Week 36

Volvo Group: "For the first time in Europe, Germany is bringing together the full ecosystem needed to scale the deployment of hydrogen trucks by 2030, combining supportive policy frameworks, a strong OEM offering and an integrated hydrogen supply chain and infrastructure"

TAC: "Iran War Day 189: White House Downplays War in Press Conference, as U.S. Diesel Prices Hit Record High"

Techcrunch: "The United States’ top automotive safety regulator has opened an investigation into Tesla’s decision to launch its new Cybercab on public roads with no steering wheel or pedals.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced Friday morning that it opened the probe mere hours after Tesla put the first Cybercabs on the streets of Austin, Texas. Federal vehicle safety regulations require manual controls like brake pedals, though the Department of Transportation recently proposed removing those requirements for vehicles that are designed to be autonomously driven."

WaPo: "[W]ages are falling behind inflation, an economic warning sign.. Inflation beat out wage growth again in August"

Tom Mille-Feuille looks standoff-ish in interviews, Chris Wallace of Youtube?

#Reshare

US did not support Bancor when it was proposed because its ruling class (the business sector, private complex, surface state) did not want it. This class always wants to exploit slave labor abroad whose output would show up as trade deficit in the books for US. Since Bancor is designed to automatically prevent trade imbalances, the surface state could not accept this.

The Lever: "The Billionaire-Backed Democrat With An Enron-Sized Problem.. New Hampshire congressional candidate Maura Sullivan worked for a biotech giant accused of using 'shell' customers to inflate its business — and its executives are now campaign donors."

The Guardian: "Almost half of world’s farmers poisoned by pesticides every year, experts find"

#Reshare

"@jonny@neuromatch.social

So the reason that Claude Code [agent / harness] is capable of outputting valid json is because if the prompt text suggests it should be JSON then it enters a special loop in the main query engine that just validates it against JSON schema.. and then feeds the data with the error message back into itself until it is valid JSON or a retry limit is reached.

This code is so eye wateringly spaghetti... just mind blowingly expensive"

"@timnitGebru@dair-community.social

Another thing that I find funny is that Anthropic is making all these claims about security while they themselves couldn't stop their own source code from leaking. And from analyzing that code, people have seen how things are done now with "vibe coding" using Claude. Even things that can be done simply are done with brute force, i.e. trying all possible scenarios before arriving at an answer or solution."

CNBC: "Dutch central bank moves gold bars out of U.S. and Canada, citing ‘crisis preparedness’"

Politico: "The Trump administration is shaking up federal involvement in the mining, tech, energy and defense sectors by making the government part-owner of dozens of U.S. companies -- and sparking a conversation among progressives about how a future Democratic president might reboot the party’s approach to climate and labor policy."

The Guardian: "It could take Ukraine several years to start building Patriot air defence interceptors and doing so is not an immediate solution for Kyiv, Marco Rubio has said"

Internal division means things are not going good over there

The Guardian: "Zelenskyy blasted Ukraine’s SBU and GUR after a shootout in Kyiv between the two intelligence and security services reportedly left three officers injured"

The closing sentence was obviously a dig to the famous JFK quote "ask what you can do for your country". Most do not realize the first part of that quote "ask not what your country can do for you" is a synonym for "dont ask services from government". Today that's like saying STFU about Medicare For All, die on your own and in debt as that would be a service to your country.

No wonder Dem shitlibs love the flamboyant fuck.

I really liked how Markey beat a Kennedy last time. Check out his ad

[-]

NBC News: "Democratic Sen. Ed Markey easily fends off Massachusetts primary challenge from Rep. Seth Moulton"

A teenager can learn how to drive in a few days, using only vision, why can't these "intelligent" machines do that?

LLM can spit out bazillion words about driving, rules, cars, even how to drive. Stick that shit in there, will it drive? If not, why not?

The tech is again wholly disconnected from LLMs (which are not intelligent either) - a recent advance in the latter has nothing to do with the former.

Autonomous cars, like Waymo's know exactly how far objects are, thanks to their Lidar. Humans don't work that way, we compute distance using vision. I would hesitate to call autonomous cars AI. They are not exactly intelligent, they just have better sensors.

Waymo: "Lidar, or Light Detection and Ranging, paints a 3D picture of the vehicle’s surroundings. Lidar sensors are located all around the vehicle in order to send millions of laser pulses in all directions, then measure how long it takes for them to bounce back off objects. No matter the time of day, our lidar system gives the Waymo Driver a bird’s eye view of what’s around."

"@jalefkowit@hachyderm.io

Is it too much to hope that this turns into a Grizzly Man scenario"

Google is sending MrBeast into the wilderness, armed with AI.. One of YouTube’s biggest creators has a new deal to promote Gemini and Google Health.

"@GossiTheDog@cyberplace.social

MrBeast has signed a multi year overall deal to base his videos on using GenAI. His first show is about using GenAI searches to survive in the wilderness."

NYT: "U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln Docks in Thailand, Giving Weary Crew a Break"

Politico: "Republicans struggle for footing on data center response ahead of midterms.. Vulnerable House Republicans are eager for Congress to take action, but leadership is not yet ready to charge ahead."

NYT: "A.I. Is to Be Banned in N.Y.C. Elementary and Middle Schools"

JFK is an idol for the centrist Dems. That idol must be destroyed.

Election fraud trumps Watergate IMO, assuming it was even true

Wallace, Countdown 1960: "In 1983, years after Nixon resigned the presidency, he sat down for a series of interviews with Frank Gannon, one of his former White House staffers. Gannon asked, 'What was Watergate?' 'Let’s start with what Watergate was not,' Nixon responded. 'No election was affected or stolen by it, as some believe the election of 1960 was stolen.'

Gannon asked later, 'Do you think that you were elected president of the United States in 1960?' 'Well, many objective observers believe that I was,' Nixon said... 'There was no question, and these are facts, that there was immense fraud in Chicago, and it was all on [Dem] side, not on our side'"

LA Times: "The money, muscle and influence of organized crime helped John F. Kennedy win the closely contested 1960 election, investigative journalist Seymour M. Hersh contends in a new book on the Kennedy presidency... In The Dark Side of Camelot Hersh claims that the Mafia was brought into the Kennedy presidential campaign--and helped the Democrat carry the key state of Illinois--mainly at the instigation of Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., founder of the family political dynasty."

The Lever: "He Champions Centrist Dems On Cable. He Also Works For Big AI... Former Rep. Max Rose helps lead an influential network intervening in Democratic primaries — while quietly advising a tech-funded political operation targeting AI regulation."

"EPA Announces More Than $2.3 Million to Help Protect Drinking Water in Indiana from Cyberattacks and Extreme Weather Events"

"@Amoeba_Girl@awful.systems

If I have a billion trillion dollars but 20% of the population hates me, but I get to live in a giant solid gold mansion with an army of servants keeping the 20% away from me, have I really failed?

I don’t know, you tell me."

F24: "Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday called on 'the people of the Middle East' to oppose 'external interference' and consider reshaping the region's security order during a visit to Egypt."

It is hilarious to me how an intervention against a "middle weight", regional power brought about this crisis in the country who is supposed to be able to fight two concurrent wars at the same time if the need arised.

TAC: "Trump’s Wars Have Created a Disturbing Military Readiness Crisis"

Selfa: "Perhaps there is no greater myth in U.S. politics than the idea, promoted by popular films like Oliver Stone’s JFK, that the Kennedy administration had planned to wind down the Vietnam War at the time of Kennedy’s assassination in 1963. In this mythology the sainted JFK would have avoided the disaster into which his benighted successor, Lyndon Johnson, led the U.S. military and foreign policy establishment. But the record shows otherwise. In 1961 Kennedy’s top adviser, McGeorge Bundy, told the State Department that Kennedy 'was really very eager indeed that [Vietnam] should have the highest priority for rapid and energetic action.' When Washington’s chosen puppet in South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem (whom Johnson once touted as 'the Winston Churchill of Southeast Asia'), refused U.S. pressure to defuse anti-government demonstrations in 1963, Kennedy authorized a CIA-led military coup that resulted in Diem’s assassination... Kennedy raised the number of U.S. military 'advisers' in Vietnam from eight hundred when he took office to 16,700 in 1962. The effect — and indeed the intent — of Kennedy’s policy committed the United States to a wider role in Vietnam."

Selfa, The Democrats: A Critical History: After [Democrat] Truman ordered atomic bombs dropped on Japan, he went on to create the National Security Council, the CIA, and the Defense Department. The Truman Doctrine authorized U.S. troops to intervene anywhere to 'defend free enterprise' against 'communism.' The myth-makers laud Kennedy for creating the Peace Corps, while ignoring that he also created the Green Berets.

We all weep for them, for those who can't find a mansion

NPR: "AI wealth is creating a 'mansion shortage' and upending San Francisco's housing market"

"A Spanish Engine With No Crankshaft Burns Hydrogen, Gasoline, or 'Pretty Much Whatever You Give It' - and It’s Already Running in a Mazda Miata While Airbus Takes a Look.. Pop the hood on a normal engine and the crankshaft is the thing doing the translating: pistons go up and down, the crank turns that into rotation, and a small museum of valves, camshafts and a cylinder head sits on top to manage the breathing. INNengine’s e-REX architecture deletes most of that. According to INNengine’s own technical breakdown, there’s no crankshaft, no valves, no camshaft, and no cylinder head."

[-]

That is a cool design.. No crankshaft.

[-]

DOE: "Gaseous hydrogen can be transported through pipelines much the way natural gas is today. Approximately 1,600 miles of hydrogen pipelines are currently operating in the United States. Owned by merchant hydrogen producers, these pipelines are located where large hydrogen users, such as petroleum refineries and chemical plants, are concentrated such as the Gulf Coast region...

Transporting gaseous hydrogen via existing pipelines is a low-cost option for delivering large volumes of hydrogen.. Research today therefore focuses on overcoming technical concerns related to pipeline transmission.. Potential solutions include using fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) pipelines for hydrogen distribution. The installation costs for FRP pipelines are about 20% less than that of steel pipelines because the FRP can be obtained in sections that are much longer than steel minimizing welding requirements."

"@mike_k@mstdn.social

A bunch of people whose salaries depend on people believing AI’s going to happen did the open letter thing: we’re so close it’s scary, you better nationalise us. Not because the money’s running out, because we’re so close.

And the dumbarse papers take it seriously.

AI’s never going to happen any time soon. The open letter’s all the proof anyone needs."

Al-Monitor: "Taiwan says 'unpredictable' China strengthens air and sea control nearby"

NYT: "These Generals Fought for Israel. Now They See ‘Jewish Terrorism’ as the Threat... A growing number of former Israeli generals, intelligence officials and prime ministers are accusing settlers in the West Bank of committing ethnic cleansing with government support. 'Once a society behaves this way,' one said, 'that society is doomed'"

"@maxine@hachyderm.io

There is no path back to a functioning society that allows for the continued existence of LLMs. It just isn’t viable to have a tool that can generate a large volume of plausible sounding text, often directly spitting out what is in its dataset, without eroding all public trust and desire to participate in the commons.

LLMs are going to fucking kill us. They’ve made mistrust the default and our world just cannot work like this. We’re basically speedrunning into the societal conditions of well established fascism where nothing and no one can be trusted anymore. I cannot fathom the people who are seeing this erosion of trust and erosion of communities and going 'yeah, but progress' as a reason to not even mildly push back with their policies and stances."

The brain must be more than just a generalizing machine. I'd assume we collect, consult a fair number of "negative edge cases" when we think, stuff that is extreme that we experienced (or learned) which play into our thought process. Generalization might point towards a general solution path, the DOs, the negative edge cases provide the DONTs. The DOs and DONTs likely work together reaching a solution. I don't think LLMs get that. They are not built, from ground up, to respect it.

Guillemot: "Bad news: Fable nuked my entire dev machine

Claude decided to test a sandbox it was building by running rm -rf [this is delete everything command] on my home directory.

The sandbox didn't work.

It's all gone"

[-]

Karate is fine, but it's tough to beat opponents larger than you, and you have to be fit. Older age, different size opponents will cause problems. Taekwando, same, and you can suffer from joint aches later. An art has to use more brain than speed, strength. Do not aim for point scoring either - ring-focused "arts" are not arts, they are spectacles, entertainment.

"Lying, dog-faced pony soldier".. :) You know that shit is totally made up.. Random unrelated thoughts meshing together.. like that W line "fool me once, shame on you, fool me, you can't get fooled again", proverb mixed with some pop song, and mixed with God knows what else

He doesn't like BJJ, doesn't hide that, that's good

The martial art tuber Jesse Enkamp is such a two-faced double-talker. He hypes up an art "the real yyyyy is terrifying" in a video, but then in private interviews he talks smack on that same art. He does the typical content creator thing, vying for clickbait, chasing fake excitement to get more eyeballs. Speak your mind brother.

Travel tubers rented an electric car during a trip in Norway, the battery died on them. That'll teach you. That tech is not for regular people, useful in real-life, it is for well-to-do affluent to show off, to virtue signal.

Even the US needs Bancor. We all do.

#Pettis

Current Account + Capital/Financial Account = 0 where Current Account $\approx$ Trade Balance + Net Income + Transfers. If current account is negative to balance the capital acct, that means your trade balance has to go negative.

Being able to print the reserve currency of the world is actually a curse in disguise. "Exorbitant privilege" is not a privelege. The country having it is a sucker. You have to provide to the rest of the world while not getting much in return, except a feeling of fake superiority.

People defend the dollar's reserve currency status, but at the same time complain about trade imbalances. The two aims can conflict. If Germany, China, Japan, oil exporters, pension funds, central banks, etc. all want dollar assets, the U.S. has to allow those capital inflows and accept the corresponding external deficit. Dollar's value rises, making imports more affordable, hurting your local production. I don't think US can return being a more sane economy unless it gives up on the dollar.

#Reshare

#Ukraine 08/16 - 08/30

[-]

#Reshare

Old Trucks Are Better Than New Trucks

[-]

♪♬ "Con troppa America sui manifesti" ♪ ♪

"Toto Cutugno & Alexandrov Ensemble"

[-]

Toto Cutugno singing his famous L'Italiano with the entire Red Army choir behind him.. hilarous

The Lever: "In the race to secure the Democratic ticket for Massachusetts’ upcoming Senate race, Rep. Seth Moulton has put out a not-so-subtle call for ads targeting 'voters under 40' highlighting that he’s 'one of Massachusetts’ rising progressive stars'..

Progressive standard bearers say Moulton’s pivot is an example of establishment Democrats attempting to capitalize on their base’s leftward shift and fool voters into supporting them over actual progressive candidates. 'We’ve seen this in the wake of Sen. [Bernie] Sanders’ presidential campaigns, where you have a lot of establishment consulting firms or elected officials painting themselves with that brush in an effort to appeal to progressive voters, but it’s a smokescreen,' said Robert Dempsey, national political director of Our Revolution..

Moulton, who has represented the congressional district just north of Boston for 11 years, has raked in more than $1.7 million in campaign donations from private equity, Wall Street, healthcare industry, and tech donors this election cycle. What’s more, a Wall Street-funded super PAC supporting Moulton has spent at least 5.4 million boosting his campaign and opposing incumbent candidate Sen. Ed Markey"

Al-Monitor: "Libya rivals agree roadmap for elections within 24 months at UN-led talks"

Old Trucks Are Better Than New Trucks

[-]

The Odyssey, ok... I rate it above average. It wasn't gimmicky like most other Nolan movies, it didn't try to create an illusion of "smartness" via convoluted puzzles, it didn't get stuck on scenes with rumbling music scores overstaying their welcome. The absence of all that plus the all star cast made it watchable. The anti-war message wasn't bad either.

Connexion: "Water restrictions in France set to last into autumn as drought deepens.. France was one of the countries to experience the most extreme heatwave episodes, compared with the norm, in summer 2026 – with drought conditions set to continue into autumn and even winter in many areas. The summer saw five official canicules, compared with three in summer 2022, also considered a critical year for water shortages."

WaPo: "British far-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos deported by ICE.. The Trump supporter turned critic was flown to the United Kingdom."

That is SecTreas' mentor

Druckenmiller, WSJ: "Let the Bond Market Speak.. Rising interest rates are a signal of trouble ahead. Artificially suppressing it heightens the danger. The Treasury Department announced on Aug. 19 that it would double the size of its long-dated bond buybacks.. The announcement came after the 30-year yield touched a 19-year high. Yields fell within minutes. By the next afternoon they had round-tripped to levels above where they started"

FT: "US corporate profits surge to record as worker payouts wilt.. Pre-tax earnings hit an annualised $4.8tn in the second quarter, or 18 per cent of national income, according to Bureau of Economic Analysis"

Politico: "Russia preparing ‘massive strikes against Ukraine’s energy facilities’.. The Russian announcement comes amid intensfying drone strikes against Ukraine."

#AustriaMil

[-]

There is serious UA resistance around Zaphorizhia, Lyman, and other places. Will it do them any good? Is RU cooking up something big?

#Ukraine 08/16 - 08/30

[-]