Sugoi & Yokunai

Thomson Reuters wins AI copyright 'fair use' ruling against one-time competitor.  This is interesting and a ground-breaking ruling. That AI-generated art is not copyrightable has already been litigated in courts.  But you can't just go out and ingest someone else's IP  to train on without permission. I think this is fair. It's going to make a lot of GenAI startups pause before they get data to train on.

––– 凄い –––

Seattle is going to hit their economic beneficiaries with a new tax. Why even do business in that city. Bezos was smart to flee Seattle.

And the state of Washington is considering "pay-per-mile" taxation. How are they going to tax out-of-state people?

Yes, Washington legislators are just crazy. Witness:

Oregon is dumb, too. They're considering reparations to Blacks. i think the only reason they propose this insanity is that they can say that they tried, and those Republicans shot it down.  My family and ancestors had nothing to do with slavery – why should my tax money go to this? Just another grift.

––– 良くない–––

It's later than you think.  AGI threatens to make teachers largely extinct.

Universities must instead lead with brutal honesty: students should pay precisely for the “last mile” of human knowledge that surpasses AGI’s capabilities. The true value of a university lies in faculty who can offer advanced education, mentorship, and inspiration at the highest level, while every other aspect of college life becomes a secondary consideration that no longer justifies tuition on its own.

Universities are already hurting. The fake wealth from federal dollars is diminishing. Sen Klobuchar can't figure it out, though.

––– 凄い –––

The Earth's inner core is changing shape. What does this mean?

––– 良くない–––

Kaspersky found that there are hidden backdoors in five generations of Apple Mobile Silicon.  Starting with the A12 CPU (iPhone X) and continuing to the A16 CPU (iPhone 14/15). The question is: who put this vulnerability there.  Apple? Or the Chinese who manufactured the chip?

––– 良くない–––

If you want to learn about interesting and obscure islands, here's your site.

––– 凄い –––

What is the true impact of the cut of NIH indirect cost funding to 15%?  Some universities have really been scarfing those federal dollars. OHSU will take a $41 million hit.  But more money will go to researchers, and there will be more money to fund more grants, so it's a good thing.

And it sure looks like chances of that Legacy merger happening is getting less and less likely. 

––– 良くない–––

In December, Oregon lost 3700 jobs, but gained 700 more government jobs.

––– 良くない–––

What does Tina Kotek want to do with the opioid settlement funds that are allocated to Oregon? She wants to spend it on syringe giveouts, boofing kits, and paying for prevention programs and rehab programs that no one will use.  Throwing good money after bad.

––– 良くない–––

Here's an interesting fact: If all the outpatient doctors worked for free, the U.S. would still have the most expensive healthcare system in the world.   The problem with our bloated healthcare system is not the "rich, greedy doctors".

––– 良くない–––

Seattle School District has a $94 million deficit to close, and they are begging for more state money.  Trouble is that the State will have a hole, too, with less federal money coming their way. Everyone is ultimately dependent on federal taxpayer dollars, and now that the grift has been discovered, and waste and fraud will no longer be financed, Blue states will suffer.  But sure, go ahead and "resist". See how far that gets you.

Same with Oregon:

I knew this would happen. The NIH cutting back on funding "indirect costs" will hurt universities, who have long relief on this money to fill budgetary holes. OHSU says that it will be "devastating".  The commenters don't seem to realize that not having to pay as much for these indirect costs will allow funding for more researchers instead. This will be great for those doing research, as they're more likely to get grant money. OHSU will just have to get more money from the state. And the state will have to stop wasting money on the homeless industrial complex, teachers unions, and funding illegals.  Start being more responsible with taxpayer money. Isn't that what it's all about?

––– 凄い –––

Oregon state provides paycheck loan service to workers. 45% of Oregonians live paycheck to paycheck. So this is Oregon's solution to help people out. Providing access to predatory loans.

AI sentiment analysis shows that movie dialog has gotten more violent over the years. Well yeah. With Hollywood, it's been a race to the bottom to be "edgy". The emotions that movies try to evoke no longer fill you with longing, yearning, or amazement. Movies aim to expose you to the disgusting, the vile, and the mentally ill. Violence comes with the territory.

––– 良くない–––

Happy Anniversary! Today is the second anniversary of this blog.  Came across this posting today: Why blog if nobody reads it?  I don't know who really reads this blog, but it's for me. I put things that I think a graying tech-savvy geek would have some interest it. There's nothing out there for my demographic.  Not interesting in gaming. More interested in factors influencing the liveability of the PNW, including politics, of which I am definitely more conservative now than before. I try to be nice, but boy, it's hard sometimes...

––– 凄い –––

Home hospitals are now trending.  Understandable, but I imagine that it's still pretty costly, and out of the reach of many. It seems to be something that is done more in foreign countries, such as the UK and Australia, but it is being done in the Northeast.

––– 凄い –––

Quipu – the largest known structure in the universe. It has a name.

––– 凄い –––

AsciiDoc is a new superset of Markdown. It does have some advantages over Markdown. I need to find an editor that can handle it, though. Finding a good Markdown editor was hard enough. Why not just use HTML? Why create something new?

––– 凄い –––

Can't believe this guy, Mark Gamba. He says:

JD Vance's Apple Watch is a security risk.  Just wear a Breitling, JD>

––– 良くない–––

Terrence Tao on how we measure the cosmos. It's actually quite interesting and the visuals are worth a watch.

––– 凄い –––

Be careful with those Magic Eraser sponges. They spew microplastics!

––– 良くない–––

Asteroid 2024 YR4 may impact in 2032. Chances of impact just doubled to 2.2%.  It's got a Torino score rating of 3, which means that it could cause Tunguska-like damage.

From https://www.highpointscientific.com/astronomy-hub/post/astronomy-101/what-is-the-torino-scale

The weather forecast for Portland is getting milder. I've noticed that forecasts start with threats of heavy winter snow, but as the date approaches, the severity is less. Earllier it was forecasted that there would be 2.6 inches on snow on Valentine's Day, but now it's 0.36 in, and will probably be just a dusting. If anything. Oh well.

––– 良くない–––

Lesson for math teachers: students may learn abstract methods of addition in the New Math or Common Core, but that doesn't translate to practical math, which they'll need in real life. And vice versa. There needs to be a unified approach. Of course, this study was done in Delhi, so I can't say that it pertains to how math is taught in America. Why doesn't the world just copy Singapore, already? National pride getting in the way. Let's build on what works instead of trying to re-invent the wheel.

––– 良くない–––

I never heard of Hotline until today. Sounds like the BBS systems of yore, with FidoNet. This must have gotten buried until the juggernaut of the WWW. No one cared about chat and FTP, when there was money to be made on websites.

––– 良くない–––

I didn't know Portland City Hall was based on The Kremlin. Portland had a Liberty Bell replica that got blown up be anarchists. Guess the heritage of civic idiocy goes back a long way.

––– 良くない–––

Oregon's going to suffer. The federal funding freeze is going to halt all kinds of Oregon highway efforts, including EV charging stations. Public EV charging stations still don't make sense. It's just one of those things people just ignore, as if there wasn't a problem.

––– 良くない–––

Universities are going to suffer, too. One of the major funding sources are overhead costs from research grants. That's going to decrease significantly, and universities will feel the pinch. Maybe now they'll focus on merit and achievement, instead of just trying to get federal dollars. Key researchers will still get nice grants, and maybe will be appreciated more.

––– 凄い –––

The Dalles ranks 6th in the nation for the most water-consuming data center. Bad for the environment, too, but who's going to tell them?

––– 良くない–––

Legacy nurses are unionizing now, making them more expensive, adding to the costs of a Legacy-OHSU merger. Well, you didn't expect them not to unionize, when non-union nurses would be the first to get cut with the merger, in order to save costs. Now that will be expensive, as there won't be any non-union nurses to fire. It's really looking like that merger won't happen. And the nurses at all the major Providence hospitals are refusing the latest offer.

It's really sad when the top employers in Oregon, Intel, OHSU, Providence, are all hurting. And the leaders just want to spend more money on the homeless, embrace being a sanctuary state, and work to oppose President Trump. Race to the bottom.

––– 良くない–––

UW is about to have their Danny Jacobs era. Robert Jones is going to double down on DEI and oppose Trump. Some folks can't learn from others, and gotta make their own mistakes.

––– 良くない–––

I used to go to StackExchange for help with coding, but since chat access became available with Claude 3.5 Sonnet, I stopped. Now StackExchange is looking to include a chat search feature, to help people locate relevant posts quickly. But it won't be for every post. Questions that will get this attention are:

Questions that meet the following criteria may receive an AI-generated answer:

• Older than 72 hours, to leave time for human curation

• Posted in 2024 or 2025

• Net positive score (0+)

• Unanswered, defined as having no upvoted or accepted answer

I think I'll stick with Claude.––– 凄い –––

Here's a long-standing problem: getting patients matched with clinical trials.  Sean Geiger has come up with trialsearcher.com, which uses the semantics-understanding properties of LLMs to do more than text-match based searching. This sort of thing has been attempted so many times before with humans, but admittedly, not with AI. It's based on clinicaltrials.gov, and not all trials are registered there.  Who will use this tool?

––– 凄い –––

The whole concept of public school education may be upended. Not many people have this on their radar yet. This could be huge.  Imagine, teachers not having the audience for BLM and LGBT propaganda.  Instead, religious charter schools could get government support. Wow, this is the way to pull kids away from the socialist inculcation that has given rise to the activist we seen in universities today. And teachers unions will be far less influential. This will go along with the dismantling of the Dept of Education.

––– 凄い –––

Oregon senator wants to take back to kicker, claiming there's not enough money.  Oh yeah? What about this? Oregon has to stop wasting money on funding illegal alien projects now. It's a new world, and the public is not in favor of it anymore.

––– 良くない–––

Yeah, when you use DeepSeek using their web platform, they fingerprint you. No surprises.

––– 良くない–––

Oregon Republicans are looking at the motor-voter law. It needs to be rescinded, but good luck with that in this Legislature.

––– 良くない–––

Dramatic increases in school spending haven't improved outcomes for Oregon students. 

Portland Public Schools explores cutting 200 teacher positions due to budget shortfall.

Washington 8th grade math scores decline despite increased education spending.

This is why we need to scrap the Department of Education. Worthless waste of money.

––– 良くない–––

Looks like Oregon is never going to enjoy the fruits of any tech boom. Not if we make it harder for business to thrive in the state.

Oregon is cracking down on private equity owning medical practices. Too little, too late, I'm afraid.

––– 良くない–––

Has Jack the Ripper's identity been confirmed at last?  A Polish barber?  Not a surgeon?

––– 良くない–––

Oh boy, I'd hate to be in the motion picture business now. OmniHuman creates realistic animated videos that look like filmed footage.  Man...

––– 凄い –––

So weird.  Danny Jacobs is still lurking behind the scenes at OHSU. The guy sued the university, and they can't get rid of him? They're still keep him on as adviser? I don't understand. Oh wait, I think I do....

––– 良くない–––

Why doctors test "too much".  I don't think they test too much. Testing is the best way to hone in your diagnosis and rule out implausible considerations. You order in batches so you don't waste time. Plus, it's done for legal reasons as well.  Hey, Nautil.us writer, go find something else to write about.

––– 良くない–––

Don't use DeepSeek using their online web interface. You'll get fingerprinted, and will be tracked everywhere you go on the Internet. If you want to explore, download one of their open-source models. There have been no reports of tracking or "phoning home" with those models.

––– 良くない–––

GenAI predicts genomic structures.

––– 凄い –––

Anthropic thinks their newest LLM cannot be jailbroken.  It's done with new Constitutional Classifiers. I bet someone will do it.

––– 凄い –––

Cool!  Bose-Einstein condensate slows light to 37 mph.

––– 凄い –––

Automatic voter registration lets non-citizens vote.  We knew that. Got to get rid of this system.

––– 良くない–––

Portland city workers threaten to strike again. Going on strike is the new Oregon lifestyle.

––– 良くない–––

What income does it take to qualify to be in the top 1% in the U.S. This site says $794,129. But this site says $407,500. I believe the latter site. Because the former site says that 1 of every 100 Oregonians makes $707,296 which I think it preposterous.  The data is from a website called GOBankingRates – not sure I believe them.

––– 良くない–––

Nitter.net is back!

––– 凄い –––

Intel nixed the Falcon Shores chip for datacenters further putting the company behind in AI. They really missed the boat.

––– 良くない–––

Mozilla publishes tips on how to protect your privacy when you use public Chat models. One more thing we need to do that we never had to do before is opt out of training. Such is the world of AI that we live in now.

––– 凄い –––

New fabric efficiently turns light into heat. The fabric is made of nanoparticles containing two polymers — polyaniline (PANI) and polydopamine (PDA). These are embedded within a matrix of thermoplastic polyurethane (PTU) fibers,

––– 凄い –––