Link. NASA’s InSight lander data combined with 1970s Viking lander data.
Little Rock AK schools rebel against GOP suppression of Black history.
Link. “In 1957, a group of nine Black teenagers, escorted by the U.S. National Guard, integrated Little Rock Central High School as white protesters spit and jeered.”
When humans arrived they set the land on fire. How humans killed everything that ate us in North America.
Link. “a 400-year-long period of massively elevated wildfire … at the end of that period, you’re in a different ecosystem and all of the megafauna are gone.”
Neptune’s Clouds Gone: “It’s thought that the bombardment of ultraviolet light triggers an alchemic, cloud-making reaction in the planet’s ethereal skies.”
Link. We are in a low output state.
Military judge rules, 20y late, that 9/11 torture confessions cannot be used.
Link. Torture was popular in America. I suspect it still is.
China crash: “The root of the troubles, they believe, is the ideology of Xi Jinping”
Link. Xi definitely contributed, including a bad choice on COVID vaccines.
How Nvidia Dominates AI.
Link. Great leadership and team. Reminds me of old Cray.
“In April, Netflix confirmed it will be shutting down its DVD mail order option”
Link. We stopped because so many of their DVDs were defective.
Iowa 90F dew point: “The first is what we call “corn sweat.” It occurs as corn plants in the massive sea of cornfields in the Upper Midwest transmit moisture from soils into the atmosphere above the plants.”
Link. Did not know.
“An AI porn singularity has already occurred, an explosion of non-consensual sexual imagery that’s seeping out of every crack of internet infrastructure”
Link. Obsessive men produce tens of thousands of prompt-generated porn images. Porn pioneers again.
Laura Jedeed’s guide to managing (left) cancellation.
Link. “Never apologize” makes sense. The mob is beyond that
“This might or might not bring nearer in time the day when we can break (say) 2048-bit RSA keys using a quantum computer”
Link. Devious of Scott to drop this into a newsy post. Apparently it’s time to stop laughing at quantum factoring speed up. (But don’t bet on it either)
Copytables: Extract Tabular Data from Web Pages
Link. $3 for Safari but free extension for Chrome. I need this.
“regret participating in the Apple Security Bounty program. It has been a giant, frustrating waste of time”
Link. Apple is kinda dumb.
John Warnock, RIP via Tsai.
Link. This guy was a genius. (I do not like Adobe but wow, he invented a lot.)
“Elon desperately wants the world to be saved. But only if he can be the one to save it.”
Link. His power is real. If you are on X read this and leave it now.
Kevin Kruse on Florida history curriculum: it’s all about protecting the GOP.
Link. Slave trades got the attention but the 20th century, when GOP became the villain, is the real problem.
Apple Notes: the missing guide.
Link. It has become a powerful beast. The weird gap is lack of backup and versioning.
A deeper take on China crisis: “Fukuyama’s arguments had strengths. The legal and political institutions of western democracies are complex and vital. The lack of human legal and economic rights in China is coming to the fore.”
Link. Faced with a relatively common economic crisis Xi’s law-rending leadership broke China’s ability to respond.
“China basically pivoted from being an export-led economy to being a real-estate-led economy. Real-estate-related industries soared to almost 30% of total output.”
Link. Maybe similar to being a petro state?
macOS security: “Secure Enclave Processor (SEP), a 32-bit ARM CPU running its own operating system, sepOS, based on a specialised microkernel …”
Link. I’d enjoy knowing the history of sepOS.
“as far as I can establish, no exploit has been made public that gives access to secrets in the Secure Enclave”
“The Twin Cities boast two of the top three park systems in the nation”
Link. DC was first – presumably due to vast federal parks. The TCs also have best bicycling infrastructure, is relatively safe from most natural disasters, had excellent water supplies, lowest unemployment, and natural cooling periods.
Moms for Liberty quotes Hitler in newsletter.
Link. “He alone, who OWNS the youth, GAINS the future.’ — Adolf Hitler.”
Likely they didn’t know the provenance. I don’t think Hitler was right though. Youth are fickle.
“many ardent Republicans appear to live in the Fox Cinematic Universe”
Link. FCU is a good one. Krugman quote but I don’t know if it’s original.
“Mr. Trump has never explicitly told Mr. Giuliani why he is effectively stiffing him, but the former president has pointed out that he lost the cases related to the election”
Link. Makes sense. Giuliani was a lousy flunky. Let the wolves have him.
Snapchat AI went rogue – company says glitch, not sentience
Link. Shared because of the funny clickbait headline. The LLM was just flaky of course. But one day a similar headline will be real.
Reverb Barb Connector – TL-RVBT-BC-A1 – RockShox
Link. Use to join cables when replacing internal cable. Enables pulling new one through.
All the macOS Spotlight features you probably don’t know about.
Link. I love this kind of article. Includes undocumented shortcuts.
“we’re firmly back in the pre-Google world where it’s common to need multiple engines to find stuff”
Link. Alta Vista resurrection?
WD silent on SanDisk SSD failures.
Link. Not trustworthy. Avoid WD.
GPT-4 with math plug-ins can solve many complex word problems.
Link. For now a human complements GPT-4/math; the combination is very powerful.
Bronze Age Pervert and the Far Right: “an MIT graduate who grew up in Newton, Massachusetts.”
Link. Undergrad MIT I presume. I’ve know a few like this.
Musk tried to hide evidence in a Trump indictment: “U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell held Twitter in contempt of court in February, fining the company $350,000 for missing a court-ordered deadline”
Link. Musk is afraid.
‘Pinned’ Links in Apple Messages: don’t use them.
Link. Odd feature poorly implemented.
“Trump’s current antics are like a liar’s version of a fake insanity defense in which the defendant makes a spectacle of bizarre behavior to prove his case”
Link. Most lawyers do not recommend. But don’t underestimate Trump. This is what he lives for and he once had a genius for it.
Credit card fees added to restaurant bill.
Link. Credit card companies got monopoly power and abused it.
Japan’s Economy Grows at 6% Rate: “result more than doubled economists’ average forecasts”
Link. Given Xi’s attack on China Japan is ever more essential.
Ritalin shortage has atypical cause: “… a $21 billion settlement brokered between three pharmaceutical distributors and most states that placed new requirements on pharmaceutical companies to help stem the flow of controlled substances”
Link. Regulation has a cost.
“Google DeepMind has been working with generative A.I. to perform at least 21 different types of personal and professional tasks, including tools to give users life advice, ideas, planning instructions and tutoring tips”
Link. AI Guardians will be essential for at least 30% of humanity in the near term.
We don’t understand why inflation has fallen while employment has not: “America’s right has become so divorced from empirical reality that it has played no role in this debate.”
Link. Another serving of humility. It is noteworthy that all debate was among centrist or left economist, there’s no longer any rational conservative economist.
“Apple might disable your AppleID if your credit card is stolen… even if the fraudulent charge doesn’t even happen on your account.”
Link. We need lawyers. Lots of lawyers. Also, billion dollar fines. Because we created a monster.
Gaming Google by deleting archives: “algorithms are probably not intentionally designed to do that …”
Link. “… but that doesn’t mean this result isn’t an emergent property of complex algorithms and models that no one fully understands.” Tsai
I also suspect the SEO types are right.
“rising popularity of switches, especially among young people, is a major reason fewer gun violence victims are surviving in his city.”
Link. Automatic pistol conversion means shootings more lethal. In KC fewer shootings but more homicides. Boys think they are cool. 3D printing finds a market.
Fitch downgrades US Treasuries: the rules are different for America.
Link. Downgrades matter for lesser nations.
“there are about 20 times more free-floating worlds in our Milky Way than stars, with Earth-mass planets 180 times more common than rogue Jupiters.”
Link. Would be neat to visit one.
Another innocent accused of “human trafficking“ because the criteria for suspicion are really stupid.
Link. A mother’s skin color didn’t match her daughter so airline accused her of “trafficking”. This is yet another American moral panic.
“Keynes’s: “Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.”
Link. I have to memorize this one.
O’Connor Layover Agreement, St Paul MN 1900 – 1940
Link. “allowed criminals to stay in the city under three conditions: that they checked in with police upon their arrival; agreed to pay bribes to city officials; and committed no major crimes in the city” #history
St Paul was the real Gotham City.
“Dietary supplementation of citicoline for 12 wk improved overall memory performance, especially episodic memory, in healthy older males and females with AAMI” (age associated memory impairment)
Link. 2021 paper. Large effect size — maybe too large to be plausible. Several other poor quality studies positive but really needs replication.
“defaults delete com.mycompany.appname deletes all the key-value pairs within the preference file for com.mycompany.appname, leaving just the empty property list.”
Link. When preference files go bad.