Sugoi & Yokunai

Class of 2024 Can’t Land Jobs as Hiring in Tech, Finance Wanes. School's over, kids. Welcome to the real world.

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Researchers uncover on/off switch for breast cancer metastasis. This report has been all over. There have been reports like this over the years. The researchers found a protein (ENPP1) that correlates with metastatic potential. But it also correlated with response to pembrolizumab, which is significant since breast cancer hasn't been responsive to checkpoint inhibitor therapies (except for triple-negative cancers). This might be something to assay for, if there was a commercially available test for it, that was covered by insurance.

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Making Synthesized Sounds More Acoustic. What makes synthesized music by Tomita more interesting than a lot of other classical synth artists, is that Tomita makes each voice sound like it was being played by an organic musician, and not just a MIDI channel. I was able to envision magical lands inhabited by these creatures, instead of a sequencer, sitting on a table. MIDI is the cheater's way of playing classical music. Play it manually. There are no shortcuts. Nathan goes into other considerations, many of which were discussed by Wendy Carlos many years ago.

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Woman chooses assisted death because Canada’s treatment wait time was ‘weeks to months’ I don't ever want to hear about how Canadian healthcare is superior to that of the United States. This is what you get when you don't make sure you have enough qualified people, and just make "healthcare" available to everyone. Healthcare can be affordable, available and high quality, but you only get to pick two.

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Can't believe anything newspeople say these days. Doesn't any journalist research stories anymore? Turns out that the story of the landlord unable to evict a nighmare tenant and having to sleep in his car was more complicated than what has been told.

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They don't want you to do your own research. Search engines promote misinformation. Doing your own research makes you believe conspiracies. Yeah, just listen to the mainstream media. They'll set you right. /sarc

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Regarding the previous item, take this story, for example. So the FDA had similar misgivings about the vax product, but never told us. And approved it anyway.

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Everyone wants a Chinese name in SF now. Because it's so cool, and it gets you votes.

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This is the future of software engineering. Scared yet?  Or happy as heck?

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The first proven pheromone? Female tears lower male testosterone. Well, guys, what do we do with this information?

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Oregon has highest rate of homeless families in the country. Feels that way.

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What did Oregonians get this year? Name one nice thing? We got to pump our own gasoline.  So that's something.

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The position of director of the Measure 110 program is still unfulfilled.  No one wants the job. And it seems people don't want to move to Oregon to take the job. Because people know that Oregon doesn't want any solutions that might fix the problem. Like the "Harbor of Hope" navigation center downtown. How's that going?

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Portland traffic deaths hover near 30-year high record in 2023. Maybe a lot of drivers are stoned on cannabis or meth.  Probably pedestrians, too.  Maybe fentanyl, too, who knows?

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Absences mount throughout Portland Public Schools’ makeup week.

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Everything's worth half of what it was when Trump was in charge. LA’s Third-Tallest Tower Sells for 45% Below 2014 Price. How symbolic.

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What's going on Verizon?  Verizon Once Again Busted for Handing Out Sensitive Wireless Subscriber Information To Any Nitwit Who Asks For It. Is anyone going to get fired for this?

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No one wants a used EV. Makes sense. Unlike a used iPhone or iPad, where you can change the battery without spending a fortune, changing the battery on a EV is so expensive, that you might as well get a new car.

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Good for Substack. It seems that some who use Substack are actual Nazis. So naturally some want to censor them. Because, censorship is so commonplace now that many on the Left no longer see it as a problem. Or something to be done just occasionally. But Substack is standing firm. Good on them. If you don't like it, don't use Substack.

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Thousands of Doctors Take Legal Action Against Transgender Mandate. Nice to see that there are still doctors willing to stand up for their beliefs.

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How To Turn Off Google’s “Privacy Sandbox” Ad Tracking—and Why You Should. Better yet, avoid surfing the Internet with Chrome. It's amazing how open Google is about wanting to insinuate itself in your life. Such creepiness.

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Physics Girl is still grievously ill. Not good. What is going on? Why is identification of the root cause so elusive? This is consistent with my hypothesis that this condition is a genetic susceptibility, possibly related to WASF3 dysfunction.

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Why are only certain Target stores closing? CNBC reporters says that Target's claim that it's due to crime is unfounded because they analyzed when police were called, and it didn't correlate with store closures. But then they admit that they didn't count “mental health crises, overdoses, vehicle thefts, vehicle burglaries and other events that weren’t directly related to Target or appeared to happen outside the confines of the store." Maybe those were a factor. Maybe it's because in the more conservative areas, people simply boycotted Target because of their woke policies.

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Some people want Oregon to pull Trump off the 2024 election ballot, too. They think that their viewpoints give them the right to deprive everyone else.

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Nuclear fusion is now a reality. I used to see articles where they'd say "we're close" or "we think we see net energy output, but we're not quite sure". Now, it's apparently reproducible and beyond doubt.  We're on our way.

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Zorin OS 17 Has Arrived. I never heard of Zorin before. It's an alternative OS you can load on your Mac. Like Cydia for your iPhone.

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Don't feel Christmas-y this year? You aren't the only one. The best part of Christmas for me as a child was that everyone seemed a little happier. I saw more smiles and people were nicer to me. It used to be the "hap- happiest time of the year".

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Oregon extends domestic partnerships to all couples regardless of sex in 2024. This is that slippery slope Lars Larson talked about after approval of gay marriages. But I suppose it could lead to an interesting tax strategy. For example, if you're a single parent and want to bequeath something to your unmarried child, you could enter into a domestic partnership, and then when you die – no estate tax!  Slippery slope.

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Portland Public School teachers are openly truant. They don't care. Why should you?

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Don't use Chinese apps! Apple allows applications to track user locations without authorization.  Especially HotSpot Helper, WeChat and AliPay. Avoid!

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Feeling sleepy while driving? It could be the CO2 in your car. It's amazing how quickly it builds up to impactful levels, especially when there are three people in the car.

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Bloomberg reveals a secret longevity research lab backed by Sam Altman. This one specializies in autophagy approaches, and using plasma from young people to rejuvenate older people. Sounds creepy but that's one of the strategies people are pursuing. More info here.

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Nobody knows what’s happening online anymore. The Internet has become so fragmented now. Everybody has retreated to their own Mastodon instance, or Lemmy, or Discord, or whatever.  Teens are on TikTok. Much of the rest are still on X/Twitter. There's not as much of a town square anymore. That's life.

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The price of being successful. In an internal meeting, Nvidia's CEO addressed a question about employees in 'semi-retirement' mode as unusual tension grows.  Heh. Unforeseen issues. This is the "problem" Microsoft had during the dotcom era. Everyone got rich and suddenly they didn't want to work so hard.

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‘Do we think the world is better off with more or less intelligence?’ Always interesting to read what Andrew is thinking about.  By the way, FT reporter, Andrew uses Zephyr, not "Zefa".

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I didn't know Rite Aid was using face recognition.

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Math team.  Brings back memories. This is a rite of passage for many Asian kids but also geeks in general, and you gotta wonder if there is a better way. Especially as the reward for all of this (getting into an elite school) is far less attractive today than it was before. With forced vaccinations, having your conservative voice silenced by the woke Left, who are not just your dorm mates, but your professors. Plus the debt.  Harry is the real winner in this story – because he followed his own path.

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59% of non-citizens are on welfare. Just as we suspected. We gotta have some control over how much of the world's poor we have to support, or we will go broke.

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Rich people are leaving California. Increasingly, the economy of California rests on the fortunes of the very wealthy.

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Ouch. Africa's first female billionaire Isabel dos Santos loses £580m High Court case. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.

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In China, Quiet Quitting Becomes Let It Rot and Lying Flat. Oh-oh. Young Chinese workers realize that the window of them getting rich and living large has closed. Now they are acting like the Japanese. And Gen-Zers/Millennials. This is a global problem now.

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Self-censorship is on the rise. It's probably OK if some people kept their opinions to themselves, but the problem is that certain factions don't self-censor, and it ends up that the Internet is increasing filling up with hateful filth, while other valid opinions get canceled. Sometimes this results in tragedy.

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PopSci thinks that health misinformation is rampant. What do they consider "misinformation" you ask? It's people who doubt the benefit of the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines, of course. What irony. Total lack of self-awareness.

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I call this Providerism: the ability to ignore political-economic reality because everything is provided for you, and the underlying mechanics and costs are abstracted away. Europeans may not be consumerists, but they are hardcore providerists. Growing up, virtually every consumer good I interacted with was made in Japan or made in China, and in 18 years that never gave rise to more than 15 minutes of conversation. The goods that you want appear from far away in your local store: they are provided. And if you fall on hard times and cannot afford these goods? The state will provide the basics. If you’re 22 and don’t know what to do, the state will provide more time and will provide a master’s degree. Or two. And if there is war, the state will call NATO, and NATO will provide defense.

How fitting: the European Commission assembled around an iPad. On the back, in fine print, it will read: Designed by Apple in California. Assembled in China. There is no European iPad. There is no European computer. There is no European search engine. There are only European consumers, to whom things are quasi-magically provided, and so they regulate the providing and consumption of those things.

Europe is falling behind. It largely missed the internet and personal computing booms, and now it sits in danger of missing the coming AI boom. Today’s Europeans are not yet poor — they are still living off the prosperity created by prior generations, and that enables their passive consumption7 — but tomorrow’s Europeans may be.

Some in Congress think we should emulated Europe in many ways (looking at you, Bernie).  Parts of Europe are becoming very dystopian. Only those with great wealth can escape it. But for how long?

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Some tech writer is not happy with Apple's weather app. He doesn't realize that micro-prediction is a fairly recent development. I've been pretty satisfied with BriefSky. Not perfect, but accurate enough to make plans.

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Tech-Linked Group Wants to Track Anti-Asian Discrimination at Work. Good luck with that.

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Testosterone supplementation causes Democrats to be more conservative. I kinda knew it.

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When should you end a conversation? Sooner than you think, it seems. Making small talk can be hard.

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52 things I learned in 2023. You'll never guess the "most successful" invention in 2023.

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Physics breakthrough of the year. This is more what I hoped the future would be like.

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5 useful Mac apps everyone should have. OK, I learned something from this article. Added one app to my collection.

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Some people are working hard to remove CO2 from the atmosphere to meet the Paris goal of limiting warming to 1.5 °C.  Recently, someone came to my door wanting to know if I wanted to donate money to help farmers reduce their CO2 emissions.  He didn't realize that farmers actually use CO2 generators to help their crops grow. Kids are not getting the education they need.

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The Flipper can wreak a lot of havoc in a 30 foot radius. Not anymore for iPhones after the latest update.

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Don't use other people's iPhone charger cables. If it's the OMG cable, you could have data stolen and malware implanted.

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GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 aren't going to replace doctors anytime soon.  The chatbots answered correctly just 21% to 41% of the time, although in another 27% to 29%, the accuracy of the answers could not be established, for some reason. At least, the bot did not do any harm, according to the researchers. Again, it's important to remember. These chatbots don't necessarily provide you with the correct answer. Just what a correct answer would probably look like, given the information fed into it.

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This should have happened sooner. Google made it more difficult for police to conduct reverse location warrants.  Location data will only be held for a shorter time (still unspecified). This was just privacy invasion, and that it would aid the police is not good enough reason to justify it. Not the way things have been going with J6 and other politics.

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Evil. Sober man in Hawaii get arrested for DUI even though he is sober, so because "these DUI checkpoints are often federally-funded, and the overtime hours they provide are paid for by state and federal agencies, rather than the police departments carrying out the patrols".  And now the guy has that on his record, and has to explain it away every single time. What corruption.

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New Washington state laws that will go into effect in 2024. Employers can't test applicants for cannabis anymore except where “impairment while working presents a substantial risk of death.” Yeah, right.

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Sign of the times – U.S. Steel sold to Japan. Now it's Nippon Steel. Symbolic of the decline that this administration has brought upon us.

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Yes, Apple is indeed pausing sales of its Apple Watch. Because of the pulse oximeter patent infringement litigation. Yeah, they lost the case.

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This link was supposed to help the novice to learn meditation. But it's way too complicated. I'd be surprised if anyone learns from this. The process is not too complicated, actually. The trick is to keep doing it, until you can do it effortlessly and regularly.

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Oregon ranks #2 in the nation as to percentage of the population that is homeless. Only California is worse. Thanks, Ted Wheeler. We're so sad that you're not running for re-election.

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Oregon is lucky to have someone like Phil Knight, who has donated much of his fortune to local causes. Tim Boyle is a big donor, too, but not to the extent that Phil Knight has done.

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This is interesting. Portland Bureau of Development Services cuts dozens of jobs due to downturn in construction industry. Because no one's building in Portland anymore, the BDS has had to cut back on personnel. Because the bureau is funded by permits. So now permits will probably take longer to acquire, and so construction will be delayed. Something's wrong with this picture.

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A new Suez crisis threatens the world economy.  Looks like everyone will soon know about Houthis. Europe's not going to have some nice things for a while.

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How you know climate change is just B.S..

• Private Jets Flock To Dubai For COP 28: Event Set To Have Biggest Carbon Footprint In History
• Sunak, Cameron and King Charles each take own private jets to travel to Cop28
• Kamala and Kerry flew on SEPARATE jets... the host is a Sultan oil boss... and it's all held in Dubai - where they air condition the desert

I'll recognize climate change as an emergency when the elites start treating it as such. Until then...

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A stock fund manager's beauty may be an advantage for the stock manager, but not necessarily for you. The reason is that an attractive manager is more likely to be promoted and move elsewhere to smaller firms, or may just be inadequate for the job and got it because of looks. But this is a Chinese paper, so maybe it only applies to attractive Chinese fund managers.

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California has an insurance crisis, and it's because of commissioner, Ricardo Lara.

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Beer sales drop. But not for THC-beer. Why not, Oregon. You're not weird enough. By all means, have some THC with your alcohol.

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This is the way responsible social media should be. Discord reports a crazed 13 year old who planned a mass shooting at a school.

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Chatmail. Seems like a good idea. Fast, secure, etc. But you have to send messages to other people enrolled in the program, or else you don't see any benefit. But maybe if too many people join, it won't be fast anymore. I'm going to wait on this one.

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Meta/Facebook comes out with their own version of Google Glass. Still dorky. Still an invasion of privacy. I am in favor of privacy startups that will arise to combat glasses like these.

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I suspected that this would happen with password managers. Leakage. You put your trust into a company to safeguard your passwords, and that company is breached. Really sucks. So far the one I use (Abine) hasn't had problems.

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Lots of hype recently about transparent wood. I suspect it's going to have limited usage.

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Microsoft will soon overtake Apple in 2024. Apple seems to have run out of ideas. They can't make their phones any slimmer, and can't make the bezels any smaller. And making pixel density more dense is pointless, even if feasible. And there is little interest in another set of emojis. Form factor hasn't changed in years. Computers are still gray rectangles, just like the day Steve Jobs died.

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A.I. now lets you separate vocal tracks from music.

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Guess we won't need TV news reporters anymore. These are much better. They can do so much more, and you don't have to pay them a king's ransom.

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Ex-Soviet math professor refuses to sign Diversity statements.  “I grew up in the Soviet Union, where people had to affirm their fealty to ideals, and the leaders embodying those ideals, on a daily basis."  Understood.

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Biden's NLRB wants to make it illegal to shut down your business if union jobs are to be lost. Doesn't matter if the numbers don't pencil out. Why would anyone want to open a business in this climate?

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