Week 3
While we celebrate this, let's always be mindful about threats against democracy
It looks like we have DJT to thank to on this one đź‘Źđź‘Źđź‘Ź
Al-Monitor: "The Israel-Hamas deal was made possible by 18-hour days and a 'remarkable' partnership between Joe Biden and Donald Trump's Mideast envoys.. Trump said the 'epic' win would never have happened without his election putting pressure for a deal"
This is the way
CNBC: "Spain plans to tackle housing crisis with 100% tax on homes bought by foreigners"
Politico: "A top progressive group [Justice Democrats] has a plan to forge a way forward after Democrats' brutal election cycle: a renewed push to primary members of its own party... 'There is something wrong with this party as a whole right now,' [said a spox], 'and it’s time to clean up shop in this Democratic Party.. The 2024 election showed that the party establishment didn’t learn its lessons'.. And Democratic members coming into this Congress should be on notice: 'Their primary starts now... Voters want to see a Democratic Party that is serious about taking on the wealthy elite and getting big money out of politics, not parade around billionaires as campaign surrogates'"
The example works, strange combination of AND, OR and bitshift operator plus a recursion. It does look like the type of code that could be built up from simpler components, during a program search.
addition(123,345)
Out[1]: 468
FC claims AGI needs to learn programs rather than representations memorized out of words via brute force. It should be possible to learn a program like below, not the usual algorithm for addition, after seeing few examples of addition.
Chollet: "Here for instance, our model of addition is an algorithm expressed in terms of binary operators.
def addition(x,y):
if y == 0: return x
return addition(x^y, (x&y) << 1)
A model of this kind will generalize strongly. It will be able to return the right answer. The exactly right answer. For any input at all even inputs very far from the distribution of inputs that your agent may have seen before. That is strong abstraction. This is where LLMs still fall short"
u.modis_fire(34.11778266, -118.504923,"2025-01-13",370,"fire1.html")
Francois Chollet: "There's been lots of talk about how LLMs perform 'in-context learning' to adapt to new problems. But what seems to actually happen is that LLMs are fetching memorized programs that map to the current prompt.
If they don't have a memorized program ready – if they're faced with something slightly unfamiliar, no matter how simple – they will fail. Even when the novelty comes in the form of a small variation of a problem they did memorize.
Zucman, The Triumph of Injustice: "FDR’s strategy worked as long as successive administrations upheld the New Deal–era belief system. That changed in the early 1980s. 'Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem,' Reagan famously said in his inaugural address of January 1981. If some people were tempted to eschew taxation, they were not to blame: high, 'un-American' tax rates were. In the new ideology that swept through the United States in the early 1980s, dodging taxes became the patriotic thing to do. Since 'taxation was theft,' according to the revived libertarian creed, it was also the moral thing to do. Until the 1970s, successive administrations had fought the tax-avoidance industry. When Reagan entered the White House in 1981, the industry became government-approved. The tax-sheltering frenzy could start.
And frenzy doesn’t begin to capture the scale of what happened. The industry mushroomed. A network of financial entrepreneurs, promoters, and advisers stormed the market. Some of these inventors required their staffers to come up with one new idea a week. They brimmed with creativity and produced groundbreaking tax dodges. Whenever the IRS shut down a particularly egregious scheme, several others would spawn"
Libération: "[French PM] François Bayrou's future rests on one word: 'Suspension.' The socialists, who have been negotiating with the government for a week to rebalance the budget, want to hear it pronounced by the Prime Minister during his general policy statement (DPG) this afternoon in the Assembly. 'Regardless of the concessions elsewhere, the media debate is currently focused on pensions, we will not give up ,' warns a socialist executive. At the end of last week, the socialist negotiators at least stated an 'agreement of views' on local authorities, housing and even overseas territories. A tax on wealth is also under consideration, inspired by the economist Gabriel Zucman. 'Lombard is giving us signals, he wants to give us the possibility of not censoring,' says the same socialist. But he also tells us that in the end, 'it is Bayrou who will decide. If he commits to suspending the pension reform, we will not vote for the motion of censure, even if we are the only ones on the left'"
FCW: "On January 10th, the first batch of 406 hydrogen fuel cell sanitation vehicles equipped with GWM Hydrogen-FTXT's hydrogen power system were officially delivered to customers, marking the successful implementation of GWM's first 'hundred-unit level' hydrogen sanitation vehicle demonstration application scenario in Baoding, China.
This batch of hydrogen sanitation vehicles includes three main models: hydrogen sweeping and washing vehicles, hydrogen cleaning vehicles, and hydrogen high-pressure flushing vehicles. They were jointly developed by GWM Hydrogen-FTXT in collaboration with three well-known Chinese commercial vehicle manufacturers - Changzheng, Yutong, and Dongfeng. All vehicles are equipped with GWM Hydrogen-FTXT's self-developed commercial vehicle fuel cell system and hydrogen storage system. Compared to electric sanitation vehicles, they have significant advantages such as faster fuel replenishment and better adaptability to high and low-temperature environments. It only takes 5-8 minutes to complete hydrogen refueling, and a single refueling allows for continuous operation of over 10 hours"
Space Explored: "New Glenn's second stage, known as GS-2, consists of two BE-3U engines that are powered by liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. Compared to traditional rocket fuels like RP-1, which is a highly refined form of kerosene, hydrogen is much more efficient"
GeekWire: "New Glenn's first stage is powered by seven of Blue Origin's BE-4 engines, fueled with liquefied natural gas. The second stage makes use of two hydrogen-fueled BE-3U engines
Recent move away from shitlibbery is good, this one, not so good.
404media: "Meta is deleting links to Pixelfed, a decentralized Instagram competitor. On Facebook, the company is labeling links to Pixelfed.social as 'spam' and deleting them immediately. Pixelfeed is an open-source community funded and decentralized image sharing platform that runs on Activity Pub, which is the same technology that supports Mastodon and other federated services. Pixelfed.social is the largest Pixelfed server, which was launched in 2018 but has gained renewed attention over the last week"
"@todayilearned@noc.social
TIL a UK trial of a 4-day workweek with 61 companies was so successful that 54 kept it, and most made it permanent. Employees worked less but stayed just as productive, with some companies seeing revenue grow by 35%. Workers also reported better health, less burnout, and even losing weight"
"@Mastodon@mastodon.social
Today Mastodon is taking another step towards its founding ideals: independence and non-profit ownership. We're transferring ownership of key assets to a new, European not-for-profit entity, ensuring our mission remains true to a decentralised social web, not corporate control"
"@mosseri@threads.net
You can dial up or down politics on your Threads, but I've gotten a number of questions about the political content control on Threads so to quickly clarify where it is and how it works. To get there, go to your profile, the top-right menu, then Account, and then you'll see 'Political content'"
But everyone says Keanu is such a nice guy, we should not say bad things about him... His fans might get upset.
We do not talk about any material concerns here, bunch of Woke shit, coupled with anti-government propaganda (what Matrix is truly all about) so the corps paying us benefit, we mark ourselves important get paid in millions, call it a day. Next question
NEXT QUESTION
I remember another interview around 2000 they asked Keanu about the Seattle anti-globalisation protests, and how that might relate to the first movie, he just cuts off the intervier, says "next question!".
I watched the cast interview for Matrix 4, they were discussing whether "a man plugging into the Matrix as a woman" would be so scandalous the studio would think nixing it... Imagine that.. with all the problems in the world, this is where you choose to focus? Here is the level of rebelliousness of their art... All-blue Dem dimwits
Keanu Reeves is the worst, total shitlib too..
There aren't many w/ brains in Holywood...
Anderson, Private Government: "Consider some facts about how employers today control their workers. Walmart prohibits employees from exchanging casual remarks while on duty, calling this 'time theft.' Apple inspects the personal belongings of their retail workers, who lose up to a half-hour of unpaid time every day as they wait in line to be searched. Tyson prevents its poultry workers from using the bathroom. Some have been forced to urinate on themselves, while their supervisors mock them. About half of U.S. employees have been subject to suspicionless drug screening by their employers. Millions are pressured by their employers to support particular political causes or candidates. If the U.S. government imposed such regulations on us, we would rightly protest that our constitutional rights were being violated. But American workers have no such rights against their bosses"
#Stevenson "The markets are really going for the UK today and they will probably force the government into spending cuts, possibly as soon as today"
#Frontline #UA #RU 01/03 - 01/13
It is all about the chopper
Make A Stand
The whole worldview is patently dumb, and, hilariously, loud and proud. Pure Anglo. US/UK has 'free'-marketism deep in its cultural DNA. That base is working against them now. You need to fight this shit like you fight cancer, or any other serious ailment. Either you kill it, or it kills you.
Note the brash, brazenness of this neolib delusion. Muckers live in a lala land.
Philips, Wealth and Democracy: "Using consumption as a gauge works to overstate popular well-being, all the more so because its measurements ignore assets and leave out debt burdens, which climbed most during periods like the 1920s, 1960s, and the 1980s and 1990s precisely for those least able to afford them. By an even more expansive view, consumption had become part of the new edifice of democracy-as-market. By driving a car, buying a movie ticket, or watching a television commercial, U.S. consumers participated every day in the democracy of the marketplace, or so suggested the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal. What was widely purchased was, ipso facto, democratically approved. Buying and selling, indeed, was a large part of what democracy was about...
Markets would become the democratic rulers in the nineties, said banker Walter Wriston: 'Markets are voting machines; they function by taking referenda.' Ultimately even the proletariat would 'fight to reduce government power over the corporations for which they work, organizations far more democratic, collegial and tolerant than distant state bureaucracies.' Broadcaster Rush Limbaugh, too, wanted to 'let the marketplace rule.' Former House speaker Newt Gingrich dreamed about the possibility of establishing a 'consumer-directed government,' once even suggesting that major questions could be resolved by simply asking 'our major multinational corporations for advice'"
Beginning of aughts remember CA had a budget hole causing the "Total Recall" election. The new governator did not fix the problem though, bcz he is a strapping, upstanding capitalist himself.
Stevenson, The Trading Game: "[2011, the presenter] had a bunch of charts. He went through them one at a time. On each one was the fiscal situation of a single country. Italy. Spain. Greece. Portugal. Ireland. Also the United Kingdom, the US, Japan. They were all variations on the same story. All these governments were spending more than their income year after year and their debts were growing. If things kept going in the same direction, the interest rates on their debts would start rising. People would stop lending to them, and they’d have to sell their assets. That would be bad...
What I couldn’t get out of my head was this sense of similarity. It was the same. The government of Spain, the government of America, the government of Japan... Outgoings more than their income. Losing the ability to borrow money. More and more income going into servicing debt. Losing their assets. The situation was the same...
But it came up against the economics though.. We’re in a monetary system. The whole thing always has to be in balance. For everyone who’s in debt, there’s someone who’s in credit. For everybody losing money, there’s somebody who’s gaining. The whole system is designed to be in balance. Not only that, but what about the houses? What about the stock market that was rising and rising? These assets weren’t disappearing. But if we didn’t own them, if the people didn’t own them, and the governments didn’t own them...Then who did?.. [T]hat was the moment that it hit me, [I was] surrounded by millionaires. [They owned the debt, along with most of the other assets]"
Countries, states reducing services, being in debt is an issue involving taxation. Neolibs kept talking down gov, reduced their spending, decreased biz regulation, well, now you burn in fire.
Why the decrease in tax collection? Maybe CA should've kept it at 2022 levels and increase gov services, so there would be more firefighting capability.
df = u.get_fred(1990, ["CATOTLTAX"])
df.plot(title="CA State Government Tax Collections")
Ultimately Ventura's attempts did not pan out but for a while I bet it was worrying for DJT.
Trump used the UFO misdirection too.. remember 2020 April
That was done to bury this
Cuck Todd is leaving NBC?
The Guardian: "Somalia and Ethiopia agree to restore diplomatic ties after year-long rift"
Politico: "Newsom: LA wildfires could be the worst natural disaster in US history"
H2 Central: "BeHydro – Dutch government will launch a subsidy program to support the decarbonisation of inland shipping – dual-fuel and 100% hydrogen engines"
H2 Central: "Panasonic Introduces Upcoming Hydrogen Fuel Cell Based Energy Solution in Germany for COâ‚‚-Neutral Offices"
The Car Connection: "Tesla tops Ford as most recalled automaker of 2024.. The Tesla Cybertruck was recalled seven times in 2024, and the EV maker continues to be investigated by the NHTSA"
Chollet: "[2024/12] OpenAI o3 ARC-AGI Results [which measures abstraction capability].. OpenAI's new o3 model.. mark[s] a qualitative shift in AI capabilities compared to the prior limitations of LLMs. o3 is a system capable of adapting to tasks it has never encountered before.. Of course, such generality comes at a steep cost, and wouldn't quite be economical yet: you could pay a human to solve ARC-AGI tasks for roughly 5 dollars per task (we know, we did that), while consuming mere cents in energy. Meanwhile o3 requires $17-20 per task in the low-compute mode...
o3's improvement over the GPT series proves that architecture is everything. You couldn't throw more compute at GPT-4 and get these results. Simply scaling up the things we were doing from 2019 to 2023 – take the same architecture, train a bigger version on more data – is not enough...
[But] I don't think o3 is AGI yet. o3 still fails on some very easy tasks, indicating fundamental differences with human intelligence... Furthermore, early data points suggest that the upcoming ARC-AGI-2 benchmark will still pose a significant challenge to o3, potentially reducing its score to under 30% even at high compute (while a smart human would still be able to score over 95% with no training). This demonstrates the continued possibility of creating challenging, unsaturated benchmarks without having to rely on expert domain knowledge"
I thought as much.. differentiability is used to find optimum point of a cost function. If program has to learn programs however, rather than a function, differentiation might not make sense for that. Deep Learning built a massive expertise around automatic differentiation, backpropagation that might not apply to this new approach.
"[E]xtending neural networks with more programmatic elements necessarily means abandoning the idea of end-to-end differentiability. An example is Chollet's observation that 'if machine learning models become more like programs, then they will mostly no longer be differentiable—certainly, these programs will still leverage continuous geometric layers as subroutines, which will be differentiable, but the model as a whole would not be. As a result, using backpropagation to adjust weight values in a fixed, hard-coded network, cannot be the method of choice for training models in the future—at least, it cannot be the whole story'"
Chollet argues "program synthesis" is the way to go for AGI. AI needs to learn programs rather than representations of word clouds (current apprach). If programs can be learned, AI can adapt to new situations better, we are a step closer to true AGI.
Next up: Reaganites remember governments can tax and need the money for better services.
James Woods says when officials tell you to evacuate don't wait around, leave! I guess he is saying listen to the government. Wasn't he some kind of Reaganite right-winger who wants small government? I guess during emergency everyone remembers there is such a thing as gov whose presence is not tied to profit motive, and is there to help you.
Be Evil
NPR: "[2023/12] Google settles $5 billion privacy lawsuit over tracking people using 'incognito mode'"