14 August 2025

Repeated exposure to an image—even if fake—can increase its perceived credibility. Isn't this just what "gaslighting" is?  The brain is very pliable. 

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Do you use 8.8.8.8 as your DNS server? Did you know that it serves 27,000,000 packets/second? That's insane.

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What does Geoffrey Hinton think we should do to prevent AGI or ASI from attacking us? Instill a maternal instinct in them, to make them care for our welfare. Will it work? Well Anthropic is trying to instill evil into their LLMs to try to prevent them from developing evil thoughts themselves. 

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There's a three-part series on How to Marry a Silicon Valley Millionaire. Part 1 Part 2 Part 3. It's not really a how-to article, but merely an interesting read for understanding how SV geeks think. We saw it during the dotcom era, and it was cruel when their weath collapsed. They do think differently from most people, and their wealth kinda came to them accidentally. The days of easy tech startup wealth is gone, as employees of Windsurf are aware.

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Oregon's unemployment hit 5% now.  No improvement in sight. Soon to be 6% next year. 

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One bit of positive news is that Phil Knight and his wife pledged $2 billion to the Knight Cancer Institute today. Details are still pending, but Druker is going to direct the funds, so it won't just go to the university. This is great news for OHSU, and the university has to pay attention to him again. Well, they have a new president and the board chairman is gone, so things can be different.
Congrats to Brian Druker, and thanks go to Phil and Penny.
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Seattle and Spokane are among worst in U.S. for rising credit card delinquencies. Yeah, well, no surprise.

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OHSU researchers formed a new union, and the first thing they do is bargain for more pay.  Well, maybe those in the cancer center can get paid.  This is Baumol's Cost Disease in action. A worker's productivity may not increase, but because everyone around is getting higher pay, well, it costs more to retain them. 

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