Link. We all have the same destination.
Author Archives: jgordon
Apple implements identity sharing with iOS 17 and macOS Sonoma.
Link. – share passkeys, passwords, verification codes, and notes
– edits and updates seamlessly sync between group members
– end-to-end encrypted
– share with family, friends, and other close contacts
I will be happy to get rid of 1Password.
China science often fake: “China seems to be the number one contributor in sheer volume (over half the faked papers globally, and it along with Russia, Turkey, Egypt, and India rank highly for faked papers as a percentage of a country’s total output.”
Link. Hundreds of thousands of fake articles. China’s science is in bad shape.
Beef inflation: it’s the monopolies.
Link. A lot of our current inflation is the unfixing of prices allowing oligopolies and monopolies to use their power.
With Ag it gets even more complicated…
Spy whale: “We don’t want to deliver an easy lunch to orcas by sending a tame whale who doesn’t know any better,” Ms. Haug said.”
Link. South of where he should be. He has his own advocacy group looking out for him.
Jack Dorsey is a nutcase.
Link. I knew he was eccentric but he’s truly nuts. Endorsing JFK jr!
“iCloud Drive now effectively keeps its own Document Revisions database, making versions available to all Macs and devices accessing them.”
Link. Didn’t used to work. I don’t think versions are worth the complexity.
Lovecraft’s Shoggoth (with smiley face mask) as AI meme: “visual shorthand for powerful A.I. systems that seem suspiciously nice”
Link. Now we are hip.
US will require automatic breaking systems in future vehicles: “automatically stop and avoid hitting pedestrians at speeds of up to 37 miles per hour”
Link. Bicycles not mentioned. Hope is will offset lethality of giant SUVs. Years away still.
F.D.A. Approves Pfizer’s R.S.V. Vaccine for 60+
Link. Guillain-Barré syndrome is a concern; it’s been a vaccine side-effect before. Vaccine will be more likely used in higher risk patients.
Russia tries to exhaust Kyiv’s amazingly successful air defense.
Link. Russia needs more civilian terror.
Evolution of feathered flight: “Theropods could not use their early wings to fly. Some horse-size species sported wings the size of laptop screens.”
Link. Courtship display presumably.
International Underwear Model and Insurrectionist gets 32 Months in Prison: “Strand’s sentencing could be a case study of why defense lawyers generally don’t recommend that their clients testify in trials.”
Link. He’s an idiot of course.
GOP research: “the swing toward Democrats is primarily being driven by both new and independent voters who are focused on abortion”
Link. Election outcome level swing.
“… widening of gene pools which resulted from this process means that the biologist Steve Jones ranks the invention of the bicycle as the most important event in recent human evolution.”
Link. Bold but I like it.
“Evidence from card swipes suggests that only about half the office space in major U.S. cities is currently in use, with little indication of a return to prepandemic norms”
Link. St Paul (MN) downtown need more foot traffic in 2019. It’s an echo chamber now.
“rising use of telephones went hand-in-hand with rising business travel: Workers began interacting more with people in other cities, but solidifying these contacts required occasionally meeting them in person.”
We suffered a lot during COVID from lack of true in person interaction. We are primates still.
Debt deal: Biden wins. Again.
Link. Maybe he is good at his job.
“While some food aid recipients aged 50 to 54 will now face work requirements, many others who are veterans or homeless will be excluded for the first time.”
“investors have flocked to the $24 trillion Treasury market just about whenever they have needed a haven”
Link. 24 trillion is just 8 Apples. Not so much really.
App.net archive exists.
Link. 44 million posts, hosted by micro.blog service.
WWDC 2023 Wish Lists
Link. Every year we ask Santa for a Snow Leopard and we get whatever iOS didn’t want.
“six Martian days after losing contact with Ingenuity, the team detected a “single, lonely” radio signal”
Link. The Ingenuity team should be punished for over-engineering their wee helicopter. (jk)
China’s real estate crash: “Even as of 2017 … China had already basically reached developed-country levels of living space per person.”
Link. Slump started 1.5y ago but was hidden by Zero-COVID. “best solution for Xi would be if he could get foreign money to bail out the sector, such as Western private equity firms” (private equity is do dumb)
“70% of people who voted for Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election believe AI threatens humanity, while just 60% of those who voted for Joe Biden felt the same way.”
Link. 70 v 60 is record breaking bipartisan agreement. I suspect the 10% diff is Blues who feel AI 2023 is just hype and will go away soon.
Twitter valuation: “Fidelity came up with the evaluation based on a markdown of its own stake in the company.”
Link. Fidelity was that stupid?!
Minnesota banned noncompetes!
Link. Holy cow. Buried in the big bill. This is fantastic good news if true.
“DS_Store, poised there waiting to trip you up. It contains private data for the Finder, and has been quietly causing havoc since the first release of Mac OS X over 22 years ago.”
Link. I’m interested in bad designs that persist.
Cyclists subsidize street costs.
Link. Most clearly IF they own a car — which most do.
“Because Finder Comments are now saved in two places, keeping them in sync has been a long battle, and one that Apple shows no sign of winning yet.”
Link.
Michael Tsai: SwiftUI Notes Before WWDC 2023
Link. Warning: really depressing.
Elizabeth Holmes in prison: “We try to help our ladies obtain work in the factory which focuses on their strengths so they may develop additional marketable skills”
Link. “Their two young children, William and Invicta, will be able to conduct video calls with Ms. Holmes and visit her on weekends and federal holidays. Phone calls are limited to 15 minutes each, with a total of 300 minutes per month.”
“… Xi’s expectations of the young generation, mentioned “eat bitterness” five times … repeatedly urged the young people to “seek self-inflicted hardships,”
Link. “ask now what your country can do for you” would be DOA in 2023 America. This is an interesting test of modern China’s state control.
[The article is written in a personal style that is definitely not NYT standard.]
Apple’s tests of OS integrity suggest data corruption due to cosmic rays is very rare.
Link. Interesting observation.
Reds confabulate about “extremist Dem murder”.: “Then, as quickly as it swelled, the media frenzy receded. Fox Digital, the TV network’s online arm, continued to publish articles that acknowledged the more complicated story that was emerging from
Link. Believed now a drunken accident. But it served red purposes.
ChatGPT + Code Interpreter: “The Pac-Man gif above was made by having CI use an algorithm to generate a maze, convert the maze into blocks, use an algorithm to find the exit, make it look like Pac-Man and then generate a gif”
Link. The Chat UI will now interpret Python code. Would be an interesting exercise to try to replicate his exercises.
AI 2023 – how to.
Link. Instapapered.
“If you walk into Denny’s, pull out a gun and “say gimme the money,” but then you end up just getting served breakfast that means you failed.”
Link. Biden wins. Again.
OneDrive auto update from April 2023 broke support on Catalina, Mojave and probably more.
Link. Not clear if there’s a lasting fix yet. I’m sad it hasn’t been fixed by now, but maybe most of us just got the update.
“… for a variety of reasons, it is better to think of AI as a person …”
Link. Learning better prompts. Specifically an intern with vast knowledge, excellent writing skills, overconfidence, and a tendency to confabulate.
“…. Anthropic’s Claude, which is not quite as powerful, but has a longer memory and a remarkably pleasant personality…”
“Ms. Turner moved to the sleepy town of Küsnacht, Switzerland, with Mr. Bach, a German music executive whom she started dating in the 1980s”
Link. They married in 2013.
Ultrasound Pulses to mice brain can induce torpor.
Link. “the researchers identified a protein in their brain membranes, TRPM2, that appears to be sensitive to ultrasound”.
I did not know this was a thing.
NYT update on Navy SEAL training investigation.
Link. “… Rear Adm. Hugh W. Howard, was warned about the drop, he told subordinates that it was fine…”
Howard has not been held to account.
Mastodon “After using NetNewsWire to read Mastodon, I find that I prefer reading posts by account rather than mixed together in a timeline”
Link. Lists help a bit but I do like the feed reader model.
“The speed of Chinese rail construction has to be seen to be believed. Here’s a video showing work on a train station that was built in nine hours.”
Link. China power.
“The far right likes George Santos because he’s the goddamn Joker—we get what we fucking deserve. He is a living, breathing deepfake, parody beyond Hollywood’s most depraved satirical dreamings, and proof positive that facts truly do not matter he
Link. Laura Jedeed is catching up post school time.
“ChatGPT users who pay for Plus will gain access to built-in Bing search. This effectively means a way to connect ChatGPT to the internet without plugins”
Link. I don’t see it yet.
“wonderful “What did they just say?” feature (speak that to your Siri remote and the video jumps back 10 seconds or so and temporarily enables subtitles).”
Link. That’s an awesome Apple TV feature. Needs marketing.
Most of article is about how bad Max is.
Derisking China – the process is well underway.
Link. Russia will be, at best, a Chinese satellite within the Sinosphere.
““Cycling Atlas Europe,” a new guidebook detailing 350 single-day rides across the continent”
Link. I’m in.
“Disk Utility in Ventura 13.4 reaches new heights in version 22.6. I’m delighted to report that you can now check and repair almost every APFS volume you might wish.”
Link. Almost. Still, progress after many years of fail.
120kya: “In southern Africa, people from Stem1 and Stem2 merged, giving rise to a new lineage that would lead to the Nama and other living humans in that region. Elsewhere in Africa, a separate fusion of Stem1 and Stem2 groups took place.”
Link. The second fusion was diaspora source. “The DNA of the Mende people showed that their ancestors had interbred with Stem2 people just 25,000 years ago.”