Amazon and Perplexity are fighting over agent use. Perplexity knows that the value of their Comet browser will be markedly diminished if people can't use it to access the world's biggest marketplace. But Amazon can't harvest all the valuable user data if it comes from a bot. So, we'll see who wins. It's an arms race.
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Umatilla is experiencing a little excitement as Amazon injects money and job growth in the little town. Enjoy it while you can. It won't last forever. And who knows how much it's going to raise your electricity and water bill, once the datacenter goes online.
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OpenAI is going to stop pretending it's your doctor. It will still give out health advice, but it will recommend that you see a real doctor. That's good, but we'll see how it's really put into practice.
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Orvis is closing half its stores by next year. They blame it on Trump. 169 years – they endured WWI, WWII, the Great Depression, Great Recessioin, COVID-19. And Trump's tariffs are derailing them? I don't think so.
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Another tragedy of the commons. arXiv is going to require review articles and position papers to have been accepted at a journal or a conference and complete successful peer review. It used to house preprints, but made the change because it was being flooded with a lot of AI junk. Make something nice, offer it to the public, and idiots will ruin it. Happens all the time.
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Cheese Consumption reduces incidence of dementia in community-dwelling older Japanese adults. This is the JAGES 2019–2022 Cohort Study. The benefit provided by cheese was really small, and I wouldn't be surprised if this just proves to be a random effect. It just ain't that easy. There's also very little info about what kind of cheese provided the benefit. Most of the people ate processed cheese, which probably isn't healthy anyway.
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Here's a report associating melatonin use to heart failure risk. Biologically, that doesn't seem to make sense. But who takes melatonin? Those with insomnia. And what is insomnia associated with? Heart failure! And heart failure reduces sleep quality, so when you find you can't function as well during the daytime from insomnia, you're more likely to take something "safe" to help you sleep.
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How embarrassing. Meta was found to be heavy ingesters of porn. Of course, they would be accused of using it to train AI. Content providers would be understandably upset. But Meta had to confess that it was for "personal consumption". But one of the plaintiffs is known to be aggressive, and probably isn't going to just drop this. Could be messy.
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UnitedHealth pays its own physician groups 17% more than outside ones. It's not clear if this is legal, and may get them into deep trouble. It's already more costly to patients.
The entire medical system needs to be overhauled. Trump, Mehmet Oz and RFK Jr may be correct in not facilitating Obamacare continuation, but as of today, that's all that many people have. If they don't have it, they have nothing. There is an alternative, and now is the best time to have a discussion.
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The entire medical system needs to be overhauled. Trump, Mehmet Oz and RFK Jr may be correct in not facilitating Obamacare continuation, but as of today, that's all that many people have. If they don't have it, they have nothing. There is an alternative, and now is the best time to have a discussion.
This article makes me think that one's vision of how one looks can have profound effects on one's outlook on life. If you think you look young, you will think younger thoughts. If you think you look old, you will think like an old person.
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Some sugar substitutes linked to faster cognitive decline. These are aspartame, saccharin, acesulfame-K, erythritol, xylitol, and sorbitol but not tagatose. They did not test allulose. This was a survey-based study, so who knows how accurate it really is? The negative impact on cognitive decline didn't affect those older than age 60, and affected diabetics worse than non-diabetics. Paper here.
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Good. Trump's immigration policy is hurting the remittance economy. We give out far too much welfare money.
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Oregon is suspending it's program to provide Electric Vehicle rebates for low-to-moderate income Oregonians. So Oregon taxpayers were buying electric vehicles for low-income people? This is why I don't think Oregon needs to raise taxes. They have enough money – they just misspend it.
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Oregon sure can pick 'em. Check this out:
An illegal immigrant convicted of sex crimes in Oregon, a sanctuary state for unlawful immigration, held various advisory positions on state policymaking committees as a so-called “Latinx” community leader.
This was published in the Washington Examiner, and not in the local papers.
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