Week 18
Nature: "Here we present a method using fossil-free hydrogen-plasma-based reduction to extract nickel from low-grade ore variants known as laterites. We bypass the traditional multistep process and combine calcination, smelting, reduction and refining into a single metallurgical step conducted in one furnace. This approach produces high-grade ferronickel alloys at fast reduction kinetics. Thermodynamic control of the atmosphere of the furnace enables selective nickel reduction, yielding an alloy with minimal impurities.. eliminating the need for further refining. The proposed method has the potential to be up to about 18% more energy efficient while cutting direct carbon dioxide emissions by up to 84% compared with current practice"
Carscoops: "Toyota's Hydrogen Trucks Are Coming For Diesel And They Are Not Slowing Down.. Toyota's new hydrogen system can go without a major service for 600k miles"
China Daily: "China has emerged as the global leader in renewable hydrogen production capacity, accounting for over half of the world's total installed capacity last year, according to a government official"
You could argue DD is better known but he is TV. Remember the hierarchy. Movies at the top, TV at the bottom.
I'm joking the fake joke went the other way, I just flipped it
Richard Gere.. that's right
The Agency, good show.. It is up to date w/ current events. The old Soviet stuff is passe... Surely there is bunch of spookery going on right now in and around Ukraine, this show takes modern events head on. Starring Fassbender and.. that fake David Duchovny guy.. what's his name?
"[2023] A paper has shown that a compression algorithm – gzip – outperforms some large language models (LLMs) in some tasks. This has the NLP community in uproar. In this article, I dissect what has just happened, and what it means for language modeling at large"
Do leave, go to Eurasia..
"@plutokiller.com@bsky.brid.gy [Mike Brown]
I just got the official email from the NSF about the drastic cuts and I think the correct translation is 'if you are a young researcher who still wants to do science strongly consider leaving the United States if you can.' which, really, is not an ideal message to be sending"
The Guardian: "Gaza humanitarian aid ship ‘bombed by drones’ in waters off Malta.. Freedom Flotilla Coalition claims Israel to blame for attack on unarmed civilian vessel in international waters.. The ship was.. to pick up activists, including the climate-change campaigner Greta Thunberg"
LLM do terribly at queries requiring structure bcz IMO they lack internal structure themselves. Except those spaghetti neuron connections there isn't much of anything in there, they are supposed to be "universal learners" you see, be able to learn anything. Learning in the sense of machine learning. Sure they learn everything but understand nothing. Intelligence needs to be coded in, starting from low to higher and higher abtractions, finally ending up with intelligence. We can't shove gobs of data on one end and expect the thing will discover, spit out fully formed structures on the other end.
LLMs need to be subjected to rigorous summary / concept based tests.. Anyone who wants to tie something mission critical to them at this stage need to get their head examined.
It summarized this with "Explosion in Iran attacked Iran at Bandar Abbas.". 😂 There was no clear attacker in this case, no country had attacked another, an intelligent actor would've pointed that out.
#Gemini #LLM Stupid, stupid.. I asked it a GDELT type question, "read article and summarize who attacked who, and where". Link.
First it extracted a chunk of text, w/ attacker/attacked wording all a mess. I asked to boil down to specific countries, locales - it gave a list, without direction, A on B, or B on A. The place was wrong, gave the place of an earlier attack the article shared as a side note, not the main location.
Someone called Ryan Reynolds' wife "Plantation Khaleesi". I've seen enough of this drama by now I get that reference
Doctorow: "In the summer of 2023, [Tesla] was caught lying to drivers about its cars’ range: Drivers noticed that they were getting far fewer miles out of their batteries than Tesla had advertised. Naturally, they contacted the company for service on their faulty cars. Tesla then set up an entire fake service operation in Nevada that these calls would be diverted to, called the 'diversion team.' Drivers with range complaints were put through to the 'diverters' who would claim to run 'remote diagnostics' on their cars and then assure them the cars were fine. They even installed a special xylophone in the diversion team office that diverters would ring every time they successfully deceived a driver.
These customers were then put in an invisible Tesla service jail. Their Tesla apps were silently altered so that they could no longer book service for their cars for any reason — instead, they’d have to leave a message and wait several days for a callback. The diversion center racked up 2,000 calls/week and diverters were under strict instructions to keep calls under five minutes. Eventually, these diverters were told that they should stop actually performing remote diagnostics on the cars of callers — instead, they’d just pretend to have run the diagnostics and claim no problems were found"
BYD USA: "BYD, US Hybrid Develop First-ever Hydrogen / Electric Bus.. The bus will utilize BYD's battery-electric platform, integrating hydrogen fuel cell technology to eliminate operational dependency on charging"
HuffPost: "Tesla Accused Of Speeding Up Odometers So Their Warranties Expire Faster."
"@GeofCox@climatejustice.social
McDonald’s posts surprise decline in global sales in first quarter...
Boycotts work !"
CBS News: "Mike Waltz out as national security adviser, but Trump says he'll be ambassador to U.N."
u.baci_top_product("Iran","China")
$ 882,817,617.0
Ethylene polymers: in primary forms, polyethylene having a specific
gravity of 0.94 or more
Top export product for Iran-TR is aliminium
CNBC: "Trump said any person or country that buys oil or petrochemicals from Iran will be barred from doing any business with the U.S."
Carriers are absolutely defenseless against hypersonic attack, esp. if they arrive as a swarm.
Davis #DeepDive says an earlier Houthi missile attack on an aircraft carrier penetrated all outer defenses, it was shot down via Phalanx, which is the last line of defense, a machine gun basically with about a mile range. A carrier might not be as invincible as once thought. It was the tool of power projection at one time when potential adversaries did not have much. Now they do.
You would believe that only if you were literally born yesterday. Who is this guy kidding? Rates might have gone down but the duration went up from 2-5 to 10-30 years, and now multigenerational mortgages are considered, meaning the loan payer will not be able to repay within the period OF THEIR LIFE. The underlying asset appreciated massively due to influx of money from the uber-wealthy.
😂 😂 😂
CEPR: "[C]ompared to the 1990s, affordability has improved, largely driven by lower mortgage rates"
ANTMAMA is done. There are problems with the T and the M
I am losing track of these acronyms. There was FAANG, FANMAG, someone just used GAFAM (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft).
Sad
"@nuintari@bsd.cafe
My wife is an auto damage adjuster, so she works with a lot of repair shops.
Occasionally, she gets a shop with an IT issue that needs some help, and I'll occasionally get brought in.
There are basically two kinds of car shops.
The first kind run on modern everything, and they are constantly having problems with damn near all of it. They have gigE networks to Windows 10/11 workstations, and 10gigE servers running some crazy ass collection of parts lookup and work time quote estimating software that is never fucking right, even when it isn't broken.
The second kind are running on a custom application from the early 1990s that runs on Foxpro that generates invoices, and forces you to manually input part prices whenever they are an unknown, which is almost always. They interact with other vendors and insurance via exchange of paper documents. Their biggest issue is finding paper for their dot matrix printers, and replacing failed CRTs and keyboards.
Guess which one has fewer operational issues?"
A Classic #Keiser
Tony Blair was knighted? When did that happen?
Used a landline recently I realized they were kind of cool.. The mechanical keys, dedicated receiver, mic, mechanically putting the receiver down ends convo.. It was so good..
Reason: "The campaign against the Houthi.. has been criticized for its wastefulness. It cost $3 billion in just the first three weeks"
Responsible Statecraft: "F-18 rolls off US carrier as it turns to avoid Houthi fire"
They threw a brick at her
The Daily Reminder: "Jewish woman attacked by Zionists for standing with Palestine!"
World Socialist Web Site: "Hundreds of Zionist fascists riot through New York, chanting 'death to Arabs'"
"@earthshine@masto.hackers.town
2005: every new PC and Windows OS installation disc comes loaded with tons of third party adware, bloatware, Spyware, and trialware pre-installed which you have to remove.
2015: bare metal clean windows installers are free from Microsoft and simple to use and it's standard to just nuke and pave over any OEMs.
2025: every new PC and Windows OS installation image comes loaded with tons of third party adware, bloatware, Spyware, and trialware baked right into the OS and comes back if removed."
"Serverless computing" term can be confusing at first. Compared w/ hosting actual servers on someone else's cloud, have we now reached a stage where there is no need for physical servers? Not exactly. The progression of the tech went as follows.
- Host your own servers (server side app, db) on your own network.
- Have a cloud provider host the same, on an always-on physical server
- Cloud provider hosts non-persistent virtual servers, your instance can started/killed as necessary.
- Your server app can be written to a specific API, which cloud vendor can scale up/down, bring online/offline as needed.
- Today: You can submit little functions, pieces of code to a cloud, and they are executed as needed, on the cloud infrastructure.
With the last development the concept of a "server app", virtual or otherwise, becomes somewhat obsolete.
We need to mind the wording, there is still hardware on the server side (the cloud) that runs your stuff. There is a physical server somewhere. But the presence of an app, an app server written a certain monolithic fashion by the developer is not assumed, the architecture on the user side is more fluid. The granularity of code execution is smaller.
"If you want to create completely free software for other people to use, the absolute best delivery mechanism right now is static HTML and JavaScript served from a free web host with an established reputation. Thanks to WebAssembly the set of potential software that can be served in this way is vast and, I think, under appreciated"
New Scientist: "Earthquakes may generate huge volumes of hydrogen within the planet by fracturing rocks that then react with water molecules. This hydrogen could be an overlooked source of energy for life deep underground, as well as for people aiming to extract the gas as an alternative fuel"
Alternatives to established fundamental sci are legion. Pick one, grind away..
Masse, Cetta, de la Pena, Unzicker
"@jimbob@aus.social
I need to be very clear, that the push towards 'vibe coding' - that is, deliberately deskilling people - is because AI code assistants are an (increasingly expensive) subscription service.
If you know how to code, you can just write Python, C, Java, R, PHP, whatever for free and make things. You may not own the tools of production, but at least you're not renting them.
If you have been deskilled so you only know how to vibe code, you will be paying for that privilege forever.
This also goes, by the way, for researchers who are starting to be convinced they don't need to learn how to be scientists anymore, because "the AI" can just do the science for them. Nope"
Firstpost: "Pakistan fears India will launch military response to Pahalgam attack 'in next 24-36 hours'"
US needs bigger government, be less pro-business and tax the rich, especially wealth.
The Conversation: "New survey shows the extent of class privilege in UK journalism .. Our data does not suggest that a privileged upbringing makes it more likely for journalists to hold a top management position. Where it does make a difference, though, is whether they work for national media or outlets with international presence.. Of those who do only 9% come from a working-class background, while 72% come from a privileged one"
Representative democracy works when it does (wout interference) because the masses get asked a simple question which they can answer based on a few simple observations, errors get corrected in the aggregate.
That is mostly true
"The masses are asses"
Quora: "When a house is appraised, they look at the ‘comps’, or the comparable housing in the area. The cost per square foot comes into play in the calculations. If you have an area with 10 houses that are all about 2,000 sq ft and they are all appraised at $200,000 with very similar amenities and features, they are estimated to be about 100 dollars per sq ft. Then another house has slightly better amenities and a newer roof and Hvac system, it might sell for 230,000, which would make it 115 dollars per sq ft. When another house goes for higher than 200,000, it tends to lift all the houses to the higher sq ft price. Maybe the school district is highly rated and the area is viewed as a safer area, the sq ft price will tend to rise. Now one of those first 10 houses that were appraised at 200k are now appraised at 220 or 225."
The effect of concentrated wealth on housing is real. Wealthy person buys a house in a neighborhood for obscene price just because s/he can, that raises the price of other houses in the same neighborhood. The effect can cascade, from top to bottom, in the end even the cheapest house can become unaffordable even with a steady job and good income.
Some wealth is based on stocks on a company held by its founder, how can you tax that wout causing the founder lose control of the company?
If stock rises above a certain level, making the stock holder / founder(s) multi-billionaire, government can take passive ownership of a big chunk of those stocks, making sure founder does not become too wealthy even if gains are not realized / made cash. Because if they do, they become a threat to public's financial safety.
Founder can remain the majority owner, but would not be able to sell all of the stocks, or even borrow against them - a large portion would be under passive ownership by another entity.
The Suez Canal works on sea water.
Reshare from 2023
The Guardian: "[T]he 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"
He can thank Trump
The Guardian: "Canada’s liberal party, led by Mark Carney, secures election victory after dramatic reversal of fortune"
The key feature of HTGR-POLA, HTR-PM, Project Pele, HTTR on that list are they are helium-cooled, not small. Gas cooled reactors are claimed to be safer, more efficient. You could build them at a larger size, they would still be safer compared to the water-cooled alternative (current tech).
CNBC: "New nuclear plant designs, called small modular reactors, could speed deployment of carbon-free power"
GFC did not start bcz of tariffs (it was a go-go time for globalisation, outsourcing, increased wealth), neither did the Great Depression.
CNBC: "Americans are getting flashbacks to 2008 as tariffs stoke recession fears"
CNBC: "Chinese factories are stopping production and looking for new markets as U.S. tariffs bite"
"@ashleygjovik@mastodon.social
I'm preparing another evidence production for Apple, going through my files, & found this gem. Here's a conversation between me & my coworkers, where we were complaining about our Apple office being a toxic waste dump, & texting pics of the parking lot full of literal toxic waste drums"
Then poster shared this photo.. Survivorship bias reference.. good one.
"Why is everyone I know with ADHD so high functioning?"
Liberal Feminism is Dying - Now What #Capelle
Politico: "Trump is under pressure to decide how widely available anti-obesity drugs should be and whether Medicare should cover them."
CNBC: "From mining giants to Big Oil, major players are jumping on the 'white hydrogen' bandwagon"
Why doesn't the "rule based order" address such concerns until trouble breaks out? Probably because weapon-dealing profiteering types in US always want more war, in all corners of the globe.
Any deal that will dissuade Russia from further war is a gift to Kyiv not just Moscow. It would be like letting Anatolia to have control of northern part of Cyprus or demilitarize it without a war in 1974 which they were ready to fight for. You don't get to crawl up my ass with your militaristic intentions, political unrest that harm my peeps near and not to give me something to calm those fears. Otherwise there is war war not jaw jaw.
NYT: "The United States has been pushing Ukraine to accept a peace plan that seems in part a gift to Moscow."
NYT: "'It makes me think that maybe he doesn’t want to stop the war, he’s just tapping me along,' Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social after meeting with Mr. Zelensky on the sidelines of Pope Francis’ funeral"
The Jakarta Post: "WFP says has depleted all Gaza food stocks as Israel blocks aid"
Palestinian Arabs are on the other hand are, and there is plenty of anti-Semitism going around for them. They are now practically genocided in Gaza.
The names listed are all European.. And since European Jews arrived from the Caucuses (not Palestine), can we then say Israeli Jews are not Semites?
"@jaromil@mastodon.social
Multiple countries in Europe are critically dependent on services provided by Microsoft. Querying mail-servers teaches that in some countries, over 70% of all public services rely on this American provider. Europe needs to build its own infrastructure, and open source is the most robust solution"
Reuters: "Spain's national hydrogen network plan ahead of schedule, Enagas chief says"
TradeWinds: "Hoegh Evi and Wartsila unveil world’s first floating ammonia-to-hydrogen cracker.. Finnish and Norwegian groups say breakthrough will scale up clean energy production"
TR invaded the northern part of the island, 1974. Cyprus for TR is like Ukraine is for Russia. It's too close to let it become a military threat, which it became after junta took over in Greece. Good news for Greeks was TR 1974 invasion helped Greeks topple the junta, but my homie was sanctioned bcz the action was unpalatable for the "rules-based order".
That should not be a big deal since Anatolians are not Turks. They should not feel any closer to Turkic states than they do to Georgians, Syrians, or even Kurds ("the Stans" obviously don't as they "backstabbed" Anatolia so readily). The so-called Turkish identity is a crooked construction, has no basis in history, culture, and genetics.
Daily Sabah: "In a significant diplomatic development, three full members of the Organization of Turkic States (OTS) – Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan – along with observer state Turkmenistan, have formally recognized the Greek Cypriot administration"
#Montignac
#RFKJ
AP: "A massive explosion at an Iranian port linked to missile fuel shipment kills 25, injures some 800"