Sugoi & Yokunai

Well, it looks like the OHSU-Legacy merger has reached the agreement stage. It just needs to be signed off by the regulators. I hope this is the right move, and not some kind of AOL/Time-Warner or HP/Compaq deal.

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Providence nurses agree to strike. Last June it was the PPMC nurses. After the St. Vincent nurses striked in 2022. Now they want to strike again, along with nurses at all the other Providence hospitals in Oregon except PPMC. They was more money and less patient load. They sure do look tired in the picture in the article.

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South Korean scientists find a way to manufacture tiny diamonds for industrial use. Thew jewelry cartel is safe for now.

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Some clues leaked as to how Google curates their search results. Google judges how worthy a page is when it comes to election or COVID-19 related content. They prioritize Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust, but they get to judge what these are. I wish they would just find out a way to weed out click farm content and just present things as they are, without the editorial curation.

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Cool. Chinese scientists supposedly cured diabetes mellitus type I using a patient's stem cells.

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Ah, Jan Leike has joined Anthropic. Congrats.

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Cybercriminals are posing as "helpful" geeks on StackOverflow, and suggesting that users download their solution to the problem posed. This loads malware.  You just can't have something nice without a**holes ruining it.

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Knots for (almost) every occasion.

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Someone keeps trying. Spinnr is trying to be an app that connects lonely people. How long before jerks infiltrate the app and ruin it for everyone? These things never work in real life.

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Using drones to photograph overhead is not protected by the First Amendment, at least not in North Carolina. Because the state wants surveyor's license fees paid.

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Study finds that 52 percent of ChatGPT answers to programming questions are wrong. I don't use ChatGPT.  Claude3 Opus and GPT-4o are my go-to bots. Even if something doesn't work, you get immediate feedback and you can ask for another suggestion, which usually works. I don't think this is a problem.

People are noticing emergent properties in LLMs.  I told you this would happen. The bigger the brain, the more you can expect.

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Just get rid of mail-in voting. Folks like Ron Wyden want the USPS not to consolidate their services to save money, because it may delay the counting of election ballots and some might miss the deadline. The USPS should be able to take measures to be more efficient, and if elections can't be done by mail, then lets go back to in-person voting.  We should be able to know who the winners are the same day as the election.

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Tina Kotek rails that we still can't get enough public defenders. There seems to be never enough qualified people for any job requiring skills in Oregon.

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"Culture of complaint"  OHSU's head of human resources is stepping down. But don't break out the champagne just yet – her replacement may be worse.

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OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's ouster last year. Doesn't look good. So now Sutskever is gone, and Altman is back in charge, pretty much allowed to do whatever he wants.

Meanwhile, California is considering a proposed law (SB 1047) to regulate AI. Some people are strongly against it. If it passes, it might make California AI companies leave the state for more favorable areas. Oracle is already leaving. Washington is looking better already. But Silicon Valley is shoring up California's treasury, so this could really hurt the state. Hollywood probably can't do it alone.

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MIT researchers develop a fiber from which a fabric can be made to block sound. Very nice.

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Now the COVID scientists are complaining that they are getting harrassed. Like Fauci and Hotez. The damage has been done. I can't feel too sorry for them. Shoulda been honest.

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What happened to MySpace? The Murdochs bought it. Put tons of ads on it. Turned it into something else. And Facebook took over. Somethings are better left alone. Like the Internet.

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Yeah, ousting Mike Schmidt is just the start. We still have Ted Wheeler and the Portland City Council. But it's a start, I guess.

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The massive strain of illegal immigration on the school system. Isn't this what conservatives have been saying? People complain about inflation, and many libertarians blame the Fed. But they don't seem to care about the money that is injected into the system by supporting all these illegal immigrants with food and housing. Whether it's injecting money into the banks or injecting money into housing programs or food vouchers, it's still injected money. Maybe some of it is debt financing, but that's not good either. And then there's student loan forgiveness. The end result of that is also money injected into the system. Yeah, it makes the injectees feel good, but at the cost of inflation for everyone else. Like legislating an increase in minimum wage, without any increase in productivity. With a stroke of a pen, somebody gets richer, but the majority of us don't.  And increased demand for goods is inflationary until a new equilibrium is reached. Our economy is not ready to absorb a mass of new consumers that just increases the demand side. We need to increase productivity, and that's much harder to do. The Democrats were never good at making that happen.

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And here's an example: Pacific Foods was sold to Campbell Soups, who will not shut down the Tualatin plant, resulting in a loss of jobs and productivity there. Which means unemployment, and more people who will seek checks from the state, and who won't be paying income tax anymore. The company says the closure is due to it being an aging facility with an inefficient configuration, but rather than refurbish it, their solution was to close it.

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Google is finding out that the licensing deal with Reddit was probably a bad idea. Why would you want to train your model on juvenilia. All those stupid jokes and inane commentary were really of no value to anyone, even the original posters and anyone else on the thread. Think harder next time before you buy, Google. Just because people add "reddit" to their searches, doesn't mean that all of Reddit is worth training on.

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NASA Advances Six Pioneering Space Technologies for Tomorrow.

It's becoming clear that Oregon's government really just panders to Portland and Eugene. The rest of the state would rather take their governance from Boise.

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Oregon is in 4th place for the state with the lowest number of children.  Families are moving out, and for good reason. This is why Oregon employers can't find qualified people to fill important positions. And why leadership positions seem to be filled by the unqualified or barely-qualified.

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Gee, wonder why.  "Two years ago, Oregon lawmakers passed a new law requiring growers to provide farmworkers with overtime pay – a requirement opponents said could drive small, family-owned farms out of business.  In response, the state crafted a zero-interest loan program to help farmers cover that cost. But despite extensive outreach and marketing, much of the $10 million made available through the program remains untapped a year later, data shows." 

Maybe it's because it's just a loan, and one has to pay it back in two years. That's not going to counter the harm of that policy. 

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Scientific misconduct has cause the public not to trust the biopharma industry. Trust lost is hard to regain.

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New research reveals that exercise can rewire brains and erase traumatic memories. Well, if you're a mouse.  Seriously, this might be why people have reported that what got them through a difficult time was exercise.

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Big Tech is bringing on a new energy crisis.  Because AI and data centers require LOTS of energy.  More than can be delivered by renewables. Nuclear energy just has to happen.

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How to be a masculine man.  Ed Latimore is a stoic and the older brother (or helpful friend) every boy ought to have. His website is an interesting read.

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Google is having problems. It just updated its algorithms again, which it does periodically, and the fallout is that there are winners and losers. Plus, it has to cleanse its output of weird AI-generated results. Sounds like some people have a lot of work to do.

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This sounds like it could be interested just to plan geek meetings, instead as a way for singles to meet new people, as some seem to think it might be. It's called Flying Pig. When I was younger, I often imagined conducting a get-together of people interested in some specialized interest, and host a gathering, with a featured speaker to start the conversation flowing. Of course, this was before social media, and before video conferencing was made easier. It's not going to stay free forever, though, and that's when things will break down, I predict.

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Someone on Reddit wants an alternative to how news is reported and presented for consumption. I like reading postings like this to see if someone truly has something novel to offer. This person hasn't thoroughly thought out the problem, and really has no solution. Journalism is most lousy and biased as hell now. The value sometimes is more in the commentary, when motivated individuals shed needed light on a topic that the journalist fails to report. I've noticed that articles from mainstream sources in Seattle and Portland are really superficial and one-sided. I often get relevant news (with video) on X/Twitter, which I once studiously tried to avoid, as social media is a disease in itself. I've concluded that no one will present you with the news you want to read and will value. You have to curate this on your own.

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Swordfighting is not what you think. Not a game, but a matter of life and death. The last paragraph is significant.

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The early history of cryonics is gruesome. Truly, the thing of nightmares.

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There's a new privacy-oriented smartphone, called Unplugged.  I have questions, which the website doesn't answer. I still don't see how they can solve the cell-tower ping problem, which gives you away.  Truly, the FBI/CIA are not going to be fooled by this phone, so I'm not sure who this phone is being marketed to.

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Portland high school’s Healthy Masculinity Club is ‘a place for guys to not be ‘guys’’. Huh?  One of the problems with today's society is that men are being told to be emasculated. I look at the men in their twenties and thirties and there is a lot of soy in their blood. Masculinity is frowned upon. No wonder we're seeing a rise in transgender crossovers. Any masculiinity is always prefaced with the word "toxic".  Even Boy Scouts are now just "scouts" and females are allowed.  Thank goodness for other organizations like Trail Life.

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And in a related story: Oregon's birth rate is among the nation's lowest.  All those soyboys don't know what to do, I guess. Well, there goes the taxbase.

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David Sinclair has stepped down from being the head of Academy for Health & Lifespan Research. No surprises. There hasn't been much ground-breaking research coming out of his lab. I see he's still a believer in resveratrol, while the rest of the field has moved on.

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Even at Apple, there is no sign of a clear AI strategy.  Incorporating AI into things seems like keeping up with the Joneses, rather than implementing something that is truly of value. As Google has shown us, the world has no use for poorly-implemented LLM technology. Don't shove generative AI into things without clear demonstration of benefit. Already, I suspect many folks are using the "&utm=14" trick to remove AI from search results.

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AI tutors are quietly changing how kids in the US study, and the leading apps are from China.  Well, one might as well learn from the people who are churning out the world's brightest kids. Kids who know how to use AI will have an advantage over kids who don't.

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The Brain Stores 10x More Info Than Thought.  My first thought was, "Who thought that?"  Kidding aside, it's good that we can store more than we thought. Howefer retrieval is the key.  We got to access all that stored knowledge more effectively.

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How do you tokenize pi? It's interesting to see how the different foundational model approach this problem.  This doesn't translate into performance, but it's possible that this might explain why raw models struggle with math problems.

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What went wrong with federal student loans?  One of the worst things Obama did was transfer the student loan business to the federal government.  Funny how Maxine Waters was completely unaware of this.  Since the government was underwriting all the loans, why wouldn't colleges hike their tuition?  That's leaving money on the table.

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More on the Windows Recall feature, which is being called a "privacy minefield".  Happily, I'm not a Windows user.

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Scientists have figured out how to thaw frozen brain tissue, such that it retains "normal function". They only tested it on organoids, not on intact brains, so don't get excited.

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AI headphones will let you focus on the speech of just one person in the crowd. Kind of like parabolic microphones.

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Aeromine Technologies plans to install bladeless wind turbines on the tops of as many roofs as they can.  Still ugly, but less so than the giant propellors. At least it won't kill birds.

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I thought this was a joke. How to NOT give someone mental illness.  Seems that the young these days are prone to this kind of mass hysteria.

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UCLA medical school found to have severely compromised their standards to let black applicants in. And if you refuse a minority physician, you are judged racist. This is how unconscious bias starts – and perpetuates.

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Cannabis tops alcohol as America's drug of choice. Getting dumber and dumber. And more psychotic. Just what we need. /sarc.

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Google's AI-assisted search results now cites The Onion!  Garbage-in, garbage-out.

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The world's top chip makers can flip a kill switch, should China invade Taiwan. The companies are ASML and TSMC. China will not get the crown jewels.

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R.I.P. Kabosu, the Shiba Inu that was immortalized on Dogecoin, has passed away at age 18 years.

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California is crazy. After Learning Her TA Would Be Paid More Than She Was, This Lecturer Quit. Lefty policies, while trying to correct inequities, seems to always do it the wrong way, which leads to more problems. Everyone wants more money, and there are so many unions vying to get more money for their members. If you are not a union member, you will be taken advantage of. Eventually it leads to absurdities, like the one in the article.

Google Search is getting to be a joke now. They've ruined their brand. Inserting AI into the mix has only led to trouble.

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More on the Greater Idaho story.  Maybe it'll happen.  On Tina Kotek's watch.

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Why did the cardiac arrest survival odds decrease in 2023?  Dr. Jonathan Jui blames it on fentanyl. But is that really true? No, it's not, and now his office says that "the intention [of the statistics] is training not formal reporting". Whatever that means. Yet he refuses to change the standards, and

ambulance service is in a crisis because of standards that require two paramedics on each ambulance, rather than one paramedic and one less-trained emergency medical technician. Those critics, including the county’s ambulance provider, American Medical Response, say the staffing requirement has made it impossible to field as many ambulances as the Portland area needs, contributing to slow response times. During a cardiac arrest, rapid treatment is essential for survival.

He's digging his heels in.

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Maxine Dexter won over Susheela Jayapal, but apparently her policies are not very different. Yeah, Oregonians are so fed up – they've decided to vote for another progressive.

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CNBC ridicules Americans who think we're in another recession.  Fools. Don't they believe the manipulated numbers issued by the BLS?  “America has the best economy in the world,” they quote Biden, without any commentary or rebuttal. Don't believe your lying eyes, America.

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OpenAI has now struck a deal with News Corp for content.

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Sign of the times.  Seattle's Pacific Place mall sells for steep discount.  Follow the money.

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Biden cancels $7.7 billion in debt. One man shouldn't control this much money. Not only is this unfair, but it worsens inflation even more for everyone.  All just for votes.

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Federal judge dismisses lawsuit brought by doctors and a basketball legend about "pandemic rules that restricted doctors from speaking out against “the mainstream COVID narrative". This should have gone on.

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And the Kaiser system is calling out for doctors who were fired due to vaccine requirements to come back and be re-hired.  Looks like they're short on doctors now. I imagine other healthcare systems are short as well.  Too bad.

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Looks like Multnomah County Chair Jessica Vega-Pedersen has had enough of East Portland, and so has moved to the west side. Can't live with the consequences of her own policies.

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Anthropic publishes paper showing insights gained on how one of their mid-size models thinks internally as it processes prompts. This is not so much of a mystery as is computer vision. We know that these chatbots operate by treating LLMs as Markov chains. But it's not so clear with convolution and pooling.

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Hawaii is a lousy state to own electric vehicles. You can charge at home, but when you're out and about, it's very risky. EVs are appropriate for just a few select areas. Places that are affluent, where people respect property, and where the commute is short. For the rest of America, especially those who aren't affluent themselves, it doesn't make sense.

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And electric grids "creak" as AI demand soars. NVIDIA needs electricity as do other chip makers. AI companies want access to a lot of electricity. Tech companies that operate data centers definitely need electricity.  EV owners want access to cheap electricity (or else why bother?).  Where's it all going to come from?

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What the hell. Is Biden going to enact race-based tax reform?

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Portland's got plenty of these. Smoking fentanyl linked to toxic brain damage in first reported case. There's a lot of brain-damaged folks walking around. Surprised this hasn't been noted earlier.

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First step in the right direction. Mike Schmidt looks to be defeated. He'll still be around until Jan 2025, though.

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Another report on C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan–ATLAS). It may be a great comet.  Fingers crossed.

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Microplastics were found in all human testicles from autopsy samples from 2016.  Dogs, too.  We're being poisoned.

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Strength training can help knee osteoarthritis.

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Another article that calls for letting physicians seek mental health without the stigma. As before, nothing will happen, and medical boards will still query healthcare providers as to whether or not they sought help for stress and burnout, and whether they are taking psychoactive medications. Being a doctor is very stressful, and this is one profession where you can get dinged if you seek help.

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Good for them! Crook County just agreed to join Greater Idaho.

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