Week 33

Phys.org: "New calcium material functions as an ammonia synthesis catalyst.. Researchers find calcium outshines chromium in the catalytic production of ammonia. Working together, a humble trio of calcium atoms have defied expectations to break apart one of the strongest chemical bonds known"

Weekend Reading: How survey-centric political reporting distracts and distorts our understanding of American politics.. [On current political reporting on polls, particularly around demographic trends..W]hen it comes to specific demographic groups or subgroups, the differences in partisanship we see from poll to poll are almost entirely noise. By 'noise,' I mean the completely predictable static that comes from polling’s inherent margins of error, as well as the heavy weighting that is now standard given vanishingly low response rates. This means that almost any time the media writes about demographic trends in partisanship, it’s not offering us important new information; it’s just narrating noise – conflating inevitable statistical and methodological variation with changes in voters’ preferences. The media’s amplification of this noise drowns out any possibility of discussion or analysis that would help Americans understand the actual dynamics of elections or the real stakes.

"@ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org

My local #library has a 3D printer! (which I can use for free... just have to pay $0.05 per gram and 1.00 per request!) -- that just opened up a bunch of project possibilities. Yay for libraries!"

"The discount retailer [Walmart Chile] has opened a green hydrogen plant at its Quilicura distribution center in Santiago.. in partnership with generating company Engie... In its first stage, the green hydrogen plant will allow the Quilicura distribution center to replace the lead-acid batteries of 200 forklift cranes with hydrogen energy cells, cutting 250 tons of toxic waste per year"

Not exactly true... God has no need for math, he has raw processing power, can simulate everything. We invented math, for our needs.

Galileo Galilei: "Mathematics is the language with which God has written the universe"

Nature: "LK-99 isn’t a superconductor — how science sleuths solved the mystery.. The conclusion dashes hopes that LK-99 — a compound of copper, lead, phosphorus and oxygen — marked the discovery of the first superconductor that works at room temperature and ambient pressure. Instead, studies have shown that impurities in the material — in particular, copper sulfide — were responsible for the sharp drops in electrical resistivity and partial levitation over a magnet, which looked similar to properties exhibited by superconductors"

Just Auto: "Nikola starts producing class 8 hydrogen fuel cell truck.. Michael Lohscheller, Nikola’s President and CEO said: 'This remarkable demand for our hydrogen fuel cell electric truck confirms the industry’s trend toward sustainable transportation solutions'"

😂 😂 😂

"@arstechnica@mastodon.social

Microsoft AI suggests food bank as a 'cannot miss' tourist spot in Canada"

"McGraw@cigitalgem@sigmoid.social

You can't fix an LLM by red teaming. It does exactly what it was designed to do. Autoassociative predictive word generation.

'Meet the hackers who are trying to make AI go rogue - Washington Post'"

"@lcamtuf@infosec.exchange

It's impressive how much money can be made by buying motor oil by the gallon, pouring it into 2 oz bottles, and then selling it as artisanal 'sewing machine oil', 'watch oil', 'bicycle chain oil', 'gun oil', 'RC car oil', and such"

EnergyPortal.eu: "BP Ventures, the venture capital arm of British energy giant BP, has invested in Advanced Ionics, a start-up company developing technology to reduce the production costs of zero-carbon hydrogen"

The Guardian: "Scientists and academics say they have been warning for several years that invasive grasses covering a quarter of the Hawaii islands are a major fire risk. Untamed grassland helped fuel the spread and intensity of last week’s deadly fires on the island of Maui, according to experts"

'What triggered the fire', 'why was the response late' are almost secondary to the issue of the conditions that allowed that fire to exist. A lot witnesses said it spread freakishly fast, gave no time to respond properly. Certain conditions allowed that to happen.

Green in the residential neighborhoods, between houses is great - but they need upkeep. Can't just leave bunch of trees, bushes distributed all over the place creating flammable litter on the ground which creates conditions for wildfires to spread.

Sell a weapon system for a bil, end up making 3 bil over the entire lifetime of that equipment. Not a bad deal. Some could start wars over that.

Expert: "The cost of buying weapons is only 1/3rd of the operating cost over the entire period of maintaining of the equipment"

The Guardian: "England’s water system: the last of the privatised monopolies.. Selling Britain’s state-owned water authorities seemed like a good idea to Conservative ministers in the 1980s.. Why not let the private sector inject some energy and much-needed cash into a project that a tired public sector management was ill-equipped to handle, they argued.

But since 1989, when 10 regional water authorities were sold, there has been claim and counter claim about the benefits that can be credited to the new private sector owners. To the industry’s detractors, one clear cost is the failure to upgrade a sewer system that regularly overflows into watercourses, polluting rivers and killing wildlife"

Then it's privatisation

FT: "Victorian sewers not to blame for England’s pollution, research shows.. Almost 80% of sewage spills are attributable to insufficient capacity"

Foreign Policy: "In Phoenix, Arizona, one flight was canceled because the plane’s internal temperature became unbearably hot, prompting three passengers to faint from heat exhaustion"

"@carnage4life@mas.to

The relationship between news websites and Google has been backwards for a while as sites make content optimized for Google.

The latest and most absurd trend is sites like CNet deleting old articles (e.g. 1996 articles about AOL service tiers) because they believe Google penalizes old content"

"@sixtus@mastodon.social

'The only way to lower rents again is public property. As early as 2021, 59.1 percent of [Berlin] voters were calling for expropriation. (...) Now this commission has reported back that expropriation is indeed legal and affordable - and what is more, that no other measure will stop the doubling of rents every decade'"

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Marcus: "I first warned of a LLM-driven deluge on February 12, a few days after Kevin Roose described his sense of 'awe' at the unveiling of the new GPT-4 powered Bing—and a few days before it notoriously recommended he get a divorce—in that brief initial period in which Bing and GPT-4 were viewed through entirely rose-colored glasses... The general thesis of the article was the Google ought be pretty concerned by what was coming; the subtitle was 'How sewers of lies could spell the end of web search'"

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Reason: "Ironically, one of the people now indicted in Georgia on RICO charges—Rudy Giuliani—made RICO famous in the 1980s"

A theory goes since inflation has to do with circulation of money in the economy among regular people, if mega corporations run the roost all money would eventually end up in their coffers, out of the circulation, so in essence they'd have an deflationary effect. See Amazon's total assets,

u.biz_balance("AMZN")['totalAssets'] / 1e9

Out[1]: 
2022-06-30    419.728
2022-09-30    428.362
2022-12-31    462.675
2023-03-31    464.378
2023-06-30    477.607
Name: totalAssets, dtype: float64

That is a a rise from $221 billion in 2020.

It feels like swimming through the air. WTF?

Wet-bulb temp 30 C! Temperature 30 C humidity 100%. A record since I've been watching it.

The Japan Times: "The prospect of a destructive wildfire has been a growing concern across West Maui for years, as drought has worsened, invasive plants have created huge swaths of highly flammable grasslands, and worsening storms have spawned winds that can fuel fires"

H2 Central: "Korea Zinc Co., a South Korean non-ferrous metal smelting company, will begin commercial production of green hydrogen in Australia in the first half of next year"

Zombies - Bro Safari & UFO! #music

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Business Insider: "Massachusetts passed a 4% tax on people who make more than $1 million per year. Revenue from the new income tax is being used to give kids in the state free lunch and breakfast at school"

"20 years ago, working as a server, I lived in a corner 1 bdrm apt downtown with amazing water views for $700/month. A similar apt now 3,600/month more than 5x as much. As a lawyer at age 47 I am unable to afford living in the apartment I did at age 27 while waiting tables"

"@Radical_EgoCom@kolektiva.social

Good old 'trickle down economics' at its finest"

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Farmer: "Actually, it's insane: we import feed from South America, which deprives farmers there of the opportunity to produce food. They are hungry because soya is produced for European cattle. We use this soy to produce products that we don't need here, export them at dumping prices - preferably to Africa, where we ruin the farmers who will eventually be here as refugees"

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Later he said 'he misspoke' - but he has a point

The Guardian: "Ukraine could give up territory to Russia in exchange for Nato membership and an end to the war, a senior Nato official has suggested"

H2 Central: "The ramp-up of the hydrogen economy will receive €3.7 billion in 2024 following the German government adopting the economic plan of the Climate & Transformation Fund (KTF), it was announced on 9 August. The KTF has a total budget of €57.6bn for next year and plans for investments to total €221.8bn between 2024 and 2027"

Link

Some festive boomer shit that Footloose movie.. But can you top Travolta and JL Curtis

What a strange year.. Added to the list.

F24: "[The birth of hip-hop] In New York August 11th, 1973 an 18 year old DJ who went by the name DJ Kool Herc began speaking over the beat of the music reminiscent of the toasting style heard in Jamaica, it wasn't long before the style could be heard all over New York and that made way for a range of art including Sugar Hill Gang and Rapper's Delight which took hip-hop mainstream in the 1980s"

"@retr0id@retr0.id

it's cute when websites think I would turn off my ad blocker rather than just leaving the page"

Got the choppa

Firstpost: "Germany to own NATO's 2nd largest chopper fleet after Chinook purchase"

Their auditor KPMG has been signing off on their books for the past four years #ABC, were they part of the scam?

SMH: "[2022/12] Engineering and construction firm Downer EDI [stock fell] after the ASX-listed company said it was investigating whether fraud is behind the 'accounting irregularities' that caused it to overstate profits by up to $40 million"

The consultancy firms raking in billions of taxpayer dollars #government #big5 #au

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Utility Dive: "Newsom orders clean hydrogen market strategy as California competes in $8B federal program.. The state will look at new financing models, permitting process changes and procurement initiatives to deploy more hydrogen projects"

Donate

"OpenStreetMap is the ground truth of the map world... It’s one of the largest, most successful open projects.. and the leading provider of open map data... Its data provides billions of euros of value to companies and governments.. Its mappers help millions of people through hundreds of humanitarian use cases"

Tranquility Bass - Cantamilla #music

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"@ernie@writing.exchange

Late stage capitalism becoming more and more like The Purge

'[News] Thirty to 50 people were part of a robbery crew Saturday that swarmed a Nordstrom department store and used bear spray on security guards at a Southern California mall'"

USG 2000-08 might have had a hand in meddling with the drug business south of the border, knocking out top guys in it creating chaos and mayhem. The M.O. is familiar. We might remember a country whose authoritarian leader was toppled and bunch of death squads, smaller fish took over the country creating terror and chaos.. I'll give a hint the name starts with 'I' (ends with 'raq'). Hell even the former ambassador to Honduras with expertise on death squads was sent to the country to fan the flames more? More chaos, longer US presence = more money for Haliburton.

#Science #1912

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Latest update - all measurements increasing #carbon #methane

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Fires, how they spread. Distance between homes is key, also house regulation codes. Greenery between houses can help fires but more deadly is the flammable leaves, needles they drop. With the right wind, ever-present (and worsening) heat conditions, stuff catches fire and spreads like, well, wildfire.

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Business Insider: "Tesla has been exaggerating its vehicles' potential driving distance for years by rigging their range-estimating software, report says"

"@snarkysteff@mastodon.online

[TV show] Suits was streamed for 3 billion minutes on Netflix and its writers were paid a collective $3,000 in residuals.

And that’s why they are striking"

Politico: "Inside Canada’s fight with Facebook: Trudeau says, 'Canadians will not be bullied by billionaires in the U.S'. Canada’s Liberal government picked a fight with two U.S. tech giants by passing legislation forcing Meta and Google to pay news publishers for content... Now Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says big Silicon Valley firms want to make an example out of his country as Meta, fronted by two of Ottawa’s brightest political minds hailing from opposing parties, blocks Canadian news from its platforms"

"Google and Meta earn 80% of all digital ad revenue [over $10 billion] in Canada"

UA counter-offensive situation - some wins some losses. Took back some RU gains around Novovodiane, but lost ground around Kyslivka.

geo = [['Main'],['Staromaiorske','Makarivka','Urozhaine'],['Klischchiivka','Opytne','Bakhmut'],
       ['Malynivka'],['Novovodiane'],['Robotyne'],
       ['Lobkove'],['Kyslivka','Tabaivka'],['Zolotarivka','Spirne']]

u.sm_plot_ukr4('ukrdata/fl-0814.csv','ukrdata/fl-0729.csv',geo,3,3,zoom=0.03,fsize=(10,10),)

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Russia had already lost the Baltic Sea, who wouldn't know that? That was clear to see since 2004. Ask anyone in the Navy with high enough rank they will say the same thing (if they don't fire their ass)

Informed Comment: "Trouble for Abraham Accords: Saudis Try to establish E. Jerusalem Consulate for Palestinians, but Extremist Israeli Gov’t says, 'No!'"

Doctorow: "Bezzle (n): 'the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it" (JK Gabraith)'

Uber was, is, and always will be a bezzle. There are just intrinsic limitations to the profits available to operating a taxi fleet, even if you can misclassify your employees as contractors and steal their wages, even as you force them to bear the cost of buying and maintaining your taxis.

The magic of early Uber – when taxi rides were incredibly cheap, and there were always cars available, and drivers made generous livings behind the wheel – wasn't magic at all. It was just predatory pricing"

"@marcelias@mas.to

The myth that citizens can out-organize voter suppression is not just wrong, it is dangerous. It minimizes the real world effects of repeated, targeted suppression laws. It shifts the burden from the suppressors to the voters"

Deutsche Welle: "The German government approved on Wednesday the allocation of €57 billion ($63 billion) in investments to tackle climate change, as Berlin pursues the goal of reaching greenhouse gas neutrality by 2045"

ISR is now officially being run by Ayetollahs. Congrats, you've become your enemy (and I bet once ISR transition to theocracy is over, Iran can actually be better off)

NYT: "Ultra-Orthodox members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right coalition want to expand the powers of all-male rabbinical courts, and to bar women and men from mixing in many public arenas"

Informed Comment: "Israel to deny Palestinian-Israelis Preparation for University, in Exact Parallel to Apartheid South Africa"

Jens Buchart - Wendy #music

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"Schwarwel@schwarwel@stranger.social

'The richest 10% of the world's population are responsible for more than half of the emissions; The richest 1% damages the climate twice as much as the entire poorer 50% of humanity"'"

Annual temparature averages from the NOAA summaries - there is increase

u.get_pd().read_csv('temp-avgs.csv',index_col='year',sep=' ').plot()

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Stations are not uniformly distributed obviously for gridded plotting their values need to be interpolated into grid points, scipy.interpolate has NearestNDInterpolator, it works well.

Some places are in bad shape even now. They will be worse off once the climate change kicks into high gear.

oh yea... #wbt

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NOAA has (open, free) daily summary data per weather station.. could process that to get wet-bulb temp, calc max of given year/month (say 2022 August) and show it worldwide...? Hmm

That was fast #FOSS #FTW

"Linus Torvalds just pushed the kernel code changes around AMD INCEPTION and Intel DOWNFALL as well as other security patches"

Sounds serious

Wired: "New ‘Downfall’ Flaw Exposes Valuable Data in Generations of Intel Chips"

In fusion Eric Lerner's team is well situated to find something optimal IMO. I'd give funding to them.

FT: "Fusion: start-up shares are easier to create than limitless energy"

Leeds Building Society: "[02/21] There are now over 676,000 empty homes in England – and the numbers continue to rise"

WION: "Belarus has applied to be part of BRICS: Ambassador Rzheussky"

TASS: "Egypt refuses to supply arms to Ukraine despite US’ pressure"