Sugoi & Yokunai

Google's AI search summary results page is going to feature ads. Because it's Google, that's why. I think they're lost and don't know what to do now that everyone has access to AI.

––– 凄い –––

Well, I wouldn't go this far in characterizing Sam Altman, but the "Sky voice" incident is telling.  This shows you the moral framework of the guy who is directing much of the effort of LLM artificial intelligence now, and this is how he makes decisions. If you get in the way of his objectives, he will go around you. Is this a factor in why his safety team quit in droves?

Update (22 May 2024):

Others are noticing that Sam Altman is turning out to be not a very believable guy.

Also: It Would Be Easier to Stop Worrying about AI If Its Apostles Weren’t So Creepy

––– 凄い –––

Memory is so difficult to figure out, and there are so many theories as to how it operates. Now, a researcher feels that "sharp wave electric ripples" help consolidate memories and tag which ones are important for storage. Speculation, of course, but an intriguing theory. 

––– 凄い –––

Which countries have the happiest people? Here is the table, compiled by the World Happiness Report. Countries in northern Europe are the happiest, no surprise.  They can have nice things. War-torn and poor countries in Africa make up the bottom.  It's interesting that the wealthy Asian countries fall in the middle. They can have nice things, too, but somehow that's not enough to make them happy.

––– 凄い –––

Speaking of not having nice things, thieves are stealing the cables of EV chargers for their copper.  It just so happens the copper prices are hitting record levels. And in Biden's economy, people are doing what they have to do to survive. 

––– 凄い –––

Canada legalized cannabis, so now hospitalizations for seniors for cannabis intoxication have tripled. This ain't your grandpa's cannabis, you know.

––– 凄い –––

Why Portlanders are moving to Clark County.  The reasons are obvious. DA Mike Schmidt and Ted Wheeler, you have no power here.

––– 凄い –––

When should Oregon be able to block medical mergers?  Ordinarily, I would say that the state should stay out of this. Although nationwide the number of physicians employed by hospitals or hospital systems is only 41%, there is also private equity, which wasn't included. I think the number is higher in the Portland area, which is really too bad.  Should OHSU merge with Legacy? Will Legacy survive without it?

––– 凄い –––

Here's a nice story about the work of Vietnamese emigré, Bùi Tường Phong and Pixar's Toy Story. He created the Phong shading and reflection algorithms. The only thing is that his last name is Bùi because he apparently said so. Phong is actually his middle name.

––– 凄い –––

The French created a stamp to celebrate the baguette, and if you scratch it, you can smell the scent of baguettes.

––– 凄い –––

Daylight Saving Time changes encourage you to stop the healthy routines you struggled to develop. We really need to ditch DST.

––– 凄い –––

What do they have in common?  Childhoods of exceptional people. Some of them anyway. Many of them were homeschooled or privately tutored. You can't beat one on one teaching.

––– 凄い –––

University asks students to develop AI that is trained on their material. Students develop this. Then the University suspends them because the AI encourages cheating. Crazy.

––– 凄い –––

No more Apple stickers with your purchase.  One thing less to enjoy.

––– 凄い –––

Negativity bias.  When you only remember the negative things, especially when they concern you. So true.

––– 凄い –––

OpenAI is losing employees. What's going on? The dissatisfaction seems to stem from Altman.

––– 凄い –––

Is it that easy? Apparently adding a simple option to your search query eradicates all the cruft from Google's search results. Just append "&udm=14" to the end of your query string. Gone are the Knowledge Panels and the ads.

––– 凄い –––

The Man Who Destroyed Portland. That could be one of a couple of men, but the New York Post gives the distinction to Mike Schmidt. His reputation is known nationally.

––– 凄い –––

Who thought this was something people would want? Windows will soon take regular snapshots of everything you do on your computer, so that you can search for stuff later on. Who knows what will be done with those snapshots. Will they go to Redmond? Is it going to use to train an AI model? It's very creepy, and given the ethics of corporations, I would avoid this completely. But who really knows if it's being shut off even if you click on that option?  More here.

––– 凄い –––

This graph has been making the rounds lately. This is why people feel that they've been financially stagnant these past four years. Because it's true.

––– 凄い –––

I thought we were supposed to emulate the Canadian healthcare system.

––– 凄い –––

Is privacy worth it?  I know how this guy feels. It's an arms race to keep up with all the ways entities want to invade your privacy on the Internet (and elsewhere). Sometimes it seems like too much energy. But that's what they want. Don't give up. Make 'em work a little harder.

––– 凄い –––

OpenAI's former superalignment team leader, Jan Leike, is not happy with his former company's prioritization of safety. And he would know. What does this mean for the rest of us?

Over 50 years of climate change warnings. We've heard them all.

––– 凄い –––

Is artificial consciousness achievable? Lessons from the human brain. This is re-establishing connections, especially in the dorsal column. Which is good that there doesn't need to be input from the brain. It's like the patellar reflex, which doesn't involve the brain at all. As it shouldn't.  And the research team is very international, I notice.

Ex-CDC director says it's high time to admit 'significant side effects' of COVID-19 vaccines. High time was 3 years ago. Where was this guy back then? Oh yeah...

––– 凄い –––

Interesting theory that excess levels of glucose can lead to higher levels of methylglyoxal, which inhibits the BRCA2 gene, which can lead to increased cancer development. So sugar is indeed bad for you, especially if you are a carrier of a mutated and dysfunctional BRCA2 gene.

––– 凄い –––

There is now talk that Section 230 will no protect Google. For a long time, Google has depended on that law to shield it from legal liability, the argument being that Google only displays search results, and does not actually produce any falsehood or harmful information. But now with AI, Google is indeed potentially generating falsehoods and misleading information. These are showing up in their Gemini demo. If AI-generated information is the default, then one can argue that Section 230 no longer applies.

Well, Google is apparently declaring the end of the Web. Probably something it helped destroy. I like the comment by Jeff Cunningham. So very true, as the Internet has been infiltrated by bots and privacy-invading trackers and ad-revenue supporting networks that sell your information to data brokers. And traditional sites we used to visit for news and entertainment and community, have been replaced by social media giants.

––– 凄い –––

We don't just want an AI-powered personal assistant, we want a private one. That's the rub.

––– 凄い –––

The spinal cord can learn and remember completely independent of the brain.

––– 凄い –––

Dem solutions beget more problems. Since the Dems made it so that mail-in ballots use business mail to return ballots, the USPS wants to hold onto them for counting so they know how much to bill. Which means that counting will be delayed until they finish and send the ballots over for vote counting.

––– 凄い –––

38% of webpages that existed in 2013 are no longer accessible. I would have guessed higher.

––– 凄い –––

How to meditate when you can't seem to do it. The zen masters all say "Just sit".

––– 凄い –––

“Outrageously” priced weight-loss drugs could bankrupt US health care. This wasn't on my bingo card ten years ago. Only rich obese are going to be able to get access. But diet and exercise are still free.

––– 凄い –––

Looks like Washington state is going to elect another Democrat to replace Democrat Jay Inslee.

––– 凄い –––

A lot. How Much Research Is Being Written by Large Language Models?  Some truly embarrassing stuff.  Does no one edit anymore?

––– 凄い –––

Can AI perceive emotion?  They can be trained on facial expression labeled datasets. But that isn't really understanding emotion. Even we humans (especially those with autism) struggle to correctly interpret facial expression.

––– 凄い –––

Google employees aren't happy with their salary. So what's new? Although these numbers look high, remember that these techies live in the Bay Area, and with California's taxes and fees, money can disappear quickly.

––– 凄い –––

No!  Geoff Hinton thinks we'll need some sort of universal basic income.  Bad idea. You do what you want in the UK, but leave the U.S. out of it. Money unearned is never a good idea. Even Alaska struggles to achieve this. Stay in your AI lane, Geoff.

––– 凄い –––

Why the Internet is boring. Is it boring? Depends on what you want and what you do? It can be a time-waster, sure. I know what I want to do, so it's not boring. Like life, it's what you make it.

––– 凄い –––

Competition is good. Google enters the text-to-video fray with Veo, that is poised to be a rival to OpenAI's Sora.

––– 凄い –––

Portland State University wants to replace their Portland Auditorium with an expensive glass-and-steel edifice. I don't know, after letting activists trash the library. I don't think Portland can have nice things anymore. They need to take New York City's approach. Repair and maintain the architecture from the Golden Age, but for new construction – make it all barebones utilitarian and nothing fancy.

––– 凄い –––

Meta's CICERO has already shown that AI is capable of being a convincing liar when it wants to be. This can't be good. So when AI is capable of second- and third-order thinking, we'll never know if we're being fooled.

––– 凄い –––

NW Natural is looking into methane pyrolysis, which turns methane into molecular hydrogen and solid carbon. It takes extremely high temperatures for this, but they say it makes sense. Sure would be cheaper to just burn the methane, wouldn't it?

––– 凄い –––

This stuff with Tina Kotek's spouse sure looks like the Cylvia Hayes situation to me. How does this allowed to just happen?

––– 凄い –––

Some success with an HIV vaccine? Researchers at Duke may have found a way to elicit broadly-neutralizing antibodies. This is just the first step, but it's progress.

––– 凄い –––

Oh-oh.  Now that Ilya Sutskever's gone, OpenAI dissolved their safety team.

––– 凄い –––

Cabel Sasser has a cautionary tale about someone selling an Apple ID badge of Employee #10. Someone's not going to be happy when they read this blog post.

––– 凄い –––

SARS-CoV2 may not have been the first bioengineered organism to be unleashed on humans. It may have been Lyme disease and Babesiosis.  So what's really going on at the Plum Island Animal Disease Center?

––– 凄い –––

Even the New York Post has recognized that Mike Schmidt has destroyed Portland. His reputation reaches out to the east. Yes "people want change".

––– 凄い –––

It seems OHSU's Chief People Officer doesn't like the people of OHSU.  They "complain" too much, it seems. Read the comments in the article. The goal was to restore trust, but it seems like the culture is getting worse. Instead, the CPO gets defensive, and it's not a good look.

––– 凄い –––

Portland officials took $5 million, meant to create more affordable housing, and instead used it to cover bureaucratic costs. We even have the bureaucracy. It's just there it incur costs.

––– 凄い –––

Oregon, Washington and Nevada saw double digit increases in drug overdose deaths in the past year. Even California wasn't that bad. There's been an 18-fold increase in fentanyl deaths alone in Portland since 2019.  This is one reason why Portland has lost population for the third year in a row.  People are going to Hillsboro and Happy Valley.

––– 凄い –––

That teacher who calmly helped a student figure out for himself why JK Rowling is not a bigot, just got fired. 

––– 凄い –––

Why math is set to be revolutionized by AI.

––– 凄い –––

EcoHealth Alliance was suspended from getting federal funds.  It's 2024 – what took them so long?

––– 凄い –––

What gives? iOS 17.5 was found to restore NSFW pictures that were thought to have been deleted years ago. This is really creepy. Those photos that you think are deleted, are still there somewhere on Apple's servers.

––– 凄い –––

For patients with traumatic brain injury, don’t pull the plug too soon. Try to wait at least 72 hours. Even so, quality of life afterwards may be such that prolongation of life might not be in the patient's best interest.

––– 凄い –––

Femtosecond lasers might create displays you can touch. One step to developing holograms?

––– 凄い –––

Ilya Sutskever will leave OpenAI soon. I feared as much. Hard to recover from last year's debacle.

––– 凄い –––

What are the dangers of AI going rogue?  I predict we won't know until something happens. Rear view mirror. And we might have super-intelligence faster than we think.

––– 凄い –––

Out of control spending.  Federal interest payment on the national debt now exceeds defense spending.

––– 凄い –––

Larry Huss comments on Tina Kotek's unpopularity, but only to try to explain how she got elected. He thinks it's because people don't bother to vote. I think it's mail-in balloting, and the potential for cheating.

––– 凄い –––

Top Five reasons why the homeless die.  Overdoses, heart disease, suicide, homicide and vehicle crashes.

––– 凄い –––

Restaurant apocalypse. Restaurants are struggling, as with many other things. I read yesterday that Red Lobster may declare bankruptcy. Who's not struggling these days? Oh yeah, government.

––– 凄い –––

Oregon is in the top ten most dangerous states. We're number 8, actually.

––– 凄い –––

Washington state has to pay more for child care because Congress is sending less money.  How did government get in the business of taking care of people's childcare?  What else are we going to subsidize?

––– 凄い –––

Washington state road deaths reach a 33 year high – up 10% from last year. WA has the third most dangerous roads in the nation, but it's not the roads' fault.  Here's a clue: "Last year, 400 fatalities involved a drug- or alcohol-impaired driver, 251 involved speeding". I'll bet the marijuana legalization has something to do with it. 

––– 凄い –––

NGOs that are facilitating the border crisis. It's a business model. They don't want the problem to go away, or they will be out of a job.

––– 凄い –––

Why does the Oregon ballot have judges up for election that have no opponent? Lars Larson explains why.

––– 凄い –––

iPadOS still has a ways to go before it is considered truly useful for techies.

––– 凄い –––

FAFO. A year ago, Seattle School District told Seattle parents that if they didn't like their liberal curriculum, they could go elsewhere. So they did. Now the school district enrollment has dropped so much that they may have to close 20 schools.

––– 凄い –––

Talk about bad timing. An online education company, called 2U, was started in 2018, and once had a market cap of $5 billion.  Due to increased competition and rising costs, the company became non-competitive, and is now worth only about $30 million.  And today, OpenAI released the multimodal GPT-4o, which can do online education really well, as seen in this video with Sal Khan.  Looks like it's time to shut down.

Chronic loneliness can affect the brain like a type of stress.  And it can lead to dementia. Boy, as if we didn't have enough factors for this.

––– 凄い –––

Time-restricted eating is a diet idea that was promoted to help people lose weight. You would fast for a limited period during the day, then eat without restriction for the remaining hours. The TREAT study and a later study showed that it doesn't help you lose weight, although you might lose weight if you are diabetic.  And now this study shows that on this diet plan, you have a increased risk of death.  A 91% increased risk of death from cardiovascular disease! 

––– 凄い –––

Always have a backup. Things could have been worse for UniSuper Pension Fund members.  Google Cloud accidentally deleted their $125 billion account.  Luckily they had a backup account with another provider, and so the information was not lost.  Whew!

––– 凄い –––

Techies in the Bay Area were told to return to their offices. So many of the top talent quit instead.  Meanwhile in India, it got so hot that many of them were more than happy to go back to air-conditioned offices.

––– 凄い –––

What took her so long?  Melinda Gates is resigning from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.  But an organization called the "Bill Gates Foundation" has less appeal.

––– 凄い –––

Singapore is a model nation. It's wealthy and full of really smart people. So I think the Prime Minister is worth listening to.

Download Singapore.mp4

––– 凄い –––

This is how Ronald Reagan dealt with "mostly peaceful" protestors.

An Australian government wanted to power to censor information on X/Twitter from the world. The hubris of some people. Fights not completely over yet, though.

––– 凄い –––

A sleeping agent, suvorexant, was found to reduce build up of amyloid-beta and tau proteins, linked to Alzheimer's disease. Improving cognition has been linked to reading more fiction, and walking faster. But correlation is not causation. Smarter people read more and walk faster than demented people. Reading more fiction and walking faster isn't going to make you smarter.

––– 凄い –––

Really?  "Kotek inherited the societal residue of her fellow progressive Democrat, Gov. Kate Brown.  Generally speaking, governors in Oregon haven’t been popular for a long time." Yeah sure, blame Oregon.

––– 凄い –––

Good taste. Steve Jobs was a fan of shin-hanga style of Japanese art, especially that of Kawase Hasui.

––– 凄い –––

Best ways to stay awake without caffeine. Someone has also discovered my sunflower seeds trick!

––– 凄い –––

Can't wait for this to go online.  The Catfish Test.  This is a test to see if someone is really who they say they are. I can see several applications for this.

––– 凄い –––

I just deleted the Signal app from my phone.  I didn't realize that the Chairman of the Signal Foundation is the same person as the CEO of NPR. That person has no background in tech, and has a dangerous political tilt.  I thought Moxie Marlinspike was still in charge.  Times sure change.

––– 凄い –––

Obesity now linked to 40% of cancer cases.

––– 凄い –––

Really? There are 15 places in Oregon where a couple can just live on Social Security.  You probably have to be Tier One on PERS, though, I bet.

––– 凄い –––

Einstein said famously that "Problems can't be solved with the same kind of thinking that created them." When Democrats face consequences of problems that they created, their solutions often make things worse. Here's an example. Oregon is flooded with illegal immigrants – a consequence of Democrat policy. Now there a report that Deschutes County doesn't have enough public defenders. The article includes this statement: "We had an individual who did not have English as his primary language”.  So to deal with the shortage, Oregon's solution is to remove the bar requirement to get a license.

Here's another problem: a lot of people have been maxing out their credit cards to get by in this lousy economy with high inflation.

That's not healthy, so what does the Biden administration want to do – legislate capping credit late fees to just 8%. This is unfair to credit card companies, who are essentially providing unsecured loans.

Here's another example: California's tax base is diminishing due to their Democrat policies, and now they went from a huge surplus in 2022 to a huge deficit in 2024.  Newsom doesn't want to cut spending. And in California, spending is indeed crazy, like giving free vodka to the homeless. 

––– 凄い –––

Here's a video recommender service called Discovahub, in case you need it.

––– 凄い –––

Does college pay off?  Sometimes. Depends on your field of study, how much you invest, and what your degree is. Masters degrees may not be as worthwhile.  At this time, I'm not sure that paying for an expensive school (especially an elite school) is worth it anymore.

––– 凄い –––

Lesbian and bisexual nurses have a substantially higher all-cause mortality compared with straight nurses.  No cause given. Just speculation.

––– 凄い –––