Humanoid soldier robots are being tested on the battlefield in Ukraine. So many questions and thoughts about this.
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Snail-derived compound could be a safer anticoagulant compared to heparin. I don't want a comparison with heparin. I want a comparison with existing anti-Xa agents, like apixaban or rivaroxaban. This snail compound, CCG, targets the factor Xa activating enzyme (X-ase) through the intrinsic pathway. They called it "iFXase" which is not just one thing, but the whole enzyme-lipid membrane-calcium ion complex. Paper here.
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Be careful if you take quercetin while on dasatinib (for CML). It could damage your nerves.
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Using AI to verify human advice could damage your professional relationships. No one likes to be second-guessed, but geez, grow a skin. Doctors get second-guessed all the time when people come in with papers after consulting with Dr. Google. Experts have got to get better now. And be ready to back up their advice.
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Another case of AI gone bad. Casino has the wrong guy arrested when their facial recognition AI misidentifies a patron. When will they learn. Ths Chinese once thought they could use AI facial recognition to identify the criminal facial type. It's funny in retrospect, but people still think AI facial recognition is at the same level as fingerprint biometrics.
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This guy wanted to help people by creating a site that helps artists convert images from one format to another. He called it delphitools. It was free and easy to use and went viral on TikTok and Bluesky. But then artistic type people found out that the developer used AI to create it. So when they uploaded their images, it was sent to a foundational AI model. Which means it could be saved and used for training. And now we know that AI-generated art cannot be copyrighted. So its amusing to read how the developer is defending himself. The tools are there. Use it if you want. Don't use it if you don't want. And you can roll your own converter.
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Here's an in-depth discussion on age-verification tech that is soon to be coming everywhere. You're going to have to give up your identity to someone eventually. Preferable it will be a neutral third-party. But then everything can and will be hacked. Another arms race will commence. But there are so many bad actors now that some kind of verification was inevitable. And anonymity is exceedingly difficult to preserve now, anyway. I still think that the person that comes up with a way to sell alternative online identities will make a huge profit. It reminds me of the old site BugMeNot.com where people could share login credentials that worked and allowed access to sites that required login. Accounts kept getting blacklisted while new ones popped up. It got so popular that their ISP got overloaded and had to shut them down. They sold to another hosting site that was less reputable and the whole operation eventually collapsed. Too bad.
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Voibe is a private offline voice AI transcription app. I've tried apps like this in the pre-AI days, and was very dissatisfied. Might give this a try, but the price is kinda steep. I hate subscription pricing models anyway.
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Funding for physics in the UK is being threatened. England is the birthplace of much of our physics, and shutting down physics research would be a shame. They're switching to a new funding model:
Earlier this year, the government body that funds science, the UK Research and Innovation Agency (UKRI), imposed a new 'bucket' system, under which money will now be put into three buckets: one for blue-sky research, the second for government priorities such as AI and quantum computing, and the third for helping businesses develop new products. It is the latter two that count as 'applied research'; these are the buckets the government thinks will drive economic growth.
I think business should fund their own research. Let them find investors to fund them.
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Javascript's Date () function needs to be fixed. I didn't realize it was so inconsistent and unpredictable. Not something you want in a commonly-used function.
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Federal judge stalls health secretary RFK Jr.’s overhaul of vaccine policy. The medical orthodoxy is cheering about the judge's ruling, but what is troublesome is that the reason for the temporary injunction is not that RFK Jr's actions were illegal. It's just that they didn't follow the usual method.
“This is all to say that there is a method to how these decisions historically have been made — a method scientific in nature and codified into law through procedural requirements. Unfortunately, the Government has disregarded those methods and thereby undermined the integrity of its actions,” Murphy wrote in his 45-page decision. “First, the Government bypassed ACIP to change the immunization schedules, which is both a technical, procedural failure itself and a strong indication of something more fundamentally problematic: an abandonment of the technical knowledge and expertise embodied by that committee.”
Some random judge gets to decide what the procedural requirements must be? And gets to decide what constitutes "technical knowledge and expertise"? Seems like too many judges want to be in the executive branch, rather than the judicial branch. Like this Chicago judge.
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This SF Tesla charging lot now has a very gross problem. The world is not ready for widespread deployment of EVs. The technology just isn't ready yet.
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Improving breast cancer screening workflows with machine learning. This Google study showed that AI-assisted mammography detected more cancers than human radiologists alone. Most places use computer-assisted mammography, and radiologists have told me that it helps, but the data suggest that there really is no benefit. Perhaps AI techniques (CNNs, VAEs, etc) may at last show provable benefit.
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Wow, Oregon saw the largest increase in foreign-born immigrants into the state. It's noticeable and explains much of the state's economic struggles.
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Price tag to replace Interstate 5 Bridge could cost billions more than expected. "Four years ago, officials said the most likely cost was $6 billion." Now it is estimated at $14.4 billion. That's $2.1 billion increase every year they sit and wait.
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British Columbia is sucking away Oregon doctors and nurses. Going to B.C. from Oregon seems like a lateral move to me. The pay is lower in B.C. but things like malpractice premiums and healthcare insurance are paid for by the government, so it sort of evens out. This may be a case that life always seems greener somewhere else. We'll see how things go after a few years.
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Why Multnomah County Has $4 Billion but Not a Nickel to Spend. Multnomah County's money is locked up in things like Preschool for All, homeless services and library renovation. Stuff that really doesn't benefit most people in the county. So they're forced to make some cuts to homeless services. And the general fund relies so much on property taxes which aren't increasing as much as they'd like. But look at the increase in social services spending and spending in the sheriff's department.
And remember, Oregon Now Spends More On Program Offering Free Health Care For Illegal Immigrants Than State Police.
Rising gas prices squeeze Oregon small businesses, force tough choices. Yeah, oil prices are up, but it's mainly Dem states that are feeling the pinch. It's the gas tax. Or carbon tax.
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