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.
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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Electric eels can genetically modify neighboring fish! Electroporation, that's how. I did experiments with that before. But electric eels can do it in the sea. But what DNA are they modifying fish with? Environmental DNA! Apparently the sea is filled with it. And who knows what it will do to fish? Very strange.
There's a lot of publicity around this Portland Police Association survey of folks of whom 55% were Democrats. Of these 56% would leave Portland if they could. It's interesting that 21% thought Portland leadership was on the right track.
Holy crap, this is big. This came out in September, but I missed it. A combination of two monoclonal antibodies cures symptomatic rabies. Cures! Rabies is a disease that previously we could only try to prevent from happening, with urgent vaccination. But once established, you were never really sure it wasn't going to emerge later. And symptomatic rabies was universally fatal. Why wasn't this all over in the news?
"Imagine opening ChatGPT but it already knows everything about your life. What would you ask it?" Creepy! This is what Google wants to create with Project Ellman. I think I've seen this movie, and it doesn't turn out well.
Interesting. Brain Area Associated With Impulse Control Discovered. In the right inferior frontal gyrus. And there are gender differences as well. Women have better inhibitory control over their impulses. Really?
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Just when you thought it was over. Portland Public School unions still want more, even after the agreement that ended the strike. Because the strike ended because the teachers would lose their PERS health insurance, not because they came to agreement. Did you REALLY think the fight was over? Psht.
Prioritize removing fencing and plywood from downtown buildings before the 2024 Rose Festival. "The boarded up condition of the Federal Courthouse, The Justice Center and some downtown businesses send the wrong signal to visitors," the task force said.
With offices sitting empty, landlords are ‘handing back the keys’. This is actually a NYT article, so I'm not sure how much applies to Seattle, but I bet it does a lot. Will this cause another Great Recession? The author thinks not, but I'm not so sure. Since that vast majority of wealth is debt instruments instead of hard assets, anytime someone can't pay off a loan worries me.
And here's Peter Schiff discussing the upcoming SCOTUS case regarding taxation of unrealized gains – basically a tax on assets that may have increased in dollar value (like because of inflation) but that didn't actually make you any richer.
The state of LLMs in mathematics. Thank goodness ChatGPT4 and GPT4 are mainly good at being search engines and "struggle" with hard problems. Guess we still need human mathematicians.
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Things I learned from teaching. How to teach difficult and important but non-exciting things to students. This is education seen from the teacher's end. The author is a college senior, so probably not yet cynical and has not had his lofty dreams of making a difference in the world shattered. Only the motivated will want to learn, and will get something out of a course. For the rest,
If you're teaching a topic, you're probably really passionate about it....At the end of the day, though, [the students] are not
getting a Ph.D. in this stuff, and they've got half a dozen other classes on top of work,
family, friends, and this weekend's party to think about.
Unless they see that the material is relevant, or that they're building or creating cool or useful stuff, they'll be bored.
The Oregon Health Authority missed a crucial deadline reporting on "how the M110 program integrates into the overall behavioral health system in Oregon". So the Legislature is unable to address what to do about M110, and so life goes on.
No School November?Let's make it No School December, too! Why bother? In Oregon, you don't have to demonstrate proficiency anyway, thanks to diversity and equity, so that we don't discriminate against minorities, right?
Meaningless numbers. Once again, "Biden job approval hits new low". Still 37%. No matter how often Biden's approval sinks to "record lows", it's always 37%.
It's been quiet about Q* recently. After Altman's return OpenAI, this topic has dropped off the radar. Here's more about Q*, but after reading this, it doesn't seem major enough to warrant what Sutskever did. Maybe it really was all just a clash of personalities.
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Fascinating geological and geographical mystery. Definitely worth 25 min of your time.
Just as you can use A.I.-generated pictures free of copyright concerns, you can to the same with music. There's an A.I. stock music generator now. Probably good for video background music.
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This story is BIG! Nature published a report with a title that makes it seem like just another obscure technical publication. It's titled N1-methylpseudouridylation of mRNA causes +1 ribosomal frameshifting. But what it reports is that the mRNA COVID-19 vax product is associated with a very serious side-effect of common frameshift mutations that cause the ribosome to transcribe random proteins, in addition to the spike protein that it's supposed to code for. And some of these random proteins can resemble some important proteins that are involved in the immune system. So you might be inadvertently immunized against something you're not supposed to be. Here's a tweet that discusses this. The vax really needs to be taken off the market ASAP, and people informed about it.
One of the reasons that Multnomah County ambulance service is running short is because the director, Dr. Jon Jui, insists that there be two paramedics on each ambulance, instead of one paramedic and one EMT, like in other cities. He's pretty insistent on that, so the effect is that we are often at zero status, with no ambulances to go around.
Here's a weird worm. Its butt develops its own brain, detaches itself and swims away. Reminds me of some of the people in the news, whose brains seem to be strongly connected to their butts (and genitals).
Just as I thought. Rocking motions synchronize brain waves. I find that with gentle rocking, I can meditate much easier and be free of distracting thoughts. You can focus on a candle flame, on a bell tone, on a mantra, or you can focus on rhythmic motions.
This author mocks Atty Gen. Ken Paxton for using absolute risk, instead of the relative risk that she prefers. Actually, Paxton is correct. Absolute risk is what we should be considering. Relative risk can be gamed. In truth the risk of getting COVID-19 may have been worthy of mitigating, but with each variant, the benefit of getting the vax product was outweighed by the risk. Paxton is right to sue. Vaccines are killing people.
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Donald Knuth gave his annual Christmas lecture last night. If you missed it, here it is.
How does Shazam work? This answers a question I've had for a long while. Whenever I hum a melody or play a tune on the piano, Shazam doesn't recognize what I play. But only after a few seconds from an overhead speaker at a store, and the song identity comes up quickly. Shazam is not looking at melodic structure. It's just doing spectral matching. So it's got to hear the exact song being played, that has the same soundprint. Otherwise, it's a no-go.
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Looks like Asian immigrants in Seattle are being specifically targeted for thefts. Because they are "unlikely to be armed, less confrontational, and have cash on hand". And Asian immigrants like to go to casinos. And it doesn't help that Little Vietnam is right next to Rainier Avenue, where the criminal class tends to live. Asians have got to arm themselves.
So sperm donations will no longer be anonymous in a growing number of states. Naturally, LGBT folks and those that are infertile are concerned, because this will definitely lead to a decline in donors. Who would want the hassle later on?
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Wasabi improves memory. But only the real stuff. Not the fake green-colored horseradish that's much more common.
Here's the next battleground. Hospitals and insurance companies fight over money. Insurance companies think that increases in reimbursement should just be a few percentage points, while hospitals say that's crap – expenses have increased by "50% to 74%". This is why employed doctors are unionizing, because naturally the hospitals will take the cost-savings from their salaries, especially doctors are typically sheep, and will continue to do their job, because of their dedication.
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Turn off push notifications. Apple Confirms Governments Using Push Notifications to Surveil Users. I can't believe the lengths the government will go to spy on citizens. Now they're tracking all the push notifications that people get on their phones. Which means they track all text-messaging.
I opened (Google's) Bard webpage, typed: "When is Gemini going to be rolled out?" Bard answered: "Please
clarify the specific product or service you are referring to by
"Gemini." There are multiple applications and services with the name
Gemini. Here are a few examples: Gemini Exchange: A cryptocurrency
exchange platform that is currently available to users in select
regions. There is no official date set for a global rollout. Gemini
Spacecraft: A planned private human spaceflight program that is still in
development. There is no official date set for the first launch. Gemini
(chat app): A social media messaging app that is currently available on
iOS and Android. There are no plans for a wider rollout at this time. If you are referring to a different product or service, please provide more context so I can provide an accurate answer."
Then I provided Bard the reference article from Slashdot: "Gemini reference: https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]" And Bard answered: "I'm just a language model, so I can't help you with that."
