26 January 2025

Good in-depth article on Greg Abel, the guy who is going to assume the reigns of Berkshire Hathaway when Warren Buffet is no longer chief. It's true, though – BRK.A has been mirroring the SP500 instead of beating it, like it did before. I guess the days of the good deals are no longer. Why is that?

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There seems to be more interest in home schooling and supplemental education lately. Here are two articles that I saw recently:
I think this is wonderful. Personalized education can really make a difference.

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After reading this, I know why tech CEOs love Indian workers, and are all for H-1B visas. Culture is very important.

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OpenAI's new Operator service may spell the death of the Web. 
Google, TripAdvisor, the tour providers - right now these are websites, and they support themselves by showing ads to users, or by partnering/commissions (e.g. TripAdvisor could receive revenue for directing users to day tours). With Operator, none of this is necessary. Google is no longer required. TripAdvisor can't support itself with ads, because nobody is looking. These models are about to become unsustainable.
Operator surfs the Web for you, and gives you the answer it thinks you want. No need to visit the individual websites and maybe leave a comment or see whatever else they have there.  I recently asked an LLM for the best BBQ joint in Beaverton, and it pointed to Salt & Straw BBQ.  There is no such place. Salt & Straw service ice cream.

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Bill Gates has an autobiography out, and in it, he calls himself "neurodivergent". This seems to be the trend now. Being neurodivergent is supposed to be cool. Everybody's in on it, like having a superpower. I think he's trying to rehabilitate his image, but most of us probably have him figured out.

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Oregon wines were once the pride of the state.  Now sales are falling off. Why is that? Do people not like wines anymore, now that we have cannabis and street drugs? Or maybe it's a luxury fewer can afford.

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Mayor Keith Wilson's $28 million homeless plan relies heavily on monetary support from Multnomah County, the state and the federal government. But the former are pinched for money and it's no longer Biden's federal government. And it's not solving the real problem:

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25 January 2025

Funny!  Newly-discovered asteroid 2018 CN41 turns out to be the Tesla Roadster that Elon Musk launched into space in 2018. It's now in the asteroid belt. 

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Why is everyone freaking out about DeepSeek R1? Because it's smaller, less expensive, and performs just as well or better than OpenAI's models. Sure, the Chinese copy, but when it comes to tech, they can copy very well.  Here's a more detailed discussion.
So this is why o3-mini had to be free.

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Yann LeCun thinks that by five years, we're going to be talking about archiectures that go beyond transformers. He predicts that dependence on LLMs will fall by the wayside. I can't keep up.

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What can we say about diet and cancer? Turns out, not much. We just have some clues, but the effects of this or that food is not large. A low-carb (low-sugar) diet with plenty of vegetables is probably a safe guideline to follow.

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Oregon is losing jobs (unemployment rate is now up to 4.1%) while the rest of the nation is seeing job growth. People who are serious about business don't want to move to Oregon, where taxes, crime, drug abuse, and homelessness are high, while you can enjoy less and less of the city.

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24 January 2025

Wow, this could be big news: a proof of P=NP.  This could have major implications in computing, and might decrease the enthusiasm for quantum computers. We'll have to see what comes out of the peer-review.

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Siri has not improved with Apple Intelligence. This is a really big disappointment for Apple. People have already lowered expectations with regard to security and privacy. Apple Maps was a big disappointment. Can't help but wonder what Steve Jobs would do to Tim Cook if he were able to come back to Apple.

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Sunburns don't damage DNA after all. It mostly damages RNA, and that process liberates inflammatory cytokines.  Still, UV rays still do cause thymine dimers, though, so there is some damage to DNA.

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Yeah, US healthcare is already socialist. And that's why it's so expensive.  It leads to silly decisions like Oregon hospitals voting for a tax on themselves.
Hospitals want the tax because it allows the state to qualify for more federal funding for the Oregon Health Plan.

It raises about a quarter of the total funding for Oregon’s Medicaid program, primarily by drawing down a federal match. The state gets roughly $2 dollars from the federal government for every dollar it puts into Medicaid.

The cost of the tax has previously been passed on to school districts and employers...
The house of cards is supported by federal funding. That's the only way socialism is able to be sustained. Money has to come from the government, because it can't support itself. And it's very expensive.

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Someone else has noticed that Big Tech is making AI on by default, and you have to turn it off. With Google, you have to upgrade to turn AI off.

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Trump has banned central bank digital currency.  Crypto is OK, and you can dabble in it if you want. But creating a CBDC allows the Fed to control your money digitally, and forcing you to accept another fiat currency that it has complete control over.  Trump has been de-banked, and knows that this can be turned against him, so has skin in the game.

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H.R. 238 seeks to allow AI to qualify as a practitioner, able to prescribe medications. No, this is not the way to go. This measure is what happens when congressmen don't understand technology.  It needs to fail.

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Projections show that enrollment in Portland Public Schools is on a downward trend. This comment says it best:
...young families don’t want to raise their children in a highly taxed, lawless city where 911 doesn’t answer the phone, police are too understaffed to respond and ambulances may or may not come. Combine that with a school district that cares much more about virtue signaling on racial “justice” than educating our children and it’s pretty obvious why the school population is falling.
Fully agree.

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Blood pressure readings must be taken in a supine position to be predictive of cardiac complications. How blood pressure is taken in the doctor's office is wrong.  Link to full study here.

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Facepalm. Portland's mayor wants to solve the homeless crisis by building new homes for them.  No word on fixing the underlying drug problems.

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23 January 2025

A new ultra-fast radiation therapy protocol may be a better way of delivering treatment. This could be great for places where access to radiation therapy is difficult, such as remote areas like eastern Oregon.  There's no Spokane, as there is in eastern Washington, and Boise is not always an option.

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  • 80% of proposals never get funded, and this number has steadily grown over time.
  • It takes roughly a year from the time the proposal is submitted to the time the funding goes out the door.
  • Since ~90% of proposals are not funded in the first round, the typical timeline is actually two years or more. Then, once the proposal is funded, the work has to start more or less immediately.
  • Two years is an enormous amount of time for science, and much of the proposed work will have either been done or needs to be substantially modified. ...hiring talented people for large-scale projects is hard, and having to do so quickly in response to a stochastic process is even harder.
It's amazing that science ever gets done. Maybe that's why private funding through pharmaceutical companies is often the way to go.

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Great news!  Backdoor Section 702 searches are unconstitutional.  Interestingly, this hasn't made much of a dent in Palantir stock. Do they have a workaround already?

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The best web browsers of 2025. On a Mac, I'm not surprised that Safari is the best.  I still use Firefox, as the disadvantages are not that significant. Not surprised that Edge is the worst. Chrome seems to be on a downward trajectory. 

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Sound Transit in Seattle has been having lots of breakdowns.  Needed repairs are urgent, but aren't happening fast enough. Why would anyone want to ride them?

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22 January 2025

Google is now requiring Javascript be enabled with searches. And this made privacy-protecting Whoogle stop working.

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Apparently those wealthy LA residents owned a lot of Teslas, and those burning Tesla vehicles have produced toxic byproducts that must be removed by specialized procedures. Probably a lot of carbon, too.  So much for green.

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Portland in the news.  #2 city with the highest property crime.
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Remember that tax to support the homeless that was only supposed to be until 2030. They want to extend it to 2050. And they don't want to put it on the ballot, because people might vote against it. And what happens if it doesn't pass?
“Catastrophe. That’s the word,” said Goldberg when asked what would happen if the tax expired in 2030 as currently scheduled.
The grift never ends.

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9th Circuit Court upholds Oregon law that says you can't surreptitiously record someone. I like what James O'Keefe has been able to uncover, but I'm not sure I trust too many people to record my conversation.

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Who owns your genetic data? You do, but that doesn't mean companieas will respect the law.

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21 January 2025

Now that people have had a chance to play around with chat, an amazing three-quarters don't like it.  These include "These products included navigation apps, personal virtual assistants, weather forecasting apps, streaming services, shopping websites and social media platforms.".  The issues were privacy and unauthorized use of personal likenesses, impact on jobs, and impact on social interaction.

In other areas, AI-assisted coding is going to get better.  Already, many companies are using AI-generated code. Sure beats looking up articles on StackExchange, StackOverflow or Reddit for help.  You still need to know what you're doing, though. AI won't help if you are coding blind, as it will give you a solution, but not necessarily what you were looking for.

And some models confabulate more than others.  Confabulate is more accurate in describing what AI does. It doesn't sense things that aren't there. It just makes things up, and is still confident about what it says. This is like Korsakoff syndrome.

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This is future of education – AI-assisted tutoring. Khan Academy has already helped many people, and the concept of Internet-assisted education is already established.  But using a chat-based interface can really supplement teaching, especially as public education is becoming more political, and a forum where teachers can introduce their own politics or sexuality instead of teaching necessary knowledge and skills.  This is why more techies are looking into homeschooling for their kids.

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There are people that really talk like this. A marriage proposal in office jargon.

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Yikes. Sleeping pills, like zolpidem (Ambien), can help you sleep, but they inhibit the brain's toxin removal (glymphatic) system. Long term use of zolpidem increases the risk of Alzheimer's disease.

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The physics (or chemistry) of ice cream. 

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There needs to be a name for this phenomenon.  This is when you have some great insight or realization, but forget to write it down, and then forget about it entirely. Or if you do remember it later, it seems less than exciting, maybe even mundane. Why is that?  I experience this with music, when I hear a melody in my mind, but later I can't recall it, even though it was very catchy or moving at the time. And even if I remember it, it doesn't do anything for me later.

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Seattle Symphony is getting rid of its Indian CEO, its Chinese CFO/COO, and its Black Chief DEI officer.  But they still have a female, "woman of color" music director, which Thiagarajan installed last year.  From the comments, it seems that the music program has been "meh", with "second-rate musicians". I don't go into downtown Seattle so I don't know. Same with downtown Portland.  These two cities struggle to have nice things.  Too many gronks.

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20 January 2025

Looks like Hayao Miyazaki may have taken the idea of Tottoro from his former colleague, Isao Takahata.  The parallels are strong. Oh well, no one seems to care, so why should I?

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The AI bubble may be bursting. Nasty of Google to force you to upgrade Google Workspace to turn off their AI. And Apple Intelligence has been underwhelming.

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GeoSpy is an AI-powered geoguesser.  It's publicly available – here's the site.

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Coming soon to Portland.

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19 January 2025

We are all mosaics.  Surprising but true. All throughout life, we accumulate mutations in each cell, and eventually become a conglomerate of cells with different genomic makeups. 

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Canary in the coal mine. Pendleton's Cancer Center will soon close.  People will have to go to Boise or Walla Walla for radiation, and radiation treatments are a daily dose for several weeks.  Shame, because the cancer center just opened in 2020.
...due to increased expenses, wage inflation and low reimbursement rates from the Oregon Health Plan and Medicare, costs have become too high for the center to keep its doors open
This will be very inconvenient. I am surprised that CHI St. Anthony Hospital, where apparently people get chemotherapy, weren't able to buy them out.  Even OHSU has a Doernbecher clinic nearby.  Meanwhile the Oregon Healty Authority just wants to focus on how to resist Trump. They'll make sure that illegal aliens get taxpayer money for care, while eastern Oregonians suffer. This will just get worse for all of us, and Pendleton is but the first to feel the effect.

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Lenovo is removing the signature TrackPoint nub from its laptop computers. I don't have a ThinkPad anymore, but when I did, the TrackPoint was surprisingly useable and convenient.

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Canoo is filing for bankruptcy.  Without subsidies, EV vehicles don't make sense for most use cases. We're not ready yet for these vehicles.

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If you're a tech worker getting laid off, being labeled a "low performer" can end your career.  Unlike in government, where you just get reassigned.

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Things are so bad for Japan's elderly, that they'd rather commit crimes and live in jail. This is not a healthy society.

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Huawei is developing their own Starlink program.  Space is going to get really crowded. Satellite collissions are going to be common.

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Confusing.  Microsoft is renaming their Office Suite to 365 Copilot.  Which people will confuse with the coding assistant. Why, Satya? 

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Charles Hugh Smith of the blog "Of Two Minds" gets called "always so negative". He responds. What's interesting is that I took it for granted that people knew how bad things were, but I guess things have been bad for so long that younger folks think dystopia has always been that way.  We old folks know how good things were, but a lot of younger folks who grew up during the Obama administration don't know any better. To them, there has always been media censorship, destructive protests in cities, lack of social civility and thug attitude, deterioration of racial relationships, acceptance of "I identify as..." lunacy, unchecked crime with resistance to enforcement, and outright weaponization of government.

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18 January 2025

This is a post from 2022 but I just discovered it.  The opening statement is so true.

I think the most depressing fact about humanity is that during the 2000s most of the world was handed essentially free access to the entirety of knowledge and that didn’t trigger a golden age.

Yeah, instead we got social media and all the garbage associated with it. It mostly brought out the worst of humanity, and allowed the dumbest ideas to make front page news instead of dying on the vine in obscurity, as it would rightfully have in the past.
But the main idea is that one-on-one teaching is the key to the intellectual advancement of the great geniuses of yore. It even has a name: Bloom's 2-sigma principle.

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Speaking of social media.  Interesting interview with the trio that runs Community Notes on X. It's one of the best things on X, but the Left hates it. So they are moving to BlueSky or Mastodon, which doesn't have Notes. Mastodon is more difficult to use, and so far it is boring, and populated by people who really have nothing to say.
They also loved TikTok, but since that will be banned starting tomorrow, they are migrating to RedNote, which is a privacy and security nightmare.

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a href="https://www.dailydot.com/news/tillamook-cheddar-cheese-not-real/" target="_blank">Is Tillamook Cheese real? Here's a deep dive into modern cheese making. It seems that it comes down to rennet.

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Portland is doubling down on just providing housing for the homeless, and not tackling the drug crisis behind it. Much of the homeless really don't want housing. They just want to be left alone, and provided with food and cash subsidies, along with tent and tarp and drug abuse kits and Narcan, that the city and county are happy to provide.  This is why the homeless problem will never be solved.

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And here's what Portland always has to deal with, again and again.  How much longer are downtown business going to put up with this?

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17 January 2025

High Taxes Are Hurting Portland Job Growth and Prodding Wealthy People to Leave. And that's only one reason why the rich as fleeing the city. It's also crime and all those tents everywhere. Why pay taxes for a city you can't enjoy? So businesses are reluctant to invest in the city as well.  Downward spiral. I think it's too late.

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Nice summary of Tina Kotek. She's on par with Newsom – we just haven't had our major disaster yet. The state is in a downward spiral, too.
Kotek is doubling down on having Oregon be sanctuary state. Maybe we'll get to see her arrested.

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Interesting rumor about GPT-5 and Claude 3.5 Opus. Could be true, but who knows?

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