemap in npm. This is not the first time Anthropic has experienced these code leaks. What's going on? They need to tighten security protocols.
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Oregon physician turned wellness influencer Casey Means out as surgeon general nominee.Β First Chavez-DeRemer, now this. Oregon just can win, can it?
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Holy crap!
Oregon hadn't cleaned out its voter rolls in about 30 years in defiance of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA). State officials settled a lawsuit with Judicial Watch, agreeing to clear out ineligible voters from rolls, starting with 160,000 voters who are dead, moved, or otherwise not voting in multiple elections. So it is that we find out Oregon has agreed to take off 800,000 ineligible names from its voter rolls, which represent 25% of all Oregon registered voters.Β
Some say that there hasn't been any evidence of fraud with the mail-in voter system, but then, how would you know? That's the beauty of having these dead voters. They are on the rolls, and votes can be tallied in their names, and who would know? It was perfect. But thanks to Tom Fitton, that's gone. Maybe now a Republican can win an election.
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Dangerous mix of meth and fentanyl on the rise in Downtown Portland, experts warn.Β Yeah, who's ready to move back into the city now, right? Portland is still not open for business. Not by a longshot.Β
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