Link. “RAG pairs generative AI with a “retriever” that can find and then reference specific data from a vector database, which is passed to the “generator” to produce a response.”

A lot of AI tech is open source.

Link. Gibson has said Neuromancer takes place in 2035.

Link. I think the word “terrorist” is appropriate. Raichik resembles Klan publicists of a century ago. She wants to terrorize the vulnerable.

Link. A reason why sync can stop working. Turning on/off doesn’t help.

Link. “Ernst Renan, in his essay “What is a Nation?”, argues that intentional forgetting is an essential part of nationhood.”

Link. It’s a popular med for kids with asthma .

Link. Humanity is done. Let the AIs take over now.

Link. Only Tsai lives in my world. All the other Mac names live in a much better universe.

Link. Defacto alliance. Also they are so dead.

Link. Mothers illegally featuring their daughters under their account. Inevitable once Instagram decides d this.

Link. Parasites are supposed to take just enough so that the host can recover.

“Gresham’s Law: “Bad money drives out good”

Link. Needs more work but I like this theory. I suspect it’s not COVID specific.

“Campbell added that it was possible people with a tighter blood-brain barrier might be better protected from brain fog should they develop long Covid, explaining why the symptom did not arise in all patients.”

In other words a less tight BBB may be a preexisting condition (genetic?) that makes post-viral neurological dysfunction more likely. So not due to COVID but a variation that makes brain more susceptible to COVID (or other viral) injury.

Link. “A U.S. nuclear forensic laboratory later analyzed the samples and confirmed that the samples contain uranium and weapons-grade plutonium.” Burma?!

For Iran.

Link. Students all do computer science.

Link. Excellent review. The available antigen tests are probably not very helpful any more.

Get vaccinated. If vulnerable wear a good mask, if sick with a respiratory disease wear a good mask.

Link. I haven’t seen this in WaPo yet but it’s the obvious point of entry.

Link. In general Interpol has responded well to abuses including oversight for bad actors. India and Russia are problematic.

Link. Perhaps an effective discontinuous emergence but built on many small improvements. Like human vs simian cognition.

Link. “by this stage we know we’re looking for NVMe with PCIe 3.0 x4 as a minimum, over Thunderbolt 3”

Best discussion I have read. Good test of young brains but I give up.

Link. A person is a fuzzy dot but it will resolve cars and truck beds.

Link. “small RNA species, hitherto unknown, that seem to be colonizing bacteria in the human oral mucosa and gut. These things are a bit like viroids, which are circular RNA species that are pathogens in plant species, but they have no sequence relationships with any known viroid.”

From a preprint. Remnants of the primeval RNA world? Able to cause disease?

Link. “China will need at least a hundred million immigrants in the next generation just to care for [boomers, Gen X] … the only major long-term provider of immigrants for East Asia may be Africa, where birth rates have stayed high and economic growth is not keeping up.”

Link. Even Putin is not immortal.

Link. That’s better than I’d hoped. It suggests ChatGPT 5 is not looking great. (Slower is better)

Link. Managing the liquid warning and general wetness. Don’t use rice. (I like the drying agent packs – no rice particle problems.)

Link. It’s a continuum of course.

Link. Google would not have this problem but Apple is device-centric not cloud-centric.

Link. No mention of lock-in and exit strategies for a subscription tool. That’s a killer for me.

The most interesting part of story is the marketing experience. About mid essay.

Link. You need a cybertruck.

Link. Via Laura Jedeed’s newsletter. Read for the history of the region and the ideology of Putinism.

Link. GOP opposition understandable.

Link. The tsunami is coming.

Link. “when the CCP says device makers must jump to sell their products in China, Apple asks “How high?”

Link. As a boomer with Gen Z kids being so involved in their adult life has been mostly good but also very weird. My parents and I got along well, but I never looked to them for advice (though I should have). Our kids still haven’t turned off location sharing.

Link. Since America can imprison foreign suspects until they die I wouldn’t consider this a refutation of the GWB torture program. Torture remains popular with many Americans.

Link. I use Synology for networked TM but my Monterey MacBook could do this.

Link. I don’t think my son would go for this but I might ask him to test it. I’m pleased Apple is making this effort.

Link. Wishing to be special. To be meaningful. To be important.

Link. Google took a bad road. They need 40 days in the desert.

Link. They lost in court. But I would not be surprised if the future legal framework for an AI is an extension of corporate entity law.

Link. Chinese stocks are falling (as happens) — and the government isn’t propping them up. Investing indirectly in US index funds.

And emigrating. To Canada, of course.

Link. Just shoot it.

Link. “schedule a 90-minute meeting with the most senior (Individual Contributor) engineer that you have on your team… What is fucked up about this place?”

(Author has a feed that I now follow)

Link. I think Bill Gates really does believe this. I don’t think what is coming is so predictable.

Link. “Workers without sick leave and those who can’t work from home if they or their children test positive and are required to isolate bore a disproportionate burden”

Link. In the context of a talk Scott wanders all over the place – but he mirrors my thoughts on where AI-denial goes wrong. I’d have spent a bit more time on how “non-special” human cognition seems.

I mostly agree with his other points too …

Link. Several Novo Nordisk competitors have flamed out … a good illustration of why drug development is ferociously expensive (even before marketing and all the the rest).

Link. Sounds like Apple might now be backing off a bit.

Link. I’d not seen that comparison before.

Link. defaults write com.apple.SoftwareUpdate MajorOSUserNotificationDate -date “2025-02-07 23:22:47 +0000”

I don’t do these for fear of complexity and future problems.