Sugoi & Yokunai

Google is not having a good week. Their stock has tanked, along with the rest of NASDAQ. They were declared a monopolist in a U.S. District Court.  And now comes word that they disclose search histories to the government. You probably already suspected that, but it's now shown to be true. If you use Google, don't access the search engine straight.  Use a different interface.

––– 凄い –––

I read this article on "What should we do with lazy and ungrateful migrants?" The author agrees with Trump, but he has to say "At the risk of sounding Trumpian". What is wrong with echoing Trump's policies? Maybe they are the reason why Trump is supported. This is like when other people preface a statement with "Now, I'm not a Trump supporter by any means, but...."  Who gives a sh#t?

––– 凄い –––

Moar! Moar!  California fast food workers want to be paid a $30/hour minimum wage now.  Imagine that? For unskilled labor.  Good luck with that passing.

––– 凄い –––

Homeless camps next to your property? You could have a problem, as this person discovered.  Further evidence that we can't have nice things anymore in Portland is the fence going up around the Lan Su Chinese garden.  Kinda spoils the serenity and tranquility feeling, doesn't it?

––– 凄い –––

Seattle is running out of jail space, so they want to rent out the SCORE facility in Des Moines. And the Des Moines residents don't like it. Who can blame them?

––– 凄い –––

"For a ‘quality’ education in Oregon, the price tag tops $13.5 billion."  Everything is just beyond the horizon. Just a little bit more money and everything will be fine. Haven't we heard that enough?

Soon, you can get legal psilocybin edibles in Oregon. Just what we need – more substances to abuse. Like we didn't have enough. Now its psychedelics. Just great.

––– 凄い –––

It won't be that easy for China to invade Taiwan. Nice explanation. Plus, I hear they have missiles aimed directly at the Three Gorges Dam.  That'll keep China busy.

––– 凄い –––

Apparently some people are excited about cerebrolysin.  Seems like snake oil.

––– 凄い –––

Calling someone too old is "ageist".  I have two problems with this essay. The first is that the author falls into the trap of many lefties. If you call someone X, you're an X-ist. The desire to categorize someone, so you can dismiss him from serious consideration, is a common Lefty tactic. I refuse to buy in. The second is the sentiment that it's wrong to say that something can be "too THIS" or "too THAT". Like "too Asian" or "too female".  Well, sometimes things are too much of something. And we have every right to call it out. The problem with putting Diversity hires in charge is that once they are in a position of power, they hire more like them solely because of an irrelevant identity characteristic, such as being female, etc. Suddenly, no one else can have a position in that power structure. It's all that one minority thing. We've seen it everywhere, and people are afraid to call it out. We see it in Oregon's government leadership, and even in Washington D.C.  Yeah, diversity was cool at one point, but no longer. We need to recognize this and call it out.  With regard to age, sometimes age is indeed an issue. It wasn't really Biden's age that we complained about. It was his dementia,  Trump is fine.

––– 凄い –––

X/Twitter is moving out of San Francisco. More taxbase loss for the city.  They're moving to South Bay, but I predict Elon Musk will move them out of the state entirely.  One step at a time.

––– 凄い –––

Funniest comment I've read this morning:

We've seen what a Trump presidency is like. Now we'll get to see what a Kamala presidency will be like.

––– 凄い –––

The music industry is now having to figure out what is copyrightable and what is not. This is very much like a Ship of Theseus argument.

––– 凄い –––

Some geeks are asking: Does Sundar Pichai/Search team know how bad Google search is?  I think he knows, but can't do anything about it. There's still money being made, and it would be risky to change things.

––– 凄い –––

Has the AI bubble burst?  AI is already making money. But the low-hanging fruit solutions were just mirages. LLMs were offering illusion of conscious all-knowing human-like entity, when it was all sophisticated probabilistic models. People were provided with solutions that looked like they could be the answers you are looking for, but with no guarantee that the answers you received are actually correct. But hucksters are still selling it.

––– 凄い –––

I think that there is definitely a genetic determinant to brain capability. This news item strongly supports that. Brains, as with other physical characteristics, developed differently in different parts of the world. Different genetics result in different brains, with different thinking patterns, etc.

––– 凄い –––

Bravo! Some schools are incorporating meditation in the classroom. This is excellent. It will improve a child's mental health and provide them with a survival skill that will help them in adulthood.

––– 凄い –––

This is disheartening.  As academic is increasingly plagued with cheaters, we are seeing a growth of fringe intellectuals.

Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine have developed a new class of ring-fused 2-pyridone antibiotic, which they call GmPcides (for gram-positive-icide). These agents are especially effective against Strep pyogenes, associated with "flesh-eating" disease.  It's interesting that this got published in a physics journal, rather than the usual biomedical journals.

––– 凄い –––

There's always something new. There's a condition where people see grotesque distortions in other people's faces. There's no single cause of this phenomonenon. Could be post-infectious. Could be a delayed trauma effect. It's called prosopometamorphopsia, or PMO. I suspect it's related to the flashed face distortion illusion, but you see it all the time.

––– 凄い –––

ChatGPT (based on GPT 3.5) isn't that good at medical diagnosis. This is no surprise. No one thinks ChatGPT is the standard anymore. I wish they did the study on more recent architectures, such as MedPaLM2 or Palmyra-Med.

––– 凄い –––

Washington state is facing a shortage of public defenders, too. What a coincidence, huh?

The progressive Washington State Supreme Court (WASC) may green-light the Washington State Bar Association’s (WSBA) new public defense standards. If approved, thousands of violent and non-violent criminals will go without any charges, let alone punishment. And it appears that releasing criminals from punishment is the very point from some public defenders.

If this sounds dramatic, it’s because it is that dramatic. It would lower the number of cases a public defender can take, limits the ability of private attorneys to take on cases for counties and coincides with a shortage of attorneys across the state.

Nice, huh? Their solution is so bad, you'd think Oregon's legislature came up with it.

––– 凄い –––

More Oregonians are worried about the economy. But they'll still vote Democrat. Betcha most would wish the economy went back to 2019, before COVID.

––– 凄い –––

Washington's stupid primary election system is a great argument Ranked Choice Voting.  Votes for stupid candidates need to just die. Not be re-allocated to the next-stupidest loser candidate.  What a mess.

––– 凄い –––

Remember when living near a greenbelt was an asset? Now it's a liability, as Tacoma residents are finding out. Criddlers and gronks live there. And they start fires.

––– 凄い –––

The WSJ suspects that we will have an election recession. It's already here, folks. And Warren Buffet is trimming back his Apple stock holdings. I agree – Apple doesn't know what to do. Phones are already as thin as they need to be. We won't notice more pixels. And who cares about more emojis. Better cameras, yes. Agentic frameworks, yes, if they work well.

––– 凄い –––

So obvious. First they depose Joe in a coup. Now Obama's people are taking over Harris' campaign. But is it Obama's doing? Or forces even above him? Who aren't ready to give up the control that a brain-dead Biden allowed?

––– 凄い –––

Man, you can't even go to a Star Trek convention before encountering loony liberal politics from your TV characters. What a pile of crap.

––– 凄い –––

Clackamas County isn't going to fool around. You get arrested for a drug crime, you're getting prosecuted. No "deflection" crap. That's the way to do it.

––– 凄い –––

Maui residents enter into a $4 billion settlement.  Who's paying?  The state of Hawai'i, County of Maui, Hawaiian Electric, Kamehameha Schools, West Maui Land Co., Hawaiian Telcom and Spectrum/Charter Communications.  Hope the money helps people get back on their feet.

––– 凄い –––

Canadian scientists find a novel way to use CAR-T cell therapy against glioblastomas. The target is the protein, Roundabout Guidance Receptor 1 (ROBO1).  Happy to see progress being made against this deadly disease.

––– 凄い –––

Another one bites the dust. Big Lots is closing 6 more stores in Oregon. Only 8 stores left. More unemployment. Less tax revenue for the state.  Way to go, Kotek.

––– 凄い –––

The state of Oregon continues to waste money. Tina Kotek is so corrupt and irresponsible with taxpayer money.

––– 凄い –––

This is not from 2021. This is from last week. So-called Dr. Peter Hotez, probably still mad that he's not getting the praise he once got on cable networks, now wants the unvaxxed to be taken into custody by UN and NATO security forces.  That'll punish them for not taking him seriously, right?  The COVID affair recently uncovered a lot of mini-dictators that would not have been evident.

––– 凄い –––

The reason reason why people aren't having kids. People aren't as mentally stable as before, and don't feel able to handle the added stress of being parents. So more childless cat ladies?

––– 凄い –––

Nice backstory on what's going on with Intel. The company has major problems that won't be fixed for a few years, likely. This truly is existential for them. Too bad the CEO couldn't see the future. Intel was heavily involved in DEI efforts, like celebrating Black history 365 days a year, instead of, you know, making excellent chips. Like many others, they felt that diversity was their strength. Insiders told a different story. Go woke, go broke, as they say.

––– 凄い –––

No shame. Man, Samsung is really blatant about ripping off Apple's designs. They seem to be incapable of embarrassement.

––– 凄い –––

Antidepressants permanently numb your genitals? Never heard that before. They mention Prozac and Zoloft, but this could happen with other SSRIs. 

––– 凄い –––

You get what you pay for. There's a California company (of course) that lets you access a doctor (supposedly a real one) at $19 for a "visit". Then you'll get a prescription. Only available in certain states. They must have an iron-clad malpractice policy, where you have to agree to be responsible for anything that goes wrong. I can't imagine the doctors they have on their "panel".   

Their CTO says:

FLUX.1 is a new image generator that looks to be as good as Stable Diffusion, but can create hands better. I've found DALL-E to be better than Stable Diffusion. The creators of FLUX think that their text-to-image outperforms Midjourney and DALL-E. I'll check it out on Poe.

––– 凄い –––

Starbucks closes their First and Pike store.  That was one of their most popular. Well, gotta adapt to changing times. Seattlites can't have nice things anymore.  And Seattle wants to have "drug-free zones" in the city. Good luck with that. It's like those old feminist responses to rape violence where they stood around with a candle and mumbled a chant about "I'm taking back the darkness". Sure.

––– 凄い –––

Jay Inslee wants to take taxpayer money and use it to con lower income people into buying EVs. Yeah, wait until the find out what a "good deal" owning an EV is. Especially in the winter. Or when copper thieves dismantle charging stations. And they can find Type 2 charging outlets near their low-income housing. Or when they get into a minor fender bender and damage their battery, and don't have the money to replace it. Or find that the resale value of their car is really low.

And after spending $1.1 million to get only 126 people to transitioned out of homelessness, Inslee wants more money. Man, can that guy leave office fast enough? He's like a male version of Kate Brown.

––– 凄い –––

Elon Musk's Ad Astra school is accepting applications in Texas. Curious to see how that goes. It won't be woke, for sure, and will probably stress STEM fields.  Could be good. We'll see.

––– 凄い –––

The AI boom is deflating. Microsoft has lost a lot of money on AI investments. No real returns just yet.  Zuckerberg says he'll need 10X more computing power to train Llama 4 than Llama 3. Plus, he already needs power for datacenters to support Facebook. Isn't he concerned about his carbon footprint? Oh, right. That's just for us to worry about.  And Amazon is shrinking their AWS offerings.  Everyone is cutting back.

Intel downtown is so bad, some are calling it an "existential risk".  15,000 are being let go, starting October, and ending November, just in time for Thanksgiving. Well, Intel overwhelmingly supports Democrats, so they got what they voted for.

––– 凄い –––

I remember when Portland Opera and All Classical Radio were so pleased with their nice new digs near OMSI. Nice views of the city and so near Tillicum Bridge and OHSU. Now they are moving out.  Can't imagine why.

––– 凄い –––

News from California.  Chevron is moving to Texas. And fast food workers want even more pay. Even after the recent minimum wage hike. Sure.

––– 凄い ––– And ODOT till have to cut a thousand jobs if they don't get more money from the State legislature.

Portland General Electric and Pacific Power want to raise rates by a lot. Everyone wants more money.

––– 凄い –––

Oregon health insurance rates will increase, too.  Why not? Join the club.

––– 凄い –––

Multnomah County blinked. Finally they will allow one paramedic per vehicle. Sorry, you can't be rigid when the situation in Portland is what it is.

––– 凄い –––

Fecal transplants can help boost responses to immunotherapy, given to treat cancer.  But it's not likely that this will be a widespread practice. Too icky, I guess.

––– 凄い –––

MIR scans generated by variation autoencoders are now so good they can be used in data analytics. Thay're that good.

––– 凄い –––

Hawaiian Electric warns of possible rolling blackouts as a power station went down unexpectedly. The grid is pretty fragile if you ask me.

––– 凄い –––

CRISPR technology may provide an inexpensive antidote to cobra venom. Cobra venom binds to heparan and heparin, which depletes tissues of anticoagulant, and so tissue thrombosis ensues. The drug works be flooding the circulation with decoy molecules designed to bind to and soak up venom, thereby avoid clotting and tissue necrosis. Heparin and heparan are inexpensive, and modifying these is also not expensive. Unlike cobra antivenom.

––– 凄い –––

Nifty. First time use of a titanium Maglev mechanical heart.

––– 凄い –––

Websites are being pestered by AI scrapers, who don't respect robots.txt. The inventors of the Web never figured that there would be problem of people wanted to avoid certain visitors to come to their site. Everything was supposed to be open and connected. We were so innocent back then.

––– 凄い –––

Yawn. COVID infections are rising again. And OHA is still pushing the vax. Give it up, guys. It's not working. Let people get natural immunity. 

––– 凄い –––

Oregon is one of the most expensive states to be driving.  That's maintenance, insurance and gas prices.

––– 凄い –––

Portland is a poor city. So much of the city is below the poverty line.  Man...

––– 凄い –––

Scammers are using Proofpoint to send realistic scam spoofed emails to people.  You can't tell them apart from a real company-issued email. Many companies got burned when they used Crowdstrike for security. I think these companies are going to get burned from using Proofpoint to route their emails.

––– 凄い –––

Telehealth is hurting rural hospitals. Telehealth visits only made sense for major urban hospitals. For rural hospitals, there was no real need to implement them. So they didn't. And now they aren't getting the business that customers prefer.

––– 凄い –––

Lilly's Zepbound (tirzepatide) decreases congestive heart failure risk by 38%. Coupled with weight loss, diabetes control, decrease in addictive behavior and now decreased congestive heart failure risk, it sounds like a winner.

––– 凄い –––

Uruguayans are upset because Google's planned datacenter is going to suck a lot of water and spew lots of toxins and CO2.  Plus it will probably raise energy prices, since there will be increased demand.

––– 凄い –––

Outpace is a Seattle biotech company that will synthesize proteins that can be used as targets for T cell therapy. This is the kind of research that should have come from OHSU.  Phil Knight's money was supposed to make stuff like this happen locally. The Knight Cancer Institute has been quiet lately.

––– 凄い –––

Documents, Whistleblowers, and Public Comments Are Clear: Oil Companies Know Carbon Capture Is Not a Climate Solution. No, it isn't, and the sooner people realize this, the better.

And many apparently want to amend the state constitution to say that we have a "right" to a clean environment. No, it's not a right. 

––– 凄い –––

Putting criminals in jail is not the answer.  How many times have we heard variations of this screed? The Multnomah County sheriff is saying something very similar, She won't arrest anyone violating city regulations. Even Ted Wheeler is unhappy with this.

And if someone abuses fentanyl, Multnomah County wants to do anything they can short of sending these criminals to jail. Bonham County is not buying it. Good for them.

Not only do data centers have high energy demands, but they also need a good backup power supply when there are brownouts or blackouts. These aren't as easy to produce and maintain. It's becoming clear that the AI dream isn't going to come about as easily as some might have hoped. And it's going to compete with cryptocurrency interests, and all the government efforts to get everyone to drive EVs.

––– 凄い –––

Scientists in Beijing have discovered a new particle, which may be the elusive glueball.  Here's the paper, if you can read it. There's no shortage of authors, that's for sure.

––– 凄い –––

Look at the sudden increase in miscarriages since 2021. What could be the cause? I think I know. 🙄

Try it yourself. This is Google today:

The current powers that be are very much like those that our founding fathers were fleeing. We've come full circle. The tree of liberty needs watering.

––– 凄い –––

Macrolones might be a powerful new class of antibiotic. This is early stage, so I'll reserve my excitement for now.

––– 凄い –––

People are overdosing on the injectable weight-loss drug, Wegovy. Because they can't follow instructions? Or are they just impatient?

––– 凄い –––

WinCo customers can't have nice things. Stores on Washington and Oregon are removing self-checkout stands.  Call me unsurprised.

––– 凄い –––

DoorDash sends a message. Seattle needs to roll back the minimum wage law, or they'll add an increased delivery fee.  Then people won't be able to afford DoorDash, so Seattle will increase their pay even more, rinse, repeat.

––– 凄い –––

As this ronin gets older, he might need these exoskeleton pants to keep on hiking in the Pacific Northwest. Hills seems to be getting steeper.

––– 凄い –––

van Eck phreaking is real! Hackers can monitor wireless electromagnetic radiation coming from an HDMI cable and interpret the video by processing it with AI to read what you type on the computer.

––– 凄い –––

Discover new music at the Cosine Club. I suppose it finds similar music by looking at the cosine similarities of vector space representations of musical pieces.

––– 凄い –––

AP reports that Guardant's recently FDA-approved colon cancer blood test, which detects cell-free circulating tumor DNA, has an 83% accuracy.  But this was in patients who were already known to have colon cancer, so 83% accuracy isn't really that good. What is the accuracy in the general screening population? Probably less, I'd say, but that's what really matters. Here's the original study.

––– 凄い –––

Close to 60% of workers are not taking all their alloted vacation.  Why? The article suggests that vacations really don't have as much refreshing and relaxing effect as what should happen when you take a break. I can understand that.

––– 凄い –––

A gambling arms race.  Oregon doesn't want tribal casinos, because they'll take away lottery revenue. Tribes say – too bad! I was surprised to read that the idea of building a casino at the old Portland Raceway is still alive.  Would definitely change the scene in North Portland if it were built, and not necessarily for the better.

––– 凄い –––

Unforeseen consequences again.  Oregon passed a law that states that "any major infrastructure project over $5 million, or any renovation which exceeds 50% of the current building’s value, to devote 1.5% of its entire budget to 'Green Energy Technology'".  But the only thing you can really do is install expensive solar panels.  And "two-thirds of school projects are outfitted with solar panels that will not break even on their investment for the next 50 years. The industry-accepted break-even limit is 25 years, assuming they last that long before requiring replacement."  So what do you do?  Postpone necessary repairs and maintenance.  Because that's all you can afford.

––– 凄い –––

More Oregon government waste. Summer is nearly over, and now the Oregon Department of Human Services is on a race and media campaign to hand-out the free food money to people for whom they have no idea exist (in the way that they think they do), as part of their Summer EBT program. What a waste.

––– 凄い –––

Looks like Apple's iOS 18.1 is not going to include their AI Intelligence after all. Kudos on them for waiting until it is ready, and not falling for the hype.

––– 凄い –––

Seattle Democrat leaders just can't stop destroying the city.  Now it looks like many Seattle restaurants will have to shut down because of the increased minimum wage happening at the end of the year. Like many Dems, Seattle city council throught they could legislate wealth. Bet they just can't understand why more poor nations are doing it. That's what happens with DEI leaders.

––– 凄い –––

Non-Google search engines blocked from showing recent Reddit results. Not sure who's going to blink first. You can still get old results off Reddit, but not new ones. But with Perplexity, Farfaille, and OpenAI's search to be available perhaps soon, one may not need to consult Reddit. Unless you really, really want to get some Redditor's opinion.

––– 凄い –––

We've mentioned this before. Generative AI is going to need a lot of power, and the existing electrical grid won't be able to handle it.  Washington is already seeing that because of this, they can't push any green new deals.  Oh, and by the way, the Great Salt Lake is drying up, and it's spewing around 7 million tons of CO2 annually in the process. You're not going to win this battle with windmills and solar panels.

Look at poor Ethiopia. Someone sold them on "EVs or nothing". Now they have 70,000 electric cars and just 50 charging stations. What suckers. They can't legally purchase any other type of vehicle.

––– 凄い –––

But engineers found that aluminum and sea water can generate hydrogen, and the reaction is catalyzed by coffee grounds. This seemed like a joke headline, but I guess it's true.

––– 凄い –––

Google was going to turn off third-party tracking cookies, but decided not to when ad companies complained. That's how you know that they're making a lot of money off you. I can't believe that people are willing to just play in the Internet without privacy extensions and a VPN. Don't make it easy for them.

––– 凄い –––

This is so funny. Talking about the Trump attempted assassination.  Journalists are just puzzled and frustrated that people don't trust them. Listen:

I know that there are going to be wild rumors and reports in the early stages, but it's certainly better than the silence we would get before. The MSM were so eager to back the Russian collusion hoax. Even now, they erase that Kamala Harris was appointed Border Czar, and that she is among the most radical Democrat in the power circle. We've long lost trust in the MSM, and see no reason to trust them now. And a couple of millennials isn't going to change my mind. And notice in this video that they don't even mention that there should be no way that Thomas Crooks should have been able to climb on the roof unopposed and fire a shot. They're more focused on why social media is so unreliable.

––– 凄い –––

A blood test that measures blood levels of ptau-217 supposedly has a 90% accuracy in diagnosing Alzheimer's disease. The first thing I want to know are the sensitivity and specificity of the test, so that I have a sense of what the predictive-value-positive and predictive-value-negative would be. Saying 90% accuracy depends on the context. If you tested a bunch of 20 year olds, a positive test is surely false. But when testing a cohort of forgetful or impaired 65 year olds, and a negative test might not be as reassuring. The reporter should mention Bayes theorem.

––– 凄い –––