Link. This is a great science article. Many great lines.
Author Archives: jgordon
“The unemployment rate for Black Americans reached its lowest point on record in April, at 4.7 percent, and the gap between the unemployment rates of white and Black people was also the smallest ever measured.”
Link. The jobs report is basically relentless good news for America. Which is bad for Trump. So the GOP must destroy America to save it from democracy.
“telomere lengths seemed constrained to a narrow range, indicating there is a price to pay for very long or very short telomeres.”
Link. Human lifespans may be as long as biology can make them with only a 20% variation in aging rates (vs dogs, 500%)
We should study telomeres in dogs.
“Two days after my thoughts were published in an article by Wired, we found out that all the campaigns under our Google AdWords account were suspended – without prior warning”
Link. Google has Muskitis. This time attacking Opera/Vivaldi. Perhaps Google fears their core business is dying.
MH ED visits under 18: “From 2011 to 2020, the figure rose from 4.8 million to 7.5 million, the team found, a period in which the overall number of pediatric E.R. visits fell.”
Link. Pre-COVID. Some might be better insurance. Paywalled so can’t see details. Deserves better coverage and I hate medical journal paywalls.
Multiple Apple ID Accounts – the issue finally rises to the surface.
Link. Thank you MJ Tsai! This has been a problem for me for over 10 years, but I thought it was uncommon. Turns out it’s common amongst Mac geeks. So many problems. Most recently … https://bit.ly/422Wskf
BAND: advertising based group coordination, app only
Link. No web views, calendar has a feed. Our mountain bike trail group is using it.
Siri fights at Apple are weirdly detached from what user’s care about.
Link. Why can’t Siri give me the Apple Music playlist I created? Like Tsai’s correspondents I just want Siri to do the simple things it weirdly can’t do. I don’t need Siri to be ChatGPT.
Brave Search no usingTailcat rather than Bing.
Link. “Their own index, based on Tailcat, is working better than DuckDuckGo/Bing for me now. Hopefully, Apple will add built-in support to Safari.”
I wonder if Apple will buy them.
Bugs related to having different iCloud service and media accounts – Gruber example.
Link. I’ve had LOTS of issues over years from having split accounts. Interesting that many Apple insiders have had the same problems and that some kind of fix is pending. (But not purchase transfer).
“I can’t imagine anybody ever even thinking of using the debt ceiling as a negotiating wedge,” Trump said.
Link. The guy has said everything but this one was particularly funny.
Lilly’s Donanemab for Alzheimer – early trial results: “47% of patients “had no clinical progression” on the CDR-SB after one year, which sounds quite interesting, but has to be compared to 29% of the patients in the placebo group who had no progressi
Link. This is at best a mediocre drug for people with Alzheimer’s and probably it’s useless. But maybe there’s a subtype of the dementia where it’s a good drug (albeit with very dangerous side effects).
You can now use passkeys to sign into your Google Account
Link. “Passkeys place a great deal of emphasis on your device password.”
That’s the fatal flaw.
“In a series of emails sent to this reporter, Musk suggested he would transfer the network’s main account on Twitter, under the @NPR handle, to another organization or person.”
Link. Musk is such a putz.
“everything interesting in our universe happened in a brief flash, at the very beginning. A promising start, and then an eternal abyss.”
Link. When I die it’s all over.
Carlson: “A group of Trump guys surrounded an Antifa kid and started pounding the living shit out of him. It was three against one, at least. Jumping a guy like that is dishonorable obviously. It’s not how white men fight. Yet suddenly I found myself ro
Link. 1. He is sincerely racist in a Kipling kind of way. 2. He is a very disturbed person.
WordTsar—a cross-platform open source WordStar 7 clone for Windows, Mac, and Linux
Link. Now do Sidekick (https://bit.ly/3LqhNwX
Hidden features of macOS: The option key 80.
Link. PDF available. Here’s one that blew me away. Super useful.
Finder slideshow mode: With Option, the Look icon becomes a play button, to display the preview of the selection in Slideshow mode (full screen).
“you can register new domain names right in iOS 16’s Settings app: iCloud Account → iCloud → iCloud Mail → Custom Email Domain.”
Link. This is old school Mac — weird but cool.
The expanding Universe doesn’t conserve energy: “there’s a physical symmetry that corresponds to the conserved quantity of energy. In this case, it’s time-translation invariance: the notion that physical properties and laws don’t evolve with time.
Link. But if they do …
Using LLM tech to read minds via fMRI: “brain activity is a kind of encrypted signal, and language models provide ways to decipher it.”
Link. I read those mocking the power of the LLMs and my laughter is dark and bitter.
“every brain has unique ways of representing meaning”. Just a little side comment.
“Both planes had bottles of epinephrine and a syringe, not an auto-injector”
Link. We trust these airlines to operate a plane?
Guy who invented some key LLM tech: “The idea that this stuff could actually get smarter than people — a few people believed that,” he said. “But most people thought it was way off. And I thought it was way off. I thought it was 30 to 50 years or
Link. Fear is important.
History: St. Paul Police Department reformation of the 1930s
Link. Things can get better.
Anecdote – exercise and weight control. It takes a lot. (2014)
Link. I came across this from 8y ago. It’s still true for me. You can out-exercise an imperfect diet, but it requires a lot of time doing hard work. If you don’t enjoy exercise it’s probably impossible.
Reds shooting innocent neighbors: age and OAN/Fox.
Link. It’s their TV. Also, they are often kind of demented.
Vaccines made in Africa: expensive.
Link. During COVID India diverted vaccines that were to go to Africa.
Facebook growing: “The company added 37 million daily users to Facebook, its marquee app, up 4 percent from a year earlier and a turnaround from the first-ever drop in its users that it reported in early 2022.”
Link. Facebook has least bad ads of any platform I see.
“He now has 10 customer-service employees who help him respond to fans while he talks. He still sometimes streams from his grassland yurt but also had a yurt backdrop built above his brick-and-mortar store.”
Link. China has fused live-streaming with small company retail.
SCOTUS corruption: “given top pay and treated to teaching trips abroad, and their personal needs are anticipated, from lunch orders to, in Justice Gorsuch’s case, house hunting.”
Link. Scalia Law School is a legal way to keep red justices close to red donors. Whitewashing bribes. SCOTUS is a stinking pile of corruption – like Congress.
“A new study of genetic data from a market in Wuhan, China, said the data did not support the case that the pandemic had started with illegally traded animals”
Link. The Bayesian analysis swings back to lab release.
“First Republic was worth just $650 million as of Friday afternoon, down from more than $20 billion before the March crisis, a reflection of investors’ realization that shareholders could be wiped out.”
Link. There may be immediate buyers post gov seizure. The shareholders are gonna get scalped.
“many of the effects that are ascribed to lactate are nothing more than the effects of a big bolus of sodium ions”
Link. Mice experiments used sodium lactate infusions. Finding these assumptions and disproving them is a great way to do science.
Recent changes in SSH remote access to a Mac
Link. “there’s now a separate Allow full disk access for remote users setting, but it’s under General ‣ Sharing instead of Privacy & Security ‣ Full Disk Access. And it’s now only visible if you click the little i button next to Remote Login. With this selected, you don’t need to give sshd Full Disk Access.”
“These days I’m carrying cables and adapters for USB-A, USB-C, Micro-USB, Lightning, MagSafe, and Apple Watch.”
Link. Same here but for last two.
Why GM is dropping Apple CarPlay: “… collecting surveillance data that Apple’s privacy rules don’t allow”
Link. Core of GM profit plan is to collect driver data and sell it. Similar to the smart TV industry. I wonder if they will subsidize car cost.
It’s India’s decade now.
Link. Noah has the numbers.
Thoughts On The Current Post-Twitter Diaspora Options: “Before she became CEO of Bluesky, Jay Graber wrote the definitive exploration of decentralized social media networks back in 2020, and has laid out the pros and cons of nearly every approach.”
Link. I’m on Mastodon for now. Everyone is watching Bluesky.
Growing a micro-LLM with Jane Austen: “Ten minutes in, BabyGPT’s vocabulary has grown…”
Link. Great explainer. You can choose from several training sources.
“By tracing this genomic evolution over the past 100 million years, the so-called Zoonomia Project has revealed millions of stretches of human DNA that have changed little since our shrew-like ancestors”
Link. Great research and an excellent article. Link may allow free access. “… some of these shifts helped human brain cells grow for a longer period of time during childhood”
“One of the bottlenecks faced by Siri is that “top executives” at Apple are wary of Siri making major gaffes in its responses.”
Link. I actually like Siri and use it for simple tasks daily.
“in 2022, NSO Group customers widely deployed at least three iOS 15 and iOS 16 zero-click exploit chains against civil society targets around the world.”
Link. Remember when we thought it was possible to secure a complex system?
Large Language Models – evolutionary tree and selection algorithm 2023
Link. A snapshot of the state of the art. Taken from Mooler et al (GitHub, linked).
iOS App Update hangs without an error message in infinite download: a general approach
Link. Verify payment, turn off Screen Time, Restart Phone, test free app download, update an app, update all, etc.
A practical guide to LLMs.
Link. The diagram is worth keeping.
“Roberts has claimed judicial independence in order to circumvent an investigation into judicial independence.”
Link. Roberts has earned the scorn of history.
Trump campaign hired non-crazies to look for fraud: “Ken Block, founder of the firm Simpatico Software Systems, studied more than a dozen voter fraud theories and allegations for Trump’s campaign in late 2020 and found they were “all false,”
Link. Curious how they found him. Love to know what they did with the results.
Five Worlds of AI: “it could be that for most jobs, humans will still be more reliable and energy-efficient”
Link. Not Aaronson’s main point but energy efficiency is pretty much all we got. Hope it’s enough.
“Just as an an entrepreneur works hard to figure out what products customers would like to buy, Tucker worked hard to figure out what monster-of-the-week Fox News viewers — and potential Fox News viewers — would fear and revile”
Link. Bit of Goebbels in Tucker but I think Noah overstates his rationality.
Legally mandated treatment for psychotic (schizophrenia) homeless: “Severe housing shortages for the mentally ill … are key questions that have yet to be answered.”
Link. Hard to succeed if there’s no housing even with treatment. Decades ago there was institutional housing of variable quality.