Link. Both are big but in different ways.
Tag Archives: pinboard
Restoring iCloud Drive files from TM using Finder
Link. Backup only works for non-optimized storage.
“[backupname]/[backup].backup/Data/Users/[username]/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs/“
Cosmology 101: “as the Universe grows by a factor of r, the radiation density drops proportional to 1/r⁴”
Link. Every time I read cosmology 101 the story gets a bit different angle. I don’t know if that reflects new insights or evolving explanations.
“anyone can connect to your AirPods and use the microphone to record your local environment”
Link. This is the last of Apple’s security blunders. We promise.
ChatGPT Privacy and Mac Sandbox Containers: “People should be more worried about their Chrome history”
Link. Sandbox unfinished.
Deleting Messages.app Attachments locally also deletes on all devices and cloud.
Link. It’s messy and confusing.
Semaglutide correlated with 7x increase in very rare eye disorder.
Link. “they had come across three patients who began to lose their vision from NAION within a week’s time …. all three patients were also taking semaglutide…
… semaglutide mimics the hormone GLP-1, which binds to receptors found in the cells of the optic nerve”
Sounds like a good observational study. Maybe patients taking glutides will need periodic eye checks. But 7x very rare is still rare.
“possibility that modern humans and Denisovans had contact on the Tibetan plateau”
Link. “for more than 100,000 years, Denisovans hunted or scavenged a wide range of animals on the Tibetan plateau”
We know we had contact some where and when.
“BusyBeaver(5) is now known to be 47,176,870”
Link. “The Busy Beaver function is Turing-uncomputability made flesh, a finite function that scrapes the edge of infinity”
Math stuff is fun because I don’t have to even try to understand it.
“In Minneapolis, Minn., the [temperature] forecast is accurate only 2 days out”
Link. Newly released data allowed WaPo to construct accuracy maps based on the last 1-2 years. Lately rain forecasts seem accurate for maybe 3 hours. Midwest weather is mathematically chaotic.
“There will be literally millions of climate refugees trying to get into Europe, and the borders will slam shut.”
Link. From June 10, before the French election, a wild theory: “[Macron] is deliberately giving Le Pen’s National Rally their chance at power three years early … in the hope that they will make a complete mess of it and lose power again in just a few years.”
“a world of abundant cheap solar energy quickly becomes a world of abundant minerals, liquid fuels, fertilizers, and the other physical feedstocks of industrial civilization”
Link. I like the idea of shifting compute between data centers based on current active solar output.
Apple Intelligence: “an astounding act of security and privacy engineering”
Link. I have been disappointed with Apple for at least 10y, so it’s a bit of a surprise when a credible case is made that they did something well.
And then I’m even more annoyed with all the simple things they can’t seem to do…
Gabapentin, Alzheimer’s, fake science, and the National Library of Medicine
Link. Fraudulent science and fake journals continue to do real harm. Why is the NLM indexing this crap?
Public beta-release of Sequoia: “… best way of keeping out of trouble when running beta versions of macOS is to install them into a Virtual Machine (VM)”
Link. Reading between lines Oakley is saying civilians can help by testing Sequoia in a VM on Apple Silicon using a disposable Apple ID. Otherwise you need be a pro.
Facial Recognition arrests: “Detroit’s Police Department is one of the few that keep tabs on its facial recognition searches, submitting weekly reports about its use to an oversight board.”
Link. Lawsuits drive a balanced approach.
A short history of Mac OS extensions
Link. I used conflict catcher. DOS TSRs were even worse.
Cow avian influenza: “virus is mainly infectious via contaminated milking machines.”
Link. No respiratory spread.
Japanese fake cholesterol med with mold contamination kills at least 80.
Link. “Herbal” medicines are similarly unregulated in the US.
Fall COVID vax for 6m and up.
Link. “Unless the price of the vaccines drops, the cost of immunizing all Americans may not be sustainable”
Last Stand of the Woolly Mammoths: “still alive when the Great Pyramids were built in Egypt”
Link. After they went extinct elsewhere a tiny group of 10 reached a cold island. Their descendants survived thousands of years but gene pool was too small.
Three papers on sleeping brain waste disposal via glymphatic/lymphatic systems.
Link. A possible key to Alzheimer’s prevention. Sacrificing sleep for a career is maybe a bad idea. (Physicians take note)
One day a medication that supports the synchronized sleep wave waste disposal for everyone over 50?
Minneapolis car thefts: maybe it really is the kids.
Link. Youth intervention program — “30% decrease in auto theft reports in 2024 … a 140% increase in car theft … 2019”
Local lore is that most of our carjackings and thefts are the work of a handful of COVID teens. When they are detained rates drop. I think this program was made for them.
Apple on iPhone: “88% of third-party batteries tested in a UL Solutions study caught fire or exploded in at least one test.”
Link. That is an extraordinary claim.
IRS identity theft: “backlog of 500,000 unresolved fraud cases”
Link. Two year backlog, low income filers who are due refunds.
RNA Vaccines For Cancer: An industry review.
Link. A very hard slog but there is new energy.
“Historians say Mr. Ben-Gurion believed that in modern Israel, ultra-Orthodoxy would diminish or eventually disappear. Instead the Haredim have become the fastest-growing part of Israel’s population…”
Link. Religious zealots are bad everywhere.
Scientists Inject Radioactive Material Into Live Rhino Horns to kill the Chinese demand for rhino horns. 🆓
Link. This is brilliant. Material will set off alarms at airports. Only a test for now.
“They’d heard of private citizens filling maybe 200 VHS tapes with news, but not 140,000.”
Link. Her unhealthy and costly obsession is a great gift to history. Internet active scanning. Linkfest.
The 2007 apex of the internet: RSS and Yahoo Pipes
Link. This was as good as the web got. The pieces were all in place. Two years later the web began to die.
“They are ancient and slow, reproducing infrequently and possibly living for millions of years”
Link. Microbes of the Mole Man.
“AI energy estimates are only a small fraction of the 620 to 1,050 TWh that data centers as a whole are projected to use by 2026”
Link. I think Ars got this right.
“Debating” Trump: “He starts with nonsense and then digresses into blather. This has gotten only worse in the years since we debated.”
Link. HRC.
“If you’re at high risk for Covid-19, it may be time to wear a mask on the West Coast, especially in Hawaii.”
Link. Maybe Denver too?
RNAi: more amyloid disease therapies on the way.
Link. My father’s brother died of amyloid cardiomyopathy. Go pharma.
“it is now possible to believe that South Africa is getting a second chance” 🆓
Link. Voters bring hope to South Africa and promise of a better future to India. Democracy has a pulse.
Putin’s pawns: “We Have Provoked This War”.
Link. Dyer dismembers the Putin talking points regurgitated by Trump et al.
Recalling WinFS: “weird amalgam of the Windows shell, SQL Server Server, and just a sprinkle of actual file system”
Link. The outside view was that it was really wonderful. I wonder if some aspects of it lived on in SharePoint (aka the worst software ever made)
“Boeing will pay a total criminal monetary amount of over $2.5 billion, composed of a criminal monetary penalty of $243.6 million, compensation payments to Boeing’s 737 MAX airline customers of $1.77 billion, and the establishment of a $500 million cr
Link. We need the responsible CEOs in prison.
“Boeing’s failure to timely and voluntarily self‑disclose the offense conduct to the department; and Boeing’s prior history, including a civil FAA settlement agreement from 2015 related to safety and quality issues”
“Chinese institutions and authorities are indeed becoming worried about the increasing flood of low- (or zero-) quality papers that come from all sorts of Chinese sources”
Link. Chinese biomedical publications are, at the moment, nearly worthless.
“national discussion on the viability of the small towns that have long been a pillar of American culture”
Link. FINALLY.
I believe this is a significant contributor to Trumpism. America’s election system gives small town rural voters power and their communities have been dying since the 80s.
Young people leave for college and never return.
“participation in an oncology trial does not seem to extend a survival benefit”
Link. But it doesn’t hurt.
“When it was first observed, the Great Red Spot extended over 24,200 miles …. it has been shrinking ever since. Today, the storm stretches to 8,700 miles”
Link. There have been two, ours is bigger.
Sweetenders: Xylitol and erythritol – platelet activation is not good
Link. “reason enough to avoid both of these compounds as sweeteners, and I would extend the caution to the other sugar alcohols as well (maltitol, mannitol, sorbitol, etc.)” OTOH aspartame seems good.
“36 volunteers age 18-29 were inoculated with a wild-type SARS-CoV2 virus strain isolated from an infected patient in the UK”
Link. Immense details on immune studies of these 2021 healthy young volunteers. About 1/5 NEVER were PCR positive despite being infected; the innate immune system worked fast. (Most people who say they never got COVID are presumed to be like this. They got COVID (virus), killed it, never noticed).
“authors were also able to find a blood marker that could distinguish the sustained-infection group from those where the virus didn’t get a chance to establish itself … HLA-DQA2, whose function is not really clear yet.”
Noah techno-optimism: “Soviet America … energy revolution; Trump’s tax cuts; the Build-Nothing Country; macro data mysteries”
Link. I mostly agree. The broadband fail is my team (Dem) being stupid. America needs a GOP that is not insane.
Housing 2024: signs of market rebalancing.
Link. Lots of apartment construction and new home — in context of record prices. Signs of rebalancing.
Current COVID employee retention benefit claims largely fraud: “The unexpectedly high cost of the program has contributed to the nation’s larger-than-expected annual budget deficits”
Link. Crime on a staggering scale.
Mexico’s female Jewish scientist president lived the grad student life in California.
Link. I just wanted to write “Mexico’s female Jewish scientist president” because it blows my mind.
Biden admin fights price-fixing by United Health Group and others by promoting competition.
Link. “the use of A.I. or algorithmic-based technologies should concern us more because it’s much easier to price-fix when you’re outsourcing it to an algorithm versus when you’re sharing manila envelopes in a smoke-filled room.”
Fighting monopolies is a major responsibility of good government.