Week 35

"@jonny@neuromatch.social

A friend who just won a big grant just said to me 'I think not using AI might have made my grant more competitive than it would have been years ago' and like... As long as there are people who actually read the grants, it gives me a schadenfreude laugh to think of the prestige class pumping out what they think is 10x solid gold genius, but to everyone else it just looks like they are surrounded by a cloud of pink slime like pigpen in peanuts."

"@Victor@spore.social

As some of the largest water reservoirs in the United States plunge to record lows, drought isn’t the only factor to blame. According to a new study, just 122 fossil fuel and cement companies are responsible for roughly half of the water lost to climate change in the American West" via #FastCompany

"@Richard_Littler@mastodon.social

Because the last years have seen one brainless absurdity after another, the NFT craze feels longer than 5 years ago. I just checked values. The Dorsey NFT, sold in 2021 for $2.9mill, was worth 280 by 2022. From 2021-2025, sales lost 93% of their value. Now, "95% of NFT art has no value at all"."

Blood In The Machine: "With the backlash to data centers, Flock and AI glasses, a mass opposition to big tech is underway. Silicon Valley is in denial."

"@newyorktimes@flipboard.com

Canada Hires 48 Scholars Away From Top U.S. Universities"

"…over the past six months, the U.S. has depleted an estimated one-quarter to one-third of its pre-war stockpile of Tomahawk missiles, one-quarter of its Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles, up to three-quarters of its 90 Precision Strike Missiles, and most of its defensive THAAD interceptors and Patriot missiles, The Washington Post reported."

TAC: "The Lee government is moving towards greater independence from the U.S... Though Lee does not want to abandon his country’s historic relationship with the United States, he does seek to increase South Korea’s ability to act independently in diplomatic, military, and economic matters. Soon after his inauguration, Lee announced plans to transfer the operational control of South Korean troops to Seoul in the event of war..

It is in this context that President Trump’s recent decision to scale down U.S.-South Korea exercises must be understood. While much of the American press framed this negatively, seeing in it evidence of Trump’s affinity for dictators and disdain for alliances, Lee saw it as an opportunity. He praised the U.S. president’s decision, and used the occasion to reiterate his support for the accelerated development of nuclear subs and the expedited transfer of operational control..In doing so, Lee avoids an open rupture with the White House, even as he signals a path toward greater self-reliance—and a desire to distance himself from Trump’s more unpopular impulses."

TAC: "What South Korea's Israel Snub Means.. In May, after two South Korean nationals were detained trying to reach the Gaza Strip aboard humanitarian aid boats, South Korea’s progressive President Lee Jae-myung made a strongly worded attack on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom he labeled a war criminal. This followed Lee's earlier suggestions that the Israeli government’s conduct in Gaza resembled Nazi massacres during the Holocaust and—even more explosively for his South Korean audience—Japan’s “comfort women” system."

"Radical", "hard" left. In the good old days Mélenchon would be called just left. Now anything that doesn't jive with PMC centrists, the mainstream press becomes "radical left".

Le Monde: "Poll shows Le Pen's biggest challenger may be hard left's Mélenchon.. The radical left leader of La France Insoumise (LFI) would advance to the second round against far-right Marine Le Pen in three of five possible first-round scenarios, a poll has found."

"Frontline" LLMs have vision capabilities, it helps chat conversations, "look at this graph, describe this photo" etc, but such vision capabilities are appendages to LLM's text ability. Vision neural nets existed before LLM tech became famous. There was YOLO (2015), Mask R-CNN. If you wanted vision capability on a drone, you would not do it through an LLM, you would do it through one of those vision-only neural nets.

But people are ignorant of these details, they keep hearing LLM is "AI" (it isn't), then hear self-guiding drone has "AI" (only has vision NN has nothing to do with recent LLM surge which isn't AI either), they add tomatoes and parsnips together and come up with 4. Dystopia bro... At the same time missiles have been running on-board decisions algos for decades. How do they think the Phalanx system works, it shoots 75 rounds per second and from detection to engagement it reacts instantly. There is an algorithm handling that, in use since the 70s. Isn't this algo also "untethered to humans"?

This is a good thing, it can usher a new era of regulation. More government... limits on capitalism.

NYT: "Meta to Pay Up to $17.1 Billion in Landmark Settlement Over Social Media Addiction Claims.. The social media giant settled with 47 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories, and agreed to make major changes to its products over claims its platforms endangered children."

I don't care much for the Kennedy name, I am generally in favor of anything related to JFK demoted as much as possible as he provides a symbol for PMC centrist Democratic shitlibs. Kennedy Center being demolished, great.

TDB: "Donald Trump’s threat to demolish the Kennedy Center unless it is named after him has prompted a fiery new legal response"

The overrepresentation must be directly proportional to their supression of the economic left. Just like their US counterparts, the UK mainstream has to divert attention from poverty to issues other than economic concerns, social left is the go-to play.

Coulter, TAC: "[The UK is] more woke than the U.S... According to the 2021 census, the UK is 2.5 percent black, but around half of all its TV advertisements feature black people.. Interracial couples in the UK are like gay-wedding planners in the U.S. Nobody has ever met one, but they seem to be everywhere."

Times of Israel: "[2025] We Do Not Believe in God, but He Nonetheless Promised Us Palestine.. Ilan Pappé nails the core contradiction. Early Zionism was, in large part, a secular nationalist movement; yet it reached for scripture like a real-estate deed."

CNBC: "Europe’s gas stores are running low — and prices could top 100 euros this winter"

Politico: "CIA chief used Moscow visit to warn Russia against attacks on NATO allies, helping Iran"

BBC: "China hits out at 'illegal' new US sanctions on Iran and trading partners"

AP News: "Trump’s new economic squeeze on Iran has a big challenge: China"

NYT: "Israeli Lawmaker Smashes Palestinian Monument in West Bank"

CNBC: "Trump’s move last week to scale back annual military drills with South Korea came as Seoul finalizes hundreds of billions of dollars in investment commitments to Washington."

Anson Mount's Captain finally seems to have settled into a shoulder-shrug act that is permanently etched in the man's face. I guess the suck is so strong around him that the only way to look remotely charismatic is to have that constant "meh" attitude. I'm cucked? Meh. See how much I care.

Strange New Worlds is such a sad show. The producers need to be ashamed of themselves placing the Trek label on it.

Electrek: "Tesla’s 'Robotaxi' service is racking up a wave of terrible rider experiences in Texas — and the complaints are increasingly coming from Tesla’s own fans and ambassadors.

A self-described 'Tesla Ambassador' says the service quoted him 66 minutes for a 2.3-mile trip and left him to call an Uber, while a four-time Tesla owner has logged a string of missed pickups and drop-offs left blocks — sometimes miles — from the destination."

🤣 🤣 🤣

"It's a no-brainer"

Well if government intervened more in a system designed to leave out government, everything would've been dandy. Why aren't you funding it bro, we created this overengineered piece of shit which would work wonders if more money was sunk into it.

I thought corporate-friendly Clintoncare / Obamacare would fix all of that. I guess it didn't.

"@mathowie@xoxo.zone

I logged onto my HMO site to renew a prescription, but it said to contact the doctor who prescribed it, not them, so I logged into that other system and it said do not message your doctor about prescriptions, instead contact your health provider.

Machiavelli would killed it working in healthcare"

Youtube User: "I installed linux mint the instant i heard microsoft was intending to embed AI into the OS."

Youtube User: "Recall & Copilot are the best thing Microsoft has ever done for me. After 40 years with Microsoft OS from MSDOS 1.0 to Window 11/Office 365 I finally had it! I canceled my subscription, backed up my data, formatted my system disk and installed CachyOS ... and I've been a happy Linux user for a year now."

Inflation is up and FEDFUNDS is flat.. That means real rates fell, and if the textbook is back, that caused, via inverse correlation, gold to go up.

Inflation rising

2026-06-01  3.531425
2026-07-01  3.364825

HTW: "Gold up 15%, silver 19% in August: Why are precious metals prices surging?"

GPUs are used for neural networks (LLM or non-LLM) all the time. The drone likely used an existing, pre-LLM machine vision NN, which every entry-level commentator associates with LLM "AI" now, and that with NVidia.

Control systems have been running algorithms on embedded computers since forever. There is no need to single out pattern recognition cases and make it a part of a dystopic or a utopic narrative. Heat seeking missiles also decide / change their path via an on board computer after they are fired. Why are they not described as part of a "dystopian future of weaponry untethered to humans"?

OMG. An NVidia chip

NYT: "An attack by what Ukrainian officials said was a Russian drone with an Nvidia chip presages a dystopian future of weaponry untethered to humans... A small Russian drone resembling a model airplane swooped down from the sky last month in the city of Zaporizhzhia in southeastern Ukraine. As it tried to navigate toward a gas station, it crashed into a wall and exploded.. The drone was programmed by human operators to travel toward a particular gas station, but once it got close, it chose its exact target — most likely propane tanks — on its own, based on its training to recognize such tanks and strike them, the experts and military officials said."

Young Washington, good movie. There is some myth-making, a little exaggeration at places, but they got some key points right. GW wanted to join the British ranks, he tried desparately to be one of them. He was a grinder, he was grinding at it to move up in that system. But he was thwarted at every turn, Brits never accepted him because he was born in America. GW had skill in military matters, so they wanted him around, eventually had him lead the local militia... so Brits were also unknowingly creating the seeds of the rebellion which would one day fight against them.

TNW: "[2026/04] France orders all government ministries to ditch Windows for Linux in digital sovereignty push.. France [is hopeful of the prospects] and the reason is the Gendarmerie nationale. Beginning in 2004 with a phased adoption of OpenOffice, Firefox, and Thunderbird, the Gendarmerie progressively built the internal competencies and governance structures required for a full operating system switch. In 2008 it launched GendBuntu, its customised Ubuntu-based deployment.

By June 2024, GendBuntu ran on 103,164 workstations, representing 97% of the force’s computing estate. The financial outcome has been unambiguous: the project saves approximately two million euros per year in licensing costs and has reduced the total cost of ownership by an estimated 40%."

Responsible Statecraft: "Israel creates fake think tank in likely attempt to dupe AI chatbots"

Latest Syria map, new code. Before / after comparison available after next update. But we can see troublespots even now, there are overlaps between HTS and ISR around Al-Quneitra.

There is a region labeled ISIS - they are stil there. I guess they are being kept "in reserve" for the next time they are "useful".

Two Kurdish areas are now cut off from each other.

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Al-Monitor: "China's Xi likely to visit India with big delegation for first time in seven years"

Dave Alvin & Phil Alvin - World's in a Bad Condition #music

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The Guardian: "On Friday Ruffalo shared a video of Oracle executive vice-chair, Safra Catz, describing the 'really profoundly scary technology' it provided to Israel after the 7 October attack by Hamas in 2023. Above the video, Ruffalo took aim at Larry Ellison, who he accused of 'using [Oracle] to fund his son David’s Warner Bros acquisition'.

Larry Ellison, who is worth an estimated $189bn, agreed to personally backstop 40.4bn in equity financing to help Paramount Skydance acquire WBD in a 110.9bn deal.

'These "really profoundly scary technologies" will most likely be merged into one of the largest media conglomerates in the world and one day used on you,' Ruffalo wrote. 'Look how [Catz] revels in what we now have come to see as a genocide, which was built on an apartheid system of oppression powered by Oracle.'

Ruffalo urged his followers to oppose the merger, which he argued would be 'catastrophic' for the entertainment industry due to job losses and reduced competition.

Though the US department of justice approved the merger in June, it remains on hold while a federal judge considers a lawsuit from a coalition of 12 US states who have challenged the deal on antitrust grounds."

A new book called The Nerd Reich.. You can guess what it is about.

Lanterns first ep was good..

"[2025] Klarna cut approximately 700 jobs and replaced them with AI-powered solutions between 2022 and 2024. CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski publicly admitted that the AI-driven transition negatively affected service and product quality. Following increased customer complaints and operational issues, Klarna is now rehiring human staff."

Axios: "Texas Gov. Greg Abbott delivered one of the starkest warnings yet from a Republican to the AI industry, saying data center companies 'dug their own grave' and deserve the backlash they're facing after failing to win community support... Abbott is the latest governor to sharply change course on the AI data center boom he once enthusiastically courted, as local opposition becomes a potent political force...

Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who last year celebrated a $20 billion Amazon data center investment, imposed new restrictions this week. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, also a Democrat, last month ordered a one-year moratorium on hyperscaler data centers...

The backlash is quickly becoming a political problem for the AI industry."

IC: "AI’s Natural Gas Addiction Could be Deadly for Communities.. Tech companies should be bringing their own renewable energy to power data centers, not burning fossil fuels or driving up costs for consumers"

"@landley@mstdn.jp

Moore's Law is dead.

Intel introduced the 64 bit 'Core 2' processor in 2005 so laptops could access more than 4 gigabytes of RAM.

Moore's Law's 18 month doubling time says the following 21 years should have 14 doublings to 64 terabytes of RAM in each $2000 laptop.

That's why silicon valley execs went crazy: they no longer have free growth. Their business model doesn't WORK. They've done regulatory capture, brute force spending inflating a snake oil bubble, and nothing's working."

#TNG

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Hearing an Israeli accent these days triggers a sense of revulsion for me... I don't like it, but it is what it is

Energy transmission in bulk probably still needs to be molecule based. Wires are too inefficient for that task... It is also unclear how lithium-air can be scaled for bigger storage needs. NH3, or H2 will be needed for that too.

If the tech truly works as advertised, batteries can be a viable option for cars. Lithium-ion is failed technology, it recharges too slow, the batteries are too heavy. But if lithium-air can deliver gasoline level performance, recharge speeds are acceptable, car won't be heavier, range will not suffer, and batteries can have a chance.

Car News China: "CATL sets sights on lithium-air technology with theoretical gasoline-level 12,000 Wh/kg energy density"

Al-Monitor: "Former envoys urge joint French, UK action on Palestinian territories.. Dozens of former senior French and UK diplomats on Saturday urged their governments to work together to uphold international law in the Palestinian territories, accusing Israel of seeking to 'destroy' any prospect of a viable Palestinian state."

IC: "The Mecca Security Pact is not about Iran.. The Pact suggests serious strategic rethinking about the reliability of the United States as the region's guarantor of peace and stability"

CNBC: "Trump reshuffled his portfolio in June, selling names like Meta and buying Berkshire Hathaway"