Link. Many diseases might happen this way. Not clear if immune response or viral synergy at risk. Cluster a side-effect of COVID precautions lapsing — decreased exposure then susceptibility.
Category Archives: share
“The fight is over a potential plan for the I.R.S. to create its own tax-filing system that would allow taxpayers to submit their returns directly to the federal government at no cost.”
Link. The journalist is wrong about the “free” programs for under 73K. They are mostly scams with substantial hidden fees. GOP defending the current rip-off industry of course.
“These days, our longtime social media hangout Twitter moulders somewhere between: Longtime anchor tenants have left, others carry “Everything must go!” banners, and the local boys who keep coming around neither expect nor fear adult supervision”
Link. Twitter as the dying mall. Great metaphor.
ChatGPT’s 155 IQ and passing the Sebastian’s children puzzle
Link. I laughed and laughed but it wasn’t a happy laugh. #beafraid #chatgpt
A response to Scott Aaronson’s rejection of an AI pause.
Link. I didn’t follow his argument, it seemed very personal. This is a lightly edited version of the comment I submitted to his blog.
“Alarmed over young people increasingly proving to be a force for Democrats at the ballot box, Republican lawmakers in a number of states have been trying to enact new obstacles to voting for college students”
Link. On reading article I was struck by the disinterest of GOP in several red states. Many seem to think this is a dumb move by the party.
Apple’s App Store Apple Account balance: how to really access it (not the way Apple says)
Link. Apple needed to replace their iTunes payment infrastructure 10y ago. Now it’s very creaky.
Traditional COVID vaccines and transient coagulation related cardiac risks in young women.
Link. Small effects but consistent. We see similar pro-thrombotic issues with oral contraceptives in young women. mRNA vaccines preferred but if won’t do that traditional still better than none.
“Apple Music Classical, as its name implies, works only with music hosted in Apple Music, not CDs that you’ve ripped or downloads that you’ve purchased from sources other than Apple”
Link. Great discussion of metadata and classification of classical music and a detailed product review. The iPhone-only release makes audiophiles unhappy.
Debt ceiling: Biden lets McCarthy twist in the wind.
Link. The GOP can’t produce a budget. We can’t govern by blackmail. GOP donors can’t tolerate a default. McCarthy will fold.
OpenAI Feb 2023 statement on the approach to Skynet: “We believe we have to continuously learn and adapt by deploying less powerful versions of the technology in order to minimize “one shot to get it right” scenarios.”
Link. “… important that major world governments have insight about training runs above a certain scale.”
They are afraid but cannot turn away. Makes one wonder about what they see in GPT 4.5. Claim they will move slowly and incrementally beyond GPT4.
“we call on all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4.”
Link. Written by domain experts. A worthy try. I can’t imagine a pause happening but I would approve.
Daring Fireball: on 16.4 et al – Mastodon link previews, voice isolation activation is weird.
Link. “the interface to turn it on or off is in Control Center, when you’re on a call.”
Google mandated DKIM or SPF starting Nov 2022. I saw zero mention of this. Would have been nice to know.
Link. “Starting November 2022, new senders who send email to personal Gmail accounts must set up either SPF or DKIM. Google performs random checks on new sender messages to personal Gmail accounts to verify they’re authenticated. Messages without at least one of these authentication methods will be rejected or marked as spam.”
Wisconsin Adventure Bikepacking Route
Link. Gravel and trail and road. Link to the MTB trails map. #bike
Improvements to Apple Password Manager in 16.4/13.3.
Link. Now make it a proper app. Darn it.
Audio Hijack: RIAA v. Steve Jobs: “We’re celebrating a small victory, but the larger story is one of a loss.”
Link. I was always surprised Audio Hijack was allowed to exist. As Tsai says there was no principal in play and Apple blocked anything like AH going forward.
Hand osteoarthritis: “therapy with conventional and biologic drugs in HOA has not achieved the expected success”
Link. One of the most common disorders in humans and we got nothing. No clear cause, no treatment.
“The work-from-home bubble has not completely burst, however, as 11.1% of employers had all of their employees working from home in 2022, which is slightly up from 10.3% in 2021.”
Link.
“between 2009 and 2019, [child] mental health hospitalizations increased by 25.8 percent and cost $1.37 billion.”
Link. iPhone?
“I’m going to walk you through setting one a large language model from scratch, simplifying things and leaving out a lot of hard math.”
Link. NYT introduction to LLM, part 2 of 5. Pretty good really.
ChatGPT 2022 “IQ of 147”.
Link. Presumably higher now. I’m sure there are better numbers known to many, but any IQ topic is culturally radioactive.
LLMs pass some “theory of mind” tests.
Link. “Because their reasoning is sensitive to small changes in their inputs, scientists have called the knowledge of these machines “brittle.”
“In a data set of 172 mass shootings, which the group defines as involving four or more victims, only four assailants were women or girls”
Link. Only women should own guns.
North Carolina Expands Medicaid – thanks to Dem governor.
Link. Only 10 dummy states left. “it is now clear that the Affordable Care Act … is here to stay. Republicans in Washington have been unable to repeal the law and appear to have largely given up fighting it”
“These violent up and down forces are more than virtually any passengers have ever experienced aboard an airliner.“
Link. Killed a passenger on a private jet. We don’t know the cause but pilots did make mistakes on the flight.
“Russia, which was much richer than Poland, Romania, or the Baltics when the USSR collapsed, now lags these countries significantly.”
Link. Russia has a limited future. Putin can’t change that.
Apple Passwords should be a proper app.
Link. “You can import from, say, 1Password, and export everything back to 1Password.”
Shortcomings of the Standard Model of Cosmology.
Link. “Over each ~10-32 second interval that passes during inflation, a region of space the size of the Planck volume gets stretched to become larger than the presently observable universe.”
A fun discussion for the lay audience.
Twitter: “the app is currently testing ways to hide your Twitter Blue checkmark.”
Link. It’s a badge of shame but many journalists will pay. They’d prefer to hide that they paid…
iOS 16.4 features: duplicate photo detection, Ask To Buy bug fix, and better cellular voice quality.
Link. Nothing urgent. Wait until Apple starts the OS upgrade nags.
APFS: 6y history.
Link. Overall it has done well. Except: “… the biggest limitation to APFS is its proprietary secrecy.”
Apple Reality Headset “device will start at around $3,000, lack a clear killer app, require an external battery that will need to be replaced every couple of hours and use a design that some testers have deemed uncomfortable. It’s also likely to launc
Link. And it doesn’t appear to be terribly useful. Sounds like another Newton. 5 y ahead of it’s time.
“… a model prompted to explain itself (a capacity called chain-of-thought reasoning) could correctly solve a math word problem, while the same model without that prompt could not.”
Link. Emergent abilities of LLMs.
“Google seems terrified that Bard might upstage its core business in search.”
Link. Google needs a Time Machine so they can avoid wrecking their core product for short term revenue.
“ChatGPT can now call on Wolfram|Alpha—and Wolfram Language as well—to give it what we might think of as “computational superpowers”.”
Link. Don’t worry. You can’t do anything.
Trump’s riot squad stays home: “He tried feebly to extricate himself, but the woman currently interviewing him begged him to answer just one more question. And so it went, crew after crew: a special kind of hell.”
Link. The media is desperate for Trump.
“Nearly every reason why it’s hard to build leading-edge fabs in America is not present in America’s neighbor to the north.”
Link. Novel.
“The House select subcommittee on the pandemic concluded that the Trump administration had meddled in or blocked at least 19 reports.”
Link. CDC vs Trump.
“Canada’s population growth rate of 2.7 percent in 2022 put it among the world’s 20 fastest-growing nation.”
Link. Skill and talent based high volume immigration. Children and adults. Astounding economic investment.
“Dozens of the world’s largest natural history museums revealed on Thursday a survey of everything in their collections. The global inventory is made up of 1.1 billion objects that range from dinosaur skulls to pollen grains to mosquitoes.”
Link. A happy day.
“Whether or not the cause of the man’s death was traumatic, mysterious or the result of a contagious illness or punishment, it appears to have left the mourners fearful of his return.”
Link. Ancient Roman protection against undead since removed.
Remembering the “trim” command: “Spaceman scans for free blocks and trims APFS containers when they’re mounted.”
Link. I wouldn’t touch it. Modern Thunderbolt APFS SSDs are very complex.
Photos Data Loss With macOS 13.3 Beta: backup is still a problem.
Link. Try backing up your macOS Notes. Apple’s Cloud-sync tech reduces data loss for many but makes true backup harder.
LucidLink: cloud file system for commercial AV work.
Link. MacFUSE based cloud file system.
FTC proposes ‘Click to Cancel’ requirements for managing subscriptions
Link. They know vendors will invent new dark patterns and they have anticipated obvious evil.
Bing: “Bing Image Creator allows you to create an image simply by using your own words to describe the picture you want to see. Now you can generate both written and visual content in one place, from within chat.”
Link.
GitHub Copilot X: AI assisted coding.
Link. CGPT 4 helps build the code to build CGPT 5. Don’t worry, it’s not a positive feedback loop. #beafraid
All the Biomass of Earth, in One Graphic
Link. Protista!
Minnesota health care market is an oligopoly and almost a monopsony.
Link. A few players sell and provide health care services and negotiate for payment. Costs are higher of course.