Link. The stupid is strong.
“slowing solid tumor growth was considered enough of a reason to be optimistic, and it really wasn’t”
Link. Die they must.
“All intuition about AI capabilities will need to get updated for o3”
Link.
Welcome to the 119th Congress: “that was still a ridiculous CR. I knew it was in trouble as soon as I saw the Member pay raise provisions”
Link. What you need to know.
Canine arthritis drug may have neurological toxicity: “Librela contains monoclonal antibodies that block the activity of nerve growth factor”
Link. I have so many questions. The article doesn’t explain why it is supposed to work and why it doesn’t kill every dog.
This is for when all else fails.
AI Engineering Primer.
Link. Later versions cover negotiation, pleading, and flattery.
Encyclopedia Britannica is doing quite well really.
Link. Content is rising.
“Do not use SMS as a second factor for authentication”
Link. If China wishes it can read the SMS.
“Johnson’s attempt at appeasement failed. Within hours, the pseudo president-elect had kneecapped Johnson.”
Link. Do we call Musk P2 or P1?
“o1-preview demonstrates superhuman performance [emphasis mine] in differential diagnosis, diagnostic clinical reasoning, and management reasoning”
Link. Not yet reviewed paper.
‘Murder Hornet’ WA invasion contained for now.
Link. Not hopeless after all.
Biology 2024 “… they discovered that a neural circuit in the brainstem dials the levels of inflammatory molecules up and down”
Link. Neuroimmunology had a brief moment in the 80s but the tools were not ready.
“ LUCA … metabolized hydrogen gas and carbon dioxide, had a rudimentary immune system, and likely lived in a microbial ecosystem”
Physics review 2024
Link. A solid year of discovery.
Semaglutide may increase risk rare blindness disorder 2-3x (NAION)
Link. Weird vascular event. We have to assume true of all GLP-1. No mechanism so we don’t know if triggered by direct drug effect or weight loss, glycemic control.
Collapse of confidence in US courts.
Link. Not as large as collapse in Myanmar, Venezuela or Syria. Dems are correct about SCOTUS and MAGA believe what Trump says.
“Purdue’s strategy to ensure broad access to its blockbuster painkiller OxyContin was explicit: “Offer rebates to remove payer restriction”
Link. “UnitedHealthcare raised concerns about abuse of OxyContin, noting that some patients were being prescribed as many as 1,000 pills a month.”
UHC as the good actpr. Most of this story is 1996 to 2003. PBMs that didn’t play along were absorbed by those who did. And America became more corrupt.
macOS 15.2 Breaks Bootable Backups
Link.
“Using principles of recurrent networks derived from AI systems will help us understand biological brains.”
Link. Nothing dramatically new here, but a nice summary of the open questions being actively studied. Building airplanes did help us understand the flight of birds.
All the dinosaur shapes.
Link. This is dino-kid bliss.
Myanmar hell: women professionals turn to sex work as civil war continues.
Link. I was thinking the other day I had not heard much of Myanmar lately. I wondered if it was doing better. It sounds more like Haiti.
Phi-4 LLM and why synthetic data is now preferred to web
Link. “each token generated by a language model is by definition predicted by the preceding tokens”
“The LA Times isn’t really a newspaper anymore — it’s a vanity rag.”
Link. NYT can take the LA Times market if they want it.
microsoft/markitdown: Python tool for converting files and office documents to Markdown.
Link. Markdown is the de facto text format for AI.
Siri’s ChatGPT Integration is a disaster.
Link. Adam is polite but this is a genuine trainwreck.
Vermont GOP drift is interesting.
Link. Republican gov voted Harris. Reps still dem but interesting shift. Not all bad.
Gemini 2.0 Flash: “being able to have an audio conversation with a capable LLM about things that it can “see” through your camera”
Link. Handy for an unsighted person navigating the world.
“recognized the potential for a planet-wide catastrophe if a mirror cell escaped containment”
Link. Left handed enantiomer proteins can’t be degraded by existing life corms.
“all plants in the world would be unable to detect these bacteria”
Fermi paradox resolved.
MacOS 15.2 Audio Bug Fixes
Link. These don’t affect me but fixes are a good sign for 15.2 in general.
A classification of “AI Skepticism”
Link. I like the categories but I dislike the framing. This is anyone who isn’t delusional (“AI will fix us”). He may also omit those of us who fear massive disruption.
DOGE is a clownshow – here’s why
Link. I didn’t remember the GRACE commission. Reagan was bad but compared to Trump he’s a shining city on the hill.
K doesn’t mention the Gore National Partnership for Reinventing Government. I think considered a failure too.
If they wanted to do something they could address gov software issues. But Musk is an idiot.
AI enhancement – techniques review
Link. The industry seems to use the word “scaling” to mean enhancement, even when “more data” is not the key.
I can’t judge how correct the assertions are but I appreciated the scope of the analysis and the range of methods in play.
Google Willow QC – the expert speaks.
Link. Great discussion. I thjnk several journalists covered this well
“Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, whose name means Organization for the Liberation of the Levant, is a former affiliate of Al Qaeda”
Link. “ … been involved in trafficking the synthetic stimulant captagon.”
The civil war resumes and Turkey vs Kurds
Quantum computing looms.
Link. Still can’t do anything useful. Breaking traditional encryption may be decades yet. But it is coming.
Academic publishers making the AI play
Link. They are ruthless bastards with lawyers, they understand their interests, and they have a moat. I have wondered if they will win in the end.
America as “Trumpomuskovia”
Link. Not new but a good summary. The great puzzle is Putin’s magnetic power over Musk, Sachs and Trump. The lesser puzzle is Vance’s role.
AI good for: “Work where you are an expert and can assess quickly whether AI is good or bad”
Link. This is what I have personally found as well.
“Using the AI as a companion when reading, because it allows you to ask infinite questions.”
I use it during lectures this way
“Reviews for the apps Bigo Live, Gaze, Superlive and Tango mentioned parents sexually exploiting their children,”
Link. Apple’s app reviews are a sewer, so it is likely nobody there monitors them. But it is likely the vendors do read them. So they knew.
Bigo Live is gone but Boho Live is there and comes up with same search term.
Mpox in Congo: “Soon staff members began to fall ill as well; two nurses each lost the vision in one eye after severe cases of mpox.”
Link. Fortunately RFK jr will lead the ongoing response.
Very brave health care workers.
“The daytime electrical current is barely strong enough to power a single lightbulb”
Cheney responds to Trump jail threat: “ the worst breach of our Constitution by any president in our nation’s history”
Link. A fighter.
Olivia Troye’s response to Patel threat: a Monty Python meme.
Link. There are people with spine.
“The case of the last German Emperor is a sharp warning against the human impulse to over-rationalize events.”
Link. Everyone wants a story but history is often one damned thing after another.
“Gabbard’s support of Assad was so well known…”
Link. Trump is demented.
“paid-for news is becoming an extreme niche for a very small part of the overall population”
Link. It appears to be a trend that started in the 1960s.
Covered by ice for 14million years, Lake Enigma has “ultrasmall bacteria belonging to the superphylum Patescibacteria”
Link. The article doesn’t mention an energy source.
“The number of people who get paid from the U.S. Treasury but work for private businesses and nonprofits is now more than three times as large as the entire on-payroll federal civilian workforce”
Link. The real opportunities are in shifting work away from contractors and back to federal bureaucrats.
(Oh, and fix federal software contracting.)
“Before he has even taken office, Trump has faced down two of the country’s most prominent newspapers, inducing them to back off longstanding, well-reasoned editorial opposition.”
Link. It can take quite a while for dead trees to fall over.
“The decision by the agency’s leaders to keep its own investigators in the dark raises new questions about WADA’s response to repeated incidents of possible doping by Chinese athletes.”
Link. I think all the questions have been answered.
Bezos on Trump love: “You’ve probably grown in the last eight years …He has, too.”
Link. Pick one:
A. Bezos is an idiot.
B. Bezos is scared.
C. Bezos believes Trump is weak and confused and can be manipulated by the oligarchs who will rule now.
Wolf Warriorism: China’s disastrous attempt at aggressive discourse is over
Link. A unique perspective. It’s weird we don’t have more like this.