Link. The research history is pretty neat. Thank you to those families.
I suspect it will be better for acute than chronic pain.
Tag Archives: pinboard
“If Ukraine had collapsed in 2022, the situation of the West would have been dire. China would have looked at a country the size Texas falling to Russia. Why not go for Taiwan?”
Link. Joe Biden was President so the world continues for now.
How to Learn Unfamiliar Software Tools with ChatGPT. Udell.
Link. I’ve been doing this. Works well for me but I do not require perfection. Jon shows how to work around ChatGPT errors and get it to self-correct.
The Data Breach “Personal Stash” Marketplace.
Link. Children trade data breach files but some age out into real consequences.
Starting with iOS 17 Apple’s own user guides are not available as ePub
Link. I’m one of the 7 people who liked having the ePUB version on my phone. Even though it was almost impossible to find in Apple’s truly truly awful book store. Apple stopped publishing them.
“does fermion doubling present a fundamental obstruction to simulating QFT on a lattice … and therefore, to simulating physics on a computer at all?”
Link. I love this stuff. #physics #computation
Fake science industry thrives on bribes to editors “special issue” fake journals.
Link. Lots of other bribes too. India especially but not only. I don’t know how much impact these papers have; some are promoted up by lay enthusiasts but legitimate researchers will just ignore them.
The First Self-Amplifying mRNA Vaccine (Japan): “(ARCT-154) uses mRNA that codes for replicase proteins lifted from the Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus”
Link. Watch this space.
A clever survey measures how confidence is related to actual knowledge of science.
Link. Yeah, the most confident often have a little knowledge. Those who know a little are not confident, those who know a lot have doubts.
The wrong and confident tend to be anti-science, male, middle-aged, and of intermediate education.
Ordinary people from Assyria onwards: “the several hundred members of Reserve Police Battalion 101 shot and killed 38,000 Jews.”
Link. Your neighbors can share food one day and shoot you the next. Humans are like that.
“Somewhere between 10 and 20 percent of the battalion refused to participate in these killings”
The roughly “15%” exception shows up in many historical settings.
“Some surveys such as the Household Pulse Survey may contact you via text message. The Household Pulse Survey uses the number 39242…”
Link. The text message comes with a link to click on (census.gov). It’s presumably legitimate but it’s madness to encourage people to click on a message link like this.
Both my wife and I have gotten these.
TidBITS does DMA: “while Apple will never allow adult-rated apps in the App Store, they will be permissible in app marketplaces.”
Link. My favorite summary to date
“harness the transformative potential of advanced technologies and artificial intelligence to empower individuals with developmental disabilities”
Link. I think this is an older business that’s pivoting to AI. It’s one of the few sites I’ve seen that is tracking the concept of an “AI Guardian”.
Bike blogger rants on carbon frames: “Steel! They should all be made from steel.”
Link. I enjoy my weird old carbon XC mountain bike. OTOH I think he’s right that carbon is way more fragile and problematic than most riders admit. OTOH carbon is not that hard to repair and I suspect carbon bikes will become much cheaper than steel bikes. OTOH he’s not entirely sincere.
#bike #bicycle
Trigger Mac diagnostic screen dump: “Control-Option-Command-Shift-Period”
Link. Most obscure key combo I recall.
British Library slowly recovers from Oct 2023 ransomware attack.
Link. Nobody can do restores. Unclear if they paid.
How did Congress fund the Manhattan Project? “Only seven lawmakers in the entire Congress had any idea that they were approving $800 million — the equivalent of $13.6 billion today — to create a weapon of mass destruction”
Link. Serious research inspired by the movie. Filed under “expediting production.”
“Brian Paré, 38, pleaded guilty to lighting 14 fires in the Chibougamau area of Quebec between May and September 2023”
Link. CO2 denialist he supported conspiracy Canada was setting fires to support CO2 restrictions. (100% chance of mental illness, probably schizophrenia)
New Hampshire trails kill another very experienced solo hiker.
Link. Weather got bad fast and he made a bad choice on familiar ground.
Modi’s power came from the destruction of a mosque. Now massive Ram Temple stands there.
Link. America’s Christian nationalists want to emulate Modi.
Dana Farber research fraud: “some published by Dana-Farber’s chief executive, Dr. Laurie Glimcher, and its chief operating officer, Dr. William Hahn.”
Link. People who commit scientific fraud are likely over-represented in positions of power and influence.
Science vigilantes fight crime in PubPeer.
After $5 million bounty F.B.I. Recovers Remains of Cydney Mizell, an aid worker abducted and killed in Afghanistan 2008.
Link. “The agents also returned the personal journals Cydney kept during her time in Afghanistan.”
“Blue whales have long been known to mate and reproduce with fin whales … blue whales can be a good 25 feet longer and as much as 85 tons heavier.”
Link. Sounds a bigger gap than Sapiens and Neanderthal.
“though the hybrids aren’t sterile, they mate only with blue whales.” (I think they mean “have offspring” rather than mate.)
“Antechinuses engage in suicidal reproduction, a biological phenomenon called semelparity that has been observed in other marsupial species”
Link. Males sacrifice sleep for copulation as they near death. Common in fish.
“The North Korean government seemed to be especially fixated on the U.S. military’s departure from Afghanistan in August 2021”
Link. Why is NK abruptly more reckless and aggressive? Are they betting on Trump?
“Nikkei 225 index is edging closer to the record it set on Dec. 29, 1989”
Link. China’s decline is pushing money to Japan.
Kenyan Court Blocks Police Force to Haiti
Link. “Many developing nations view international security missions as a way to subsidize or reward their security forces.”
The US will contribute money but is loathe to send troops.
Latest Apple Beeper block disables iMessage for Mac owners with “irregular” use.
Link. “… After The New York Times contacted Apple, some Beeper customers began reporting that they had been unblocked in recent day..”
The NYT unlock makes it worse.
“China is only at 28% of U.S. per capita GDP. When the U.S., the UK, Japan, and Germany hit their relative peaks, they weren’t just among the largest economies on the planet, but also the richest…”
Link. Xi is a curse upon China.
Smith dissembles though about why Xi wants control. It’s not “lack of faith in the Chinese people”. Weird that he went that way.
Residential Solar and financial scams.
Link. Finance wizards created complex instruments that could be used to fleece homeowners.
Thoughtful regulation needed. Federal money (subsidies) should only be available for “certified” / “qualified” packages.
“allegations that some UNRWA staff were involved in the 7 October deadly Hamas attacks on Israel. The agency later announced it was sacking those employees.”
Link. Israel has good reason to distrust the UN; it is not surprising that UN agencies in Gaza would have staff who are also Hamas.
It reinforces concerns that aid distributed through UN goes to Hamas rather than civilians.
Rural areas 30% worse COVID impact: “Older age composition, worse pre-pandemic population health, lower vaccination rates,… completely explain the rural disadvantage in Covid-19 mortality.”
Link. Of these only vaccination could be changed.
“The Perils of Interpreting opens with the 1793 meeting of Lord George Macartney and the Qianlong emperor”
Link. Book illuminates the 19th century history of the imperial relationship through the stories on two interpreters.
Lupus: “when the BORC complex isn’t working properly, TLR7 can accumulate in immune cells, making them less sensitive to activation by intruder genetic material and more likely to attack our body’s tissues.”
Link. One possible cause.
“The world science fiction convention coevolved with fan-run volunteer conventions in societies where there’s a general expectation of the rule of law and most people abide by social norms irrespective of enforcement. “
Link. The esoteric and obscure Hugo Disaster of 2024 has many lessons for the world.
Pre-Industrial Societies: what was special?
Link. I liked DeLong’s brief list. I am very glad I did not live in these societies.
Stolen Device Protection for iPhone: Password access requires biometric authentication, passcode won’t work
Link. You can turn off SDP at home but not when out. There are times biometrics doesn’t work for me so I’m a bit wary of this.
Former GOP establishment leader and Never Trumper: “I wasn’t just wrong; I was completely, embarrassingly wrong.”
Link. Wrong about the GOP. It wasn’t the party he thought it was.
Gene therapy for 5% of inherited deafness in children: “one-time therapy delivers a functional copy of that gene to the inner ear during a surgical procedure”
Link. Chinese study, replicated in other centers.
“because of a mistake, the removal and re-installation of the door plug in Renton was never entered in the computer system”
Link. Boeing error. No signoff was done. Whistleblowers everywhere. Boeing workers are very angry.
Americans are working too hard.
Fani Willis and Trump Georgia prosecution.
Link. A good overview. She’s toast.
Serious bugs fixed in macOS Sonoma 14.3
Link. Might be the good release?
“we lack the infrastructure to return to a mass military, whether it’s staffed by conscription or traditional recruitment”
Link. It’s not 1939 and it’s not the Great Depression. Democracies with stable economies are not able to do mass military. See also Israel.
Canada overwhelmed by grad student immigrants, lowers visa cap by a third.
Link. “…. about 40%, of foreign students come from India, with China coming in second with about 12%…”
China I understand. Xi seems to hate Canada, but he is sending China’s finest to support Canada. India’s flow is interesting.
“Hamas’s tunnel network has been found to be far more extensive than previous IDF estimates, spanning over 300 miles in the south alone”
Link. It appears Israel did not exaggerate Hamas tunnels the way the US invented Taliban/al Qaeda tunnels.
“NYT is using the open source Ruffle as their Flash emulator”
Link. Archival Flash lives.
Bug: Ventura and Monterey updated to Sonoma unwillingly
Link. “Some macOS 13 Ventura and macOS 12 Monterey users are being upgraded to macOS 14 Sonoma after dismissing notifications that encourage an upgrade”
“what the AARO discovered was a web of governmental leaders who believed in bizarre conspiracy theories and were willing to spend taxpayer dollars on it”
Link. Congress flying saucer fans. Not all are GOP. “taxpayer money was being inappropriately spent on paranormal research at Skinwalker Ranch in Utah,”
Sonoma 14.3: Oakley likes the update.
Link. Makes me cautiously optimistic.
COU: Macintosh 128K to the M3: “With SIMD, registers are packed with more than one number at a time, and the multiply instruction works on them all at the same time.”
Link. Review of how computers got faster over the decades. Using Apple’s Accelerate library requires careful coding.