Week 34

Arab News: "India’s Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping agree on efforts to de-escalate border tensions"

Firstpost: "Dutch brewer Heineken exits Russia, stares at whopping $320 million in losses"

Ng keeps saying LLMs build a "world model". That's not exactly correct. Any data structure mimicing data could be labeled this way.. Recently simple compression beat a neural net classifier, compression algos usually have an internal tree structure, is that tree a world model? This is nonsense.

Hinton is the "Godfather of AI" mentioned before (actually he is one of the three people who brought neural net approach to weak AI). Ng is also a known name in the field, he was widely credited as the first researcher to bring GPU usage for neural "deep" learning.

Hinton [talking to Andrew Ng]: "We need the AI researchers to reach a consensus [on whether recent neural net based approaches can actually think] in much the same way as climate scientists have consensus on climate change. We need consensus because politicians and other decision makers are going to be looking for technical opinions from the researchers, but if the AI researchers have all sorts of different opinions, then they're going to pick and choose whatever suits them"

"baldur@toot.cafe

'Netflix and other streamers wield too much power over labor. Use antitrust law to break them up'. The old vertical studio system was broken up by the Justice Department. It may be time to do the same with these 21st century behemoths"

"World's First Futuristic Hydrogen Tram will be in Sarawak, Malaysia!"

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Agriculture is still mostly stuck in pre-modern age. There should be no need for soil, pesticides, huge horizontal areas and all the culture / law that is tied to these things... High-tech agro can be in a completely controlled, isolated environment where all aspects of it are independently optimized.. Huge amt of land is wasted as farmland now, they can be reclaimed, greened (and made public).

These guys produce good vegs in a vertical setting - Agrotonomy.

Vertical farm cabbage, lab-manufacture poultry... That'll do. Some spices wld be nice too, ginger, turmeric

Personally more used to the former.. Kefir never became a staple in Anatolia for some reason even though it is hugely popular in the Caucasus and Russia.

Yogurt marinade works well, if kefir is not around.

Newsweek: "Life, Liberty and Right to Repair.. Frustrations with this experience have created a global "right to repair" movement to require manufacturers to make repairing their products easier... In the past, when an expensive consumer product stopped working, the owner could take it somewhere and get it fixed. More recently, when a product stops working, the owner often hears, "We can't fix this, you have to buy a new one." This is because as products become more complex and more digital, access to physical parts alone is often insufficient to repair many products"

Stat: "Kellogg's is going to war over Mexico's nutrition label rules. A similar fight is coming to the U.S... A 2019 policy requires companies that make unhealthy foods to include warning labels on the front of any boxes they sell in Mexico to educate consumers about things like excess sugar and fat. Any food with a warning label — like Kellogg's Fruit Loops or its Frosted Flakes, which typically contain more than 37 grams of added sugar in a 100-gram serving — is also banned from including a mascot on its packaging...

Kellogg's isn't the only company throwing everything they have at fighting Mexico’s policy, and finding loopholes to exploit. Companies like Coca-Cola and Kraft Heinz have begun designing their products so that their packages don’t have a true front or back, but rather two nearly identical labels — except for the fact that only one side has the required warning. As a result, supermarket clerks often place the products with the warning facing inward, effectively hiding it"

MIT Technology Review: "The moon is a treasure trove of valuable resources... But there’s one resource in particular that has excited scientists, rocket engineers, space agency officials, industry entrepreneurs—virtually anyone with a vested interest in making spaceflight to distant worlds more affordable. It’s water. Why? If you split water into hydrogen and oxygen, and then liquefy those constituents, you have rocket fuel"

DOJ: "Justice Department Sues SpaceX for Discriminating Against Asylees and Refugees in Hiring"

The City: "NYC Lost 100K Homes in Apartment-to-House Conversions"

H2 Central: "OSM Thome and PGS Collaborate on Ammonia-Fuelled Vessels"

@erinwhalen@mindly.social

.. France has launched an initiative to reduce textile waste by paying people to repair their clothes instead of throwing them out.

"@futurebird@sauropods.win

Anyone who says that 'government health care would mean bureaucracy' hasn't dealt w/ CVS caremark"

Allahi Allah (Carmen Rizzo Remix) #music

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Hawaiian natives did not all of a sudden materialize in that place, or "evolve" as Hawaiian FYI. The first inhabitants arrived there from somewhere else, quite recently in fact compare to our total history. The route seems to be Africa, Arabian Peninsula, India, China, Papua New Guinea, Somoa, Hawaii. Some from that branch went to Madagascar, so Hawaiian-like people could perhaps be found there.

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Not much of a vacation

The Independent: "Italy warns tourists to avoid sun from 10am until 6pm as heatwave expected"

HS Today: "The new H2Rescue Emergency Relief Truck (H2Rescue), which started as an ambitious idea years ago, is now a full prototype demonstrating the feasibility and value of this concept.

'I don’t think people fully appreciate what it means to not have power, you don’t realize how critical it is for communities until you don’t have it,' said S&T Under Secretary Dr. Dimitri Kusnezov, who saw the vehicle up close at a demonstration at the U.S. Department of Energy headquarters in June.

H2Rescue is a zero-emission, hydrogen powered truck that can carry a total load of about 33,000 pounds (truck and cargo) into disaster zone. It is equipped with a mobile command center and the capability to generate enough power to run about 15 homes for three days, accomplished with only water vapor coming out of the tailpipe. Where traditional diesel trucks use their limited carrying capacity to transport generators that emit exhaust into the environment, H2Rescue is the generator—emitting nothing but steam"

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"@CLondoner92@mastodon.cloud

#Citybus #HongKong: First #Hydrogen Refuelling Station on Hong Kong Island and Parallel Testing of 5 Hydrogen Double Deck Buses Receives Agreement in Principle"

In the light of this findings the extraterrestrial Oumuamua claim becomes less likely. Had already downgraded the extraterrestrial UFO views, noone can produce anything other than grainy videos, plus most of the proponents of said theories are cultural leftist, or right-wing anti-government fucknuts who like to associate all kinds of bizarreness with the government so they can "limit it" when they are in power.

It turns out the theory where Oumuamua was emitting gas, propelling it forward still has legs.. People were wondering how OM could speed that fast, the H2 iceberg (melting causing the gas formation) claim was debunked but there is newer, more plausible one.

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"gerrymcgovern@mastodon.green

'Wireless technologies require 10 times more energy than wired technology to transfer each unit of data and voice and do so at much slower rates than fiber optic cable'"

IAEA had okayed it, they did not look at all aspects?

CNBC: "China suspends all seafood imports from Japan after treated radioactive water is released from Fukushima"

IMO they were going to let Prigozhin live (could've been useful in Africa) but he likely started talking out of his ass again, pissed off someone... Now he dead.

The Guardian: "Brics to admit six new countries to bloc.. Argentina, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE are to become full members from 1 January 2024, the group announced at its summit in South Africa"

#gopdebate

"The elephant not in the room" - that's right

#gopdebate

Some fine comments on Ukraine, immigration, other than that nothing noteworthy...

#gopdebate

It is lively

"@EESC@social.network.europa.eu

Did you know that 5.8 million tonnes of textiles are thrown away every year, nearly 11 kilos per person? We endorse the European Commission’s proposal to make producers responsible for the full lifecycle of textile products and to support the sustainable management of textile waste across the EU"

404 Media: "Most Americans have very little choice but to provide their personal information to credit bureaus. Hackers have found a way into that data supply chain, and are advertising access in group chats used by violent criminals who rob, assault, and shoot targets... Senator Ron Wyden [said] 'These companies have demonstrated that they can't control who has access to their data products. The government needs to stop these companies from packaging and selling our personal information, and the senior executives that put profit over national security and Americans' safety should be punished accordingly'"

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WION: "Kids in US most likely to die due to use of firearms, reveals study"

Informed Comment: "Drilling our way to Climate Doom: The US leads the World in Oil and Gas Production"

"@the9thdude@mstdn.social

Sure would be swell if #government could spin up some internal #Mastodon instances for alerts, weather notifications, public safety announcements, and public statements"

NASA: "In a paper published.. by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, [researchers] described how they used a climate model to estimate the impact of 13 sectors of the economy from 2000 to 2100. They based their calculations on real-world inventories of emissions collected by scientists around the world, and they assumed that those emissions would stay relatively constant in the future.

In their analysis, motor vehicles emerged as the greatest contributor to atmospheric warming now and in the near term. Cars, buses, and trucks release pollutants and greenhouse gases that promote warming, while emitting few aerosols that counteract it"

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"The Imminent Enshittification of the Internet"

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The Guardian: "G20 poured more than $1tn into fossil fuel subsidies despite Cop26 pledges – report"

But JFK's suave image was useful for post 80s shitlibs as they could hide behind it and push for the right-leaning econ policies helpful for the rich (like JFK), at the same time you could blame the government (per grand bargain) for his death giving you two birds with one stone. Speechify some shit about space and cut benefits for the poor. That has been the Democrat game for decades.

Bay of Pigs was a leftover plan from the Eisenhower admin to JFK. Kennedy modified the plan, and like a true Kennedy f--ked it all up, made it worse, mismanaged the mission and its aftermath (not to mention the mistake of pursuing it in the first place). Then he gets into blood feud with Castro and the stupid son of a bitch gets himself shot.. The worst US president of modern times.

Ike.. He helped big biz then on his way out complained about the "military-industrial complex" which in a way he ran and helped flourish.

Plokhy, Nuclear Folly: "In May 1959 Castro limited the size of agricultural estates to one thousand acres; the rest were to be confiscated and redistributed by the government. In July 1960 the government nationalized all US-owned businesses and properties: since the revolutionary government needed resources and lacked money, no compensation was offered... In response President Eisenhower closed American markets to Cuban sugar, by far the island’s main export. The United States found itself in a situation akin to the one that the old imperial powers, Britain and France, had faced in their Asian and African colonies and dependencies...

American interests were at stake..Luckily, the president’s advisers had a plan to deal with the crisis. Only a few years earlier, in June 1954, the CIA had executed a successful coup in Guatemala, where land reform threatened the interests of the United Fruit Company. In March 1960, with agrarian reform in Cuba already underway.. Eisenhower decided to bring about regime change in Cuba"

😂 😂

The Guardian: "Bernardo Arévalo was elected president of Guatemala.. Until a few months ago, the idea of an Arévalo presidency seemed far-fetched. The 64-year-old intellectual, who was born in Uruguay after his father was forced into exile by 1954’s CIA-backed coup"

For most of its existence USG branches existed to serve the needs of private interests.. The 'conflict' with Cuba followed the same pattern.

Zinn Education Project: "On June 27, 1954, democratically elected Guatemalan president Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán was deposed in a CIA-sponsored coup to protect the profits of the United Fruit Company. Árbenz was replaced by decades of brutal U.S.-backed regimes"

CBS News: "CBS News poll finds Trump's big lead grows, as GOP voters dismiss indictments"

Note the mention of H2

Reuters: "Explainer: Why are countries racing to the moon's heavily cratered south pole? Scientists are interested in pockets of ancient ice because they could provide a record of lunar volcanoes. If ice exists in sufficient quantities, it could be a source of drinking water for moon exploration and could help cool equipment. It could also be broken down to produce hydrogen for fuel and oxygen to breathe, supporting missions to Mars or lunar mining"

Fine advance for India

F24: "India becomes first nation to land spacecraft on Moon’s south pole.. India on Wednesday made history when its Chandrayaan-3 lander successfully touched down on the Moon's south pole"

Informed Comment: "Washington for First Time terms violent Israeli Squatter-Settlers “Terrorists,” but US Needs to Let [UN Security Council] Impose Sanctions"

"@LadyDragonfly@universeodon.com

Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Those who prevent you from learning about history fully intend on repeating it"

Michael Rosen: "One of the great achievements of the modern media is to get people angry about small fiddles and not know about the giant ones"

"@FranckLeroy@mastodon.online

Exactly 14 years ago , Satoshi Nakamoto designed the most pathetic / inefficient system ever invented by humankind : the blockchain.

Today, it weights 60 000 tons, wastes constantly 10 gigawatts (more than Belgium or Chile) to process less than 7 transactions per second: Less than a 33 bps modem from 1990.

This could be a joke if it didn't have such gigantic environmental impact, wasn't enabling billion dollars ransomware industry and was not crushing thousands of lives in the process"

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

Scoop: "Water Wars: Cooling The Data Centres.. Google has proven to be particularly thirsty in this regard, not to mention secretive in the amount of water it uses at its data hubs"

Instead of pumping sea water into the canal as needed, they used water collecting somewhere high-up so its movement would be easier I bet. Suez works on sea water. PC design sounds like a US capitalist design - exploiting nature, trying to get something for nothing but screwing up something else in the process, with a fragile design to boot. When things get funky invade the host country once in a while too, won't hurt.

The Guardian: "[The Panama Canal] was also one of the greatest engineering feats in the world, in which the Americans built the canal over the hills of Panama in a series of great locks, a system that relies entirely on rain... Around 52 million gallons of fresh water is lost to the sea each time a ship enters or leaves the canal. That water is replaced from a vast reservoir built high in the hills, which in turn is replenished by heavy rainfall – but if the rains dry up so does the canal"

Relies on rain water..?

Yahoo News: "200 Ships Are Stuck at the Panama Canal.. The 50-mile-long canal, as the report notes, relies on rainwater to replenish it. When it doesn't rain enough, the authorities that control the canal have to reduce traffic through it to conserve water, and those that are allowed through have to pay higher fees to do so"

H2 Central: "FirstElement Fuel, the World-Leading Provider of Hydrogen Refueling Solutions, is Awarded $7.7 Million from the California Energy Commission to Scale up its Manufacturing Capacity"

U can survive 31 C wbt or even 35 C granted u stay pat and do not move. If u move or engage in any kind of activity ur int temp can rise to 42 C which one cannot dissipate away in humidity and that will kill you

"@j3rn

Windows is wild now. When you install it, it asks permission to tailor ads to your interests. Bruh I paid $150 for this OS, the number of ads I want you to show me is zero"

There is a bright red spot off northwest Africa too, apparenty that is the Spanish island Tenerife - on fire.

NASA: "[2019/08, relatively] 'low values of fire radiative power in Angola indicate that these are mostly smaller agricultural fires, as opposed to large forest fires,' said.. a climate and fire researcher... Typically, savannas, grasslands, and croplands are burned in southern Africa at this time of year for various agricultural reasons, including clearing the land for new crops"

There are fires in southern Africa? Is that Angola..? Namibia?

Worldwide fires, past 7 days. Canada looks bad

u.modis_fire(clat=0,clon=0,zoom=18)

"drvolts@journa.host

BP's new Energy Outlook models three scenarios: New Momentum (BAU); Accelerated (faster change); and Net Zero. In all three, the oil giant finds that fossil fuel demand peaked in 2019. We are on the down slope now"

AP News: "Children who lived closer to natural gas wells in heavily drilled #Pennsylvania were more likely to develop a relatively rare form of #cancer, and nearby residents of all ages had an increased chance of severe #asthma reactions, say researchers"

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

Al Monitor: "Iran claims to have produced key engine for supersonic missile tech"

The Guardian: "About 90% of water samples taken over the last 10 years from the Great Lakes contain microplastic levels that are unsafe for wildlife, a new peer-reviewed paper from the University of Toronto finds"

Daily Sabah: "Oil-rich Gulf nations bet on 'green' hydrogen.. Oil producers in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Oman are investing heavily in climate-friendly fuels in search of alternative revenue streams to crude oil and gas... oil-rich Saudi Arabia is constructing the world's largest green hydrogen plant at NEOM, the $500 billion futuristic megacity being built on the Red Sea. The 8.4 billion plant will integrate solar and wind energy to produce up to 600 tons of green hydrogen a day by the end of 2026, officials say"

Fuel Cell Works: "Researchers Produce Highly Efficient, Low-cost Green Hydrogen.. The researchers used a hydrogel (a water-based gel) to attach [an] enzyme to the electrode and were able to produce green hydrogen using a biocatalyst, and with over 90% efficiency"

Math is useful so natural science formulations can proceed without problems - when mathematics is used to model physical phenomena, various branches of math allows you to enter realms to simplify stuff; Ended up with a square root of -1? No problem! Call it i, here is the book-keeping around that (imaginery numbers), off you go, keep on deriving, continue... From infinities, into the imaginery, to groups, to manifolds.. some stuff cancels out, simplifies then back to real world with a clean formula.

Recommending Collide, Man on a Ledge

Remember the scene where the mercenary shows the top honcho (who hired him) his tatoo/mark possibly from days being a child soldier, says "I've seen and done things I'm not proud of, but at some point you realize war is a business.. so when did killing become a business for you?".

Everyone talks shit about Bay but he is the better director. The Island was good film, had a good story, action, and a message.

Nolan is jealous of Michael Bay? He wants to be like him? That's funny

CleanTechnica: "[U.S. H2/electrolyzer startup] Verdagy announced that it nailed down $73 million in Series B funding... Verdagy’s Series B funding round was led co-led by Shell Ventures, which is no small potatoes, along with the high flying Singapore-based investment firm Temasek. For those of you keeping score at home, the round also gathered up new investors Bidra Innovation Ventures, BlueScope, Galp, Samsung Venture Investment, Toppan Ventures, Tupras Ventures, Yara Growth Ventures, and Zeon Ventures"

The Guardian: "In May, the World Health Organization issued an alarming report that declared widely used non-sugar sweeteners like aspartame are likely ineffective for weight loss, and long term consumption may increase the risk of diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and mortality in adults.

[WHO later] issued a third report that seemed to contradict its previous findings – people could continue consuming the product at levels determined to be safe decades ago.. That contradiction stems from beverage industry corruption of the review process by consultants tied to an alleged Coca-Cola front group"

H2 Central: "Brasil – Government Launches Pilot Plant For Renewable Hydrogen From Ethanol At USP"

Dieselgate Scandal in a different form? The report reinforces the case that battery-electric tech cannot survive in any way other than part of a giant scam. See related post.

The Guardian: "At the COP28 we need to rally behind all hydrogen trending toward near zero emissions by 2030 [says former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull]"

Janes: "Keel laid for second Ada-class corvette for Ukrainian Navy.. at RMK Marine's shipyard in Tuzla, Istanbul, on 18 August"

Reuters: "Ukraine alone decides when conditions right for peace talks- NATO's Stoltenberg"

Firstpost: "Russian, China warships sail close to Japanese islands as 'warning' on eve of US-Japan-South Korea summit"

WaPo: "The U.S. intelligence community assesses that Ukraine’s counteroffensive will fail to reach the key southeastern city of Melitopol.. a finding that, should it prove correct, would mean Kyiv won’t fulfill its principal objective of severing Russia’s land bridge to Crimea in this year’s push"