Flutterby™! From 2024-09-01 to 2024-09-30

Back from the Sunnyvale Caller's Workshop. I forget how fun it is to hang out with new caller energy, and wish we had a group of square dance callers up here in the North Bay who'd wanna get together and pass a mic around and dance for and mess with each other.

[ related topics: Invention and Design California Culture ]

You know what I really love most about computing? That rather than building simpler and more elegant programming languages and interfaces, we're building Byzantine tools to automate the process of building inelegant code that requires fragile runtimes.

This message brought to you by Perl one liners to figure things out while using VSCode to write TypeScript.

Also, autocorrect said "BSCode", and... Uh... Maybe AI is closer than I think?

[ related topics: Perl Open Source Software Engineering Artificial Intelligence hubris ]

YubiKeys are vulnerable to cloning attacks thanks to newly discovered side channel if you have physical access to the device and the PIN.

So you probably shouldn't sweat it.

RT Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦 @rysiek@mstdn.social

Ok, here's the deal on the "YubiKey cloning attack" stuff:

:eyes_opposite: Yes, a way to recover private keys from #YubiKey 5 has been found by researchers.

But the attack *requires*:

👉 *physically opening the YubiKey enclosure*

👉 physical access to the YubiKey *while it is authenticating*

👉 non-trivial electronics lab equipment

I cannot stress this enough:

✨ In basically every possible scenario you are safer using a YubiKey or a similar device, than not using one. ✨ #InfoSec #YubiKey5

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

What (else) could possibly go wrong? Former Mt. Gox CEO’s new crypto exchange set to launch this month with 'transparency' focus.

In a bid to outpace existing trading giants in the crypto exchange market, the former Mt. Gox CEO told The Block that EllipX will use user-friendliness as its weapon, mainly with the EllipX Wallet that was introduced last month. Equipped with multi-party computation technology, the EllipX wallet is said to be easier to use, with no need to write down phrases on a piece of paper, according to Karpeles.

Ooh, all my griftcoins in a single vulnerability? Sounds... transparent.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Space & Astronomy Cryptography Guns Economics ]

Doing a lot of pondering about how the value of software is in the cost to change it, and how the layers of abstraction we're adding mostly improve tone to market, but leave us with debugging and performance nightmares.

(Why yes, I have been doing TypeScript and Mithril code this morning.)

[ related topics: Software Engineering Theater & Plays Economics ]

This is such a good read: Ian Cooper: Is AI a Silver Bullet?

Like previous attempts to find a silver bullet such as 4GLs, it does not seem likely that LLMs as a software authoring tool will be succeed. In particular, like 4GLs they suffer from the problem that because software spends most of its life in maintenance, the cost of change makes most improvements to the cost to author irrelevant; in fact, some rapid authoring techniques make maintenance harder and increase the lifetime cost of software.

And, yeah, it's nominally about LLMs and AI for code generation, but really it's about complexity management. As I try to debug Mithril TypeScript today, with the wacky stuff that Safari does to code maps (and, yay, TypeScript's error messages), and think about some of the performance issues that we're seeing because we're blindly accepting Google's Firebase client libraries without really understanding what that abstraction layer imposes on us, I've been thinking a lot about the abstraction layers that have had lasting value.

SQL. OpenGL. I think there's some reasonable value in the scene graph of your choice, but... I'm not sure that we've seen a good replacement for CGI for web serving yet, it sure seems like the ability for PHP and Perl scripts to cohabit on a server has been lost with the "fuck it, let's put everything in its own virtual space" direction that everybody's gone (with all of the wasted RAM and CPU cycles of all of those services waiting around for a few hits a minute).

And we really don't have a better mechanism for keeping artifacts around than the shell, despite 4+ decades of attempting GUIs. Hopefully work project will get there, but...

[ related topics: Perl Open Source Software Engineering Theater & Plays Space & Astronomy Work, productivity and environment Graphics Artificial Intelligence Maps and Mapping Databases Archival hubris ]

Ouch. Pulling no punches. McSweeney's: Your Favorite Regional Theater’s (Honest) Season Announcement! by Jenny Stafford

Join Prospero and Caliban as they… okay, look, we know you don’t want to see this, and we don’t want to do it. But it’s public domain so we don’t have to pay any playwrights, and our unpaid intern, Micah, can basically sell this out to school groups, who also don’t want to see it. With any luck, some of you will come, too, because we all know we should like Shakespeare, right? Come feel smart for an evening!

[ related topics: Children and growing up Theater & Plays ]

Yep. It's a scam. FTC staff report analyzes 70 MLM income disclosure statements

Via ResearchBuzz

[ related topics: Weblogs moron ]

Not news: AI worse than humans in every way at summarising information, government trial finds

Amazon conducted the test earlier this year for Australia’s corporate regulator the Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) using submissions made to an inquiry. The outcome of the trial was revealed in an answer to a questions on notice at the Senate select committee on adopting artificial intelligence.

Via and Via.

Nature: AI generates covertly racist decisions about people based on their dialect

Finally, we show that current practices of alleviating racial bias in language models, such as human preference alignment, exacerbate the discrepancy between covert and overt stereotypes, by superficially obscuring the racism that language models maintain on a deeper level.

Via Kent Brewster, who observes that this has implications about the use of "AI" to automatically write police reports from body cam footage, and via allison @aparrish@friend.com whose thread expresses some good anger.

ChatGPT is truly awful at diagnosing medical conditions. PLOS ONE: Evaluation of ChatGPT as a diagnostic tool for medical learners and clinicians

While our results indicate that ChatGPT consistently delivers the same information to different users, demonstrating substantial inter-rater reliability, it also reveals the tool’s shortcomings in providing factually correct medical information, as evident by its low diagnostic accuracy.

(Via)

[ related topics: Cameron Barrett Politics Books Nature and environment Invention and Design moron Current Events Law Enforcement Currency Artificial Intelligence Race ]

Cat throwing pottery (Mastodon video)

[ related topics: Video ]

If you've noticed an uptick in franticness about "deep state" from your Russian apologist acquaintances....

US Department of Justice: Two RT Employees Indicted for Covertly Funding and Directing U.S. Company that Published Thousands of Videos in Furtherance of Russian Interests. In addition to being involved in the editorial direction,

Between in or about October 2023 and in or about August 2024, RT sent wire transfers to U.S. Company-1 totaling approximately $9.7 million, which represented nearly 90% of U.S. Company-1’s bank deposits from all sources combined.

Though the US DOJ didn't name the company in question, it's widely reported to be Tenet Media (Wired, Mother Jones).

Kevin Beaumont @GossiTheDog@cyberplace.social points out an Elon Musk trait.

US DOJ: Justice Department Disrupts Covert Russian Government-Sponsored Foreign Malign Influence Operation Targeting Audiences in the United States and Elsewhere. From the affidavit.

The cybersquatted domains used by Doppelganger generally are not indexed by search engines. A visit to the standalone domain, such as www.washingtonpost[.]pm, reveals a blank page or an error page. Rather, as its primary method of distribution, Doppelganger created fraudulent social media personas impersonating U.S. citizens to post article-specific extended hyperlinks to the cybersquatted domains on those social media platforms.

The actual domain names start on p70 of the affidavit...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics broadband moron Journalism and Media Work, productivity and environment Law Enforcement ]

The news that an OAR guide recently became legend by (presumably accidentally) taking a boat full of customers over the dam has made me nostalgic for the days of being a whitewater guide. Ocoee!!! - by Microdahts (YouTube video) with lots of carnage video from 2012 helps on the nostalgia.

[ related topics: Movies Current Events Chattanooga Boats Machinery Douglas Adams Whitewater Video ]

Feedback sent to the city on the D St restriping:

I am *loving* the new design. When I'm walking to and from work, it's way more comfortable to cross D Street. When I'm biking, D Street is now an option.

The only two suggestions I'd make are:

1. maybe, in the places where the parking coexists with the bike lane, to put the parking outside of the bike lane. This will both better protect the bike lane, and make the weird jogs a little less intrusive when riding it.
2. from the dynamic speed sign, it's clear that the current traffic calming measures don't go nearly far enough in restricting automobile speeds southbound. Maybe when the permanent changes go in there can be some concrete and other additions rather than just paint to help bring drivers under control.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Work, productivity and environment Automobiles Graphic Design Bicycling ]

Shout out to the F150 driver who chirped tires to pull through the intersection behind me once I'd walked past the centerline.

In a fair and just society that'd be brandishing a deadly weapon.

[ related topics: History Guns ]

Somewhat amused that Petaluma's "we don't want to end up like Healdsburg" contingent is now going on Nextdoor with the "vote for my candidate so we can end up like Healdsburg" take.

Short thread about Microsoft CoPilot's inability to summarize:

What I do fear is that for those that do heavily invest, they’ll be required by the likes of Microsoft to begin to speak in ways that Copilot can parse and ‘understand’. Which in larger organisations will shape the way that they communicate with others, and it’ll spread. In the same way that American corporate speak, or Agile terminology has infected the rest of the world.

The thing that most blows my mind about this whole LLMania is that we have mechanisms for accurately describing processes to computers already...

[ related topics: Humor Microsoft moron ]

"All the credibility of a right-wing influencer claiming that they were unaware of being a Kremlin psy-op..."

[ related topics: Fashion ]

I mean, it's free (on top of the cost for the parking garage, Old Town Sacramento), but that is the most anemic "Level 2" charger that I think I've encountered.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Pivot to AI has a great takedown of that "diffusion model recreating DOOM" paper/demo videos.

[ related topics: Games Artificial Intelligence Video ]

Dang it. We're Here isn't getting renewed. This household would probably drop a few hundred into a Kickstarter for another season...

https://variety.com/2024/tv/co...led-hbo-drag-reality-1236133021/

[ related topics: Technology and Culture Television ]

Discussion about square dance calling this weekend made me think about the heyday of it, and how, yeah, it just takes a couple of hundred people per week at twenty bucks a pop to make calling as a business viable. Which is an order of magnitude and 2-2.5x more than now, but shows how it was feasible back in the day... And not like selling out stadium shows.

[ related topics: Television Community ]

Something's fishy here...

[ related topics: Photography ]

Without parking and cars, nobody will come here...

[ related topics: Photography ]

Loving this mural

[ related topics: Photography ]

Another shot of that mural

[ related topics: Photography ]

Another mural

[ related topics: Photography ]

Baldur Bjarnason: The LLM honeymoon phase is about to end

The usefulness of LLMs was always overblown, but unless the AI vendors discover a new kind of maths to fix the problem, they’re about to have an AltaVista moment.

GPT-fabricated scientific papers on Google Scholar: Key features, spread, and implications for preempting evidence manipulation. Or: yep, LLMs are being used to generate exactly the sort of propaganda masquerading as research that you expected.

RT Matteo Collina @mcollina@fosstodon.org

Finally it happened to me as well: developers complaining that the behavior of my OSS libraries does not match what ChatGPT explains to them. 🤦‍♂️

In the replies, shrimp eating mammal 🦐 @walruslifestyle@octodon.social observes

this is a power game, and openai has the upper hand. if it's not already true, one day there will be "open source developers" who argue that they should modify their project to do what chatgpt says they should do. it'll help adoption, they'll say, it'll help accessibility, they'll say. user first, they'll say.

Which also means that it's going to be interesting to get adoption on new approaches to problem, because the frameworks by which people "understand" concepts will be limited by LLM behavior (this is especially already a problem that we see with people who use LLMs to "summarize" documents, because the LLM most certainly is not doing that).

Governor Newsom seeks to harness the power of GenAI to address homelessness, other challenges. Given that Newsom has gone full on "let's inflict more trauma to people experiencing trauma response", this bodes ill. (Via)

Edit: Pivot to AI: Promptfondler drama: Shumer’s ‘no-hallucination’ Reflection 70B turns out to be two other models in a trenchcoat

Others tested this new model — but Shumer’s claims didn’t check out. Reflection 70B had similar benchmark scores to Facebook’s LLaMA 3 70B — and lower than LLaMA 3.1, which Shumer had said it was based on. Reddit r/LocalLLaMA concurred — Reflection 70B was just LLaMA 3 with some extra tuning. [Twitter, archive; Reddit; VentureBeat]

Further testing suggested that Reflection 70B was, in fact, a front-end to Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet using LLaMA 3 weights. HyperWrite filtered the string “Claude” in an attempt to hide this. [Twitter, archive; Twitter, archive; Reddit]

[ related topics: Free Software Interactive Drama Games Invention and Design Mathematics Artificial Intelligence ]

Friday we went up to Sacramento, plugged the car into an L2 charger in a garage in old town Sacramento, wandered through the heat towards downtown, eventually found Capital Books, came back via a snack at Salud restaurant on Cesar Chavez plaza, to discover that the L2 charger was running about 3kW. Sigh. Anyway, fun party that evening, danced 'til I couldn't see straight at Sactown Stomp, hosted by Capital City Squares. First time seeing so many of those folks since COVID started, some bumps 'cause this was an attempt to reboot Stumptown Stomp in a new venue (that wasn't as walkable as Guerneville, both from geography and heat) and carpet in one of the dance venues.

Sunday we went up to Grass Valley on Sunday, saw those kids, but/and... trying to keep to L2 charging, in the afternoon we parked the car up at the campus, hung out at the koi pond, and walked down to Briarpatch Co-op to refill water and use the bathroom and stuff. So we bought a container of gelato and sat in the AC and I noticed that there, in the community ownership locally grown whatever and so forth (with, let's be fair, prices to match)... that it was a Unilever brand.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Books Invention and Design Food Heinlein Sports Automobiles Community Fashion Maps and Mapping Woodworking ]

Mike Spooner @shelldozer@oldbytes.space

An old witty paraphrasing of Arthur C Clarke's "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" when applied to the maxim "never attribute to malice that which can be explained as incompetence":

"Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice"

[ related topics: Space & Astronomy Clowns ]

John Graham-Cumming's blog: 2024-09-07 — Cracking an old ZIP file to help open source the ANC's "Operation Vula" secret crypto code

Today I learned that DTMF encoded messages encrypted and decrypted with PowerBASIC code helped take down South Africa's apartheid system.

[ related topics: Free Software Weblogs Cryptography ]

US seeks new pedestrian safety rules aimed at increasingly massive SUVs and pickup trucks

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said Monday that for the first time it’s proposing a new rule setting testing and performance requirements to minimize the risk of pedestrian head injuries.

It's vehicles less than 10k lbs, so actually does get some of the Section 179 $25k tax deduction class monsters.

And in case you missed it, The Economist on how Americans' love affair with big cars is killing us (archive.ph version).

[ related topics: Politics Invention and Design Theater & Plays Law Machinery Economics ]

As I won't shut up about, Charlene and I obviously had a good time at Sactown Stomp this last weekend. Re-energized us on much of what we love about square dancing and the square dance community. Some good conversations there, and the drive home involved discussion about what we could do short of trying to start a club again to help bring more of the energy we love to our participation in square dancing. Which made us ask what makes the square dance fly-in format so much more sense of community than the club event, and I think we settled on a few things:

1. The longer time period (all day, or more) means we end up sitting out and chatting more.
2. Bonus if there's a little bit of space for socialization. In this case there was the Friday night party, and, though we bailed on the announced place and went elsewhere, the "whole bunch of us are going to this place for dinner" vibe.
3. Multiple rooms means there's a bit of option. Even for programs we don't dance, it's sometimes fun to sit and watch.
4. The sense of destination means that rather than driving 2+ hours each way for half that in dancing, we're willing to extend things out a little bit more and explore a bit. But I think part of this is that the context needs to allow for socializing; it's not like we go down to Palo Alto early for an ECR dance, even though I'm sure there's stuff there we haven't seen or done that might be open on a Saturday evening.

So we're trying to think about what this means. Would it draw anyone, for instance, to rent a hall for the day before an evening dance and inviting some callers you may not have experienced before to play? Are two rooms important for that?

Is there a way to get the sense of "sitting down with friends for dinner" without completely overwhelming a single kitchen by bringing 3 squares of people into a restaurant at one time? Does catering work? (This is where a few hundred people and a walkable region around a hotel works.)

No answers, just brainstorming. Thinking about venues (a walkable downtown would be cool for so many reasons, so could ya, like, rent Out West Garage for a weekend?). Thinking about ways to piggyback on existing events. Thinking about the SCVSDA Jubilee and other similar events...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Movies Food Space & Astronomy Law Work, productivity and environment Heinlein Travel Community ]

Thinking about how "is because" is code signaling.

Well. Touting an endorsement from Viktor Orbán sure is a take. I'm not sure that debate changed any minds.

Though it did reinforce to me that we need better education, and an emphasis on learning about systemic complexity so that we don't fall for facile claims of easy solutions, and for the destruction of reality in favor of assertions.

[ related topics: Education ]

Electrek: It turns out cyclists actually should roll through stop signs. Here’s why.

Alvin explained, “The main takeaway from the study is that a rolling stop law allowed people biking to do an action they preferred in treating a stop sign as a yield. And once drivers were educated, intersection interactions between people biking and driving were no more dangerous than before introducing the law.”

The quote says "the study", the article actually links to several studies, though the articles that the link farms are ripping off, like Velo: Of Course a Rolling ‘Idaho Stop’ Is Safer for Cyclists. Here’s Why. and Oregon Public Broadcasting: Allowing rolling stops on bicycles doesn't cause risky road behavior, study finds are referencing Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies Volume 166, September 2024, 104754: Safety relevant driver and bicyclist behaviors resulting from bicycling rolling stops observed in a networked driving and bicycling simulator.

Delaware Yield Crash Data shows a -23% change in bicycle/automobile collisions in the 30 months before and after implementing the rules.

The Idaho Stop Law and the Severity of Bicycle Crashes: A Comparative Study Brandon Whyte, Masters Project 2013 (PDF) didn't find a difference in the number of collisions, but did find a "...significant difference in crash severity".

NHTSA Bicyclist Yield As Stop Fact Sheet (PDF)

I'm trying to find the Tampa Bay study mentioned in the original article, but that led to League of American Bicyclists: Laws To Promote Biking & Walking which mentions a study out of that region that addressed racial disparities in enforcement. Go figure.

Note that the key here seems to be in educating the causes of cyclist injury: Automobile drivers and law enforcment.

[ related topics: Sociology Television California Culture Sports Automobiles Pedal Power Bicycling Model Building Government ]

I don't guess that last night's debate actually changed anyone's mind, though the reports of voter registration following Taylor Swift's endorsement of the Harris/Walz ticket might have, but among the word salad there was concern expressed that immigrants in Springfield Ohio were eating pussy. Or something.

Anyway...

[ related topics: Photography ]

ReBlusky @doriantaylor.com

he calls her a marxist but she's not the one getting publicly owned

A+ to the headline writer: Rolling Stone: Elon Musk Threatens Taylor Swift After Harris Endorsement: ‘I Will Give You a Child’

Really, that tweet (no link, because ugh) was so fucking creepy.

[ related topics: Politics Writing Current Events ]

Concrete clickbait: next time you share a spomenik photo, think about what it means

Alongside this, many contemporary artists have made work on these monuments that is considerably more thoughtful. Pupovac points to David Maljkovic’s work in sculpture and film, such as Scenes from a New Heritage, which “asks the question of what is left of the monuments when all of the necessary tools for understanding have been stripped away; and one of the answers is the position that Kempenaers takes — the awe”.

Via MeFi, where the comments delve into some of the complexities of framing the narrative around large public art works, and the legacy of Tito in Yugoslavia, and...

Anyway, next time you see one of those surrealist big sculptures, this may help contextualize it.

[ related topics: Politics Photography Invention and Design Work, productivity and environment Art & Culture ]

I haven't been doing a lot of non-work coding of late, but as every widget set on the planet strives to both implement all of HTML+CSS+JavaScript internally, and be embeddable in that environment, and bloat out to require a modern machine to run passably (yeah, I'm looking at you, Qt, though not the only one), I keep my eyes open for lighter-weight widget systems.

Dear ImGui:

Dear ImGui is a bloat-free graphical user interface library for C++. It outputs optimized vertex buffers that you can render anytime in your 3D-pipeline-enabled application. It is fast, portable, renderer agnostic, and self-contained (no external dependencies).

egui

egui (pronounced "e-gooey") is a simple, fast, and highly portable immediate mode GUI library for Rust. egui runs on the web, natively, and in your favorite game engine..

[ related topics: Language Books User Interface Games Nature and environment Software Engineering Space & Astronomy Work, productivity and environment Graphics Machinery ]

Well, I suppose that the good news is Apple's lack of clipping means I can draw into the region of the superview even though it's outside my own subclass's bounds.

Yay for being able to fix selection drawing in these table view rows, I guess...

[ related topics: Apple Computer Current Events Furniture ]

I confess that I did not expect the first powered exoskeleton that I was aware of hitting the market to be marketed for wallpapering and drywall sanding. But it makes perfect sense, don't need a lot of support in those applications, but hands over the head all day is tough.

https://www.festoolusa.com/pro...77340---exo-18-hpc-4,0-i-plus-us

[ related topics: Economics Festool ]

Neighborhoods of last resort: How landlord strategies concentrate violent crime Henry Gomory, Matthew Desmond

Drawing on data pertaining to eviction rates, criminal incidents, housing code violations, and landlord behavior in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, this study documents how extractive rental management strategies, such as weak tenant screening, frequent eviction filings, and property disinvestment, concentrate crime at particular properties. In turn, high rates of crime in a neighborhood incentivize these extractive landlord strategies. By showing how landlords’ economic strategies are central to urban crime geographies, this study contributes to our understanding of third-party policing by revealing the limits of market-based solutions to place management dilemmas.

https://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9125.12332

Comparing forms of neighborhood instability as predictors of violence in Richmond, VA Samuel J. West, Diane Bishop, Derek A. Chapman, Nicholas D. Thomson

Our results indicated that the tax delinquency of company-owned properties (e.g., rental homes, apartments) was the only variable in our model (R2 = 0.62) that was associated with violence in all but four Richmond neighborhoods. We replicated this analysis using violence data from a later point in time which yielded largely identical results. These findings indicate that external sources of neighborhood instability may be more important to predicting violence than internal sources.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0273718

Via Skepchick: Who's worse: Venezuelan gangs, or landlords?

[ related topics: Politics Economics Real Estate Model Building ]

The Macroeconomic Impact of Climate Change: Global vs. Local Temperature Adrien Bilal & Diego R. Känzig

This paper estimates that the macroeconomic damages from climate change are six times larger than previously thought. Exploiting natural global temperature variability, we find that 1°C warming reduces world GDP by 12%. Global temperature correlates strongly with extreme climatic events unlike country-level temperature used in previous work, explaining our larger estimate. We use this evidence to estimate damage functions in a neoclassical growth model. Business-as-usual warming implies a 29% present welfare loss and a Social Cost of Carbon of $1,065 per ton. These impacts suggest that unilateral decarbonization policy is cost-effective for large countries such as the United States.

Via Revising the cost of climate change: New study of economic toll yields projections ‘six times larger than previous estimates’

8,887 grams of CO2 emitted per gallon of gasoline, 112.5 gallons of gas emits a metric ton, which suggests gas taxes should go up by at least $9.46/gallon.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Work, productivity and environment Economics Global Warming ]

Stanford Report: Methane emissions are rising faster than ever

The trend “cannot continue if we are to maintain a habitable climate,” the researchers write in a Sept. 10 perspective article in Environmental Research Letters published alongside data in Earth System Science Data. Both papers are the work of the Global Carbon Project, an initiative chaired by Stanford University scientist Rob Jackson that tracks greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Current Events Work, productivity and environment Education Global Warming ]

Aiden Clark’s dad begs Springfield, politicians: Stop using son to hate Haitians

“I wish that my son, Aiden Clark, was killed by a 60-year-old white man. I bet you never thought anyone would say something so blunt, but if that guy killed my 11-year-old son, the incessant group of hate-spewing people would leave us alone,” Clark told the city hall forum. “The last thing that we need is to have the worst day of our lives violently and constantly shoved in our faces, but even that’s not good enough for them. They take it one step further. They make it seem that our wonderful Aiden appreciates your hate, that we should follow their hate.”

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Current Events Community Race ]

Sierra Clubs: Getting off gas, block by block.

Gas utilities’ monopoly franchises generally require that they keep delivering their fossil fuel as long as customers keep paying. That means a single gas user can sink a project, and, so far, one or more usually do. In 2021, for example, a farmer reported a leaky gas pipe south of Sacramento to PG&E. According to the utility, electrification could have saved ratepayers “millions on repairs.” Instead, the project died when the lone customer served by the 3.5-mile pipe insisted on keeping gas service.

[ related topics: California Culture ]

I think I have discovered both a band name and a logo...

[ related topics: Photography ]

When Marjorie Taylor freakin' Greene calls out the racism...

https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/12...reene-laura-loomer-rhetoric-maga

[ related topics: Politics Race ]

The problem with the modern news ecosystem is that I have no good way of evaluating the claims made in this article from a site that I've never heard of before. I mean, News Guard seems to be as legit as a the founder of Court TV and Brill's Content, and a former editor of the WSJ would put together, so I guess...

Anway, with that caveat: Triple Hearsay: Original Sources of the Claim that Haitians Eat Pets in Ohio Admit No First-Hand Knowledge

“I’m not sure I’m the most credible source because I don’t actually know the person who lost the cat,” Kimberly Newton told NewsGuard. She is the Springfield, Ohio, resident whose story started it all

So.. uh... unsourced post by someone who allegedly describes themselves as "...a Democrat who supports Donald Trump" in a local Facebook group gets amplified via Twitter to...

Thinking about various Nextdoor posters.

[ related topics: Technology and Culture Food Current Events Television ]

Fuuu. I'm going to have to build one of these. Carpentopod: a walking table project. Guy designs a 6 legged walking mechanism linkage reminiscent of Theo Jansen's Strandbeest sculptures (but simpler), integrates it into a coffee table.

[ related topics: Furniture ]

Reading the Mike Healy editorial on the proposed downtown Petaluma overlay, and thinking about how Lance Kuehne is also positioning himself as the anti-overlay candidate, and thinking about vote splitting, and wondering how this is all gonna go down.

https://www.petaluma360.com/ar...luma-overlay-zone-hotel-problem/

[ related topics: Travel ]

Genetic Evidence Overrules Ecocide Theory of Easter Island Once And For All

"These results do not support a major population collapse on Rapa Nui after its initial peopling and before the 1800s," conclude the authors of the study, led by geneticists from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark and the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.

A large body of archaeological and anthropological data has already contradicted the ecocide theory of Rapa Nui. But this new research is the first to undermine the story using ancient genomic data.

Via Metafilter which includes this comment from nelson:

Direct link to study. Includes a couple of sections on community engagement. We're a long way from the old days when archaeologists just stole DNA and artifacts from people.

The most exciting part of this work to me is the clear evidence of some small amount of mixing between Polynesian and Native American populations. The evidence has been leaning that way for a long time, most notably the presence of sweet potatoes in the parts of Polynesia closest to South America). But this new analysis both provides more evidence and gives very specific kinds of evidence of exactly which populations mixed and roughly when.

Further down the thread there's a recommendation for K.R. Howe's Vaka Moana, Voyages of the Ancestors: The Discovery and Settlement of the Pacific, which looks fascinating, and (again to quote the thread) an antidote to "Heyerdahl nonsense".

One of the things I realized recently is that I know that various cultures in the Americas had woven cloth, but I have no idea about the technologies that those peoples were using for spinning yarn and weaving cloth, especially from plant fibers. And yet they were doing so...

[ related topics: Nature and environment Invention and Design Food Work, productivity and environment California Culture Community Skating Education ]

RT mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io

Shout out to everyone smart enough to figure out that "They're eating the dogs and cats!" is just a lie that racists say, but not smart enough to figure out that "They're closing drug stores because of shoplifting!" is exactly the same thing.🤡

Linking to this awfully headlined America’s stores are winning the war on shoplifting (which was, you know, never actually a problem...):

Some retail analysts have suggested companies may have overblown the impact of shrink and theft to mask other problems. William Blair analysts last year suggested that chains had “overexaggerated” the impact, using it as an excuse for inventory mismanagement and strategic mistakes. Walgreens’ then-chief financial officer James Kehoe indicated last year that the company may have gone too far: “Maybe we cried too much” about theft and other losses, he said.

Golly. You don't fucking say?

[ related topics: Health History Dogs ]

Pivot to AI has a look at OpenAI's new "strawberry" model. Short version: it gets the number of "r"s in "strawberry" right more often now, still can't give you a list of states with "a" in them.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Artificial Intelligence ]

The problem with having so many interests is that I could easily spend all morning diving into some of the cited papers in this work, but instead I'm gonna go out and make some sawdust 'cause it feels like an "I need to make sawdust" kind of morning. Macroeconomic Forecasting with Large Language Models by Andrea Carriero, Davide Pettenuzzo, Shubhranshu Shekhar (PDF). Via

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment ]

Playing around with handheld router technique this morning.

[ related topics: Photography Woodworking ]

Holy shit, it's real! LA Times: The summer COVID-19 surge may be dipping — just like life expectancy

Via https://bird.makeup/users/thev...nic/statuses/1834534386173157811

[ related topics: Photography California Culture Birds ]

What's most amazing about this story isn't that someone posted something horribly racist on a local Facebook group, I mean, that's what Nextdoor and local Facebook groups *do*. It's the layers of racism that led this to be amplified to the national level. I'm kind of fringe in how much I believe racism permeates the world around me, indeed, even in my own beliefs which I try to examine and adjust, but... Dayumn.

'It just exploded': Springfield woman claims she never meant to spark false rumors about Haitians

Triple Hearsay: Original Sources of the Claim that Haitians Eat Pets in Ohio Admit No First-Hand Knowledge

Meanwhile, yeah, there's a blurry video of someone grilling stuff (hard to tell fromthe video, could be chicken) that's allegedly from Dayton floating around, JD Vance shares social media post about immigrants cooking pets in Dayton, city refutes it, Ohio police dispute new allegations immigrants are eating pets in Dayton

[ related topics: Invention and Design Food Current Events Journalism and Media Law Enforcement Boats Birds Race Video ]

‘The data on extreme human ageing is rotten from the inside out’ – Ig Nobel winner Saul Justin Newman

In the MeFi link, user gauche observes:

The state-specific introduction of birth certificates is associated with a 69-82% fall in the number of supercentenarian records.

So we know that birth certificates are killing old people. We just don’t know how.

So, yeah, the remaining "BlueZone"s seem to be just wealth correlated...

Massachusetts Introduces Bill To Legalize Kei Cars

State Representative Steven S. Howitt’s HD.5357 would create a legal definition of a kei car that lines up with the original Japanese rules about size and engine displacement. It would also force the RMV to implement an inspection and registration process for cars that are imported under the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards’ 25-year rule and require it to approve the registration of any cars that met the safety standards in their home countries.

[ related topics: Law Automobiles Machinery ]

Contra papers claiming superhuman AI forecasting

[ related topics: Artificial Intelligence ]

RT Frederic Thevenet @fthevenet@mastodon.social

@davidgerard

At long last, a definitive answer to the age old question; how can you tell what's 'AI' from what's merely 'ML' or just plain old computers crunching numbers?

Well, "Statistics is written in R, Machine Learning is written in Python and Artificial Intelligence is written in Powerpoint".

Thanks @davidgerard !

[ related topics: Monty Python Mathematics Education Artificial Intelligence Python ]

In one of my posts mentioning how much of the shoplifting mania of the last few years was manufactured outrage (and, it's been suggested, a lot of that was managers (presumably getting paid while) looking the other way while stuff disappeared off the loading dock, rather than going out the front door, theft can come from a lot of sources.

So, yeah, it's facile to say "sure, the reasons we don't have grocery stores in poor areas is shrinkage", but... the convenience store at the end of my white upper middle class street used to carry some produce, no longer does, and I'm pretty sure the cause isn't shoplifting. So I decided to dig in a bit. (Quickly) Read a few more than I'm linking to here...

Food Deserts: Evaluating Grocery Stores and Bus Accessibility using GIS in Madison, Wisconsin Masrudy Omri Brian Resch Laura Gundlach and William G. Gartner discusses the issues with mobility in poor neighborhoods impacting the supermarket model.

Do residents of food deserts express different food buying preferences compared to residents of food oases? A mixed-methods analysis delves into different buying preferences in poor neighborhoods, and how time and budget are big factors between the demographics of food oasis vs food desert neighborhoods and, yes, does acknowledge that from a consumer standpoint theft was a consideration.

My take-away is that, yeah, there's shrinkage in stores in poor neighborhoods, but the relationship is quite a bit more complex than that. And the story about shoplifting in the last few years doesn't add upt.

[ related topics: Food Bioinformatics Consumerism and advertising Marketing Race Public Transportation ]

Hell yeah: Change.org: Governor Newsom: Save Lives by Requiring Speeding Alerts in Cars and Trucks. SB 961 has made it to the governor's desk!

[ related topics: Machinery ]

@sierdy tooted

one day pro wrestling will allow heterosexual wrestlers.

and the resulting thread surfaced: NPR: Appalachian Wrestling's Greatest Villain: 'The Progressive Liberal'

So, uh, cops in New York City shot 2 bystanders while apprehending a guy with a pocket knife over a $2.90 fare evasion.

One of those two passengers hit by the cops' bullets, a 49-year-old man, was hospitalized in critical condition after he was hit struck in the head, according to the NYPD.

Can you imagine the bloodbath if they treated the casual misuse of deadly weapons used to kill tens of thousands every year, ie: speeding, similarly?

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Invention and Design Current Events Law Enforcement Guns New York Public Transportation ]

BART's PR folks are having fun (and it's a neat article): The Transbay Tube turns 50: Inside the groundbreaking history and future of the Bay's underwater crossing

To some, it was a preposterous notion – train rides under the ocean?!? -- but the nonbelievers quickly hushed on that fateful day in 1974. They, too, wanted to take an underwater voyage from Oakland to San Francisco.

[ related topics: Bay Area Current Events California Culture Machinery Trains Public Transportation ]

A rockslide-generated tsunami in a Greenland fjord rang Earth for 9 days.

A large rockslide occurred in Greenland on 16 September 2023 that generated a local tsunami. The event was energetic enough to generate a global signal that resonated for 9 days. Svennevig et al. used a range of geophysical tools to detail the sequence of events that occurred and then determined the origin of the global signal. The authors found that the signal was generated by standing waves in the Dickson fjord due to the rockslide.

Some really cool stuff in here about the elevation data sets used to determine volumes. And some cool stuff about modeling waves of fjords. DOI: 10.1126/science.adm924

Via Ars Technica: Bizarre, nine-day seismic signal caused by epic landslide in Greenland.

[ related topics: tolkien Bioinformatics ]

Looks like stripping <sup> codes is not a good strategy...

Via @KevinMarks

[ related topics: Photography ]

Decided that waiting for a weekend I was willing to give up wasn't gonna get me vaccinated, so yesterday I got the new COVID, flu, and the first shingles shot. Today sucks.

[ related topics: Invention and Design ]

Awesome: San Francisco cops are using a silly stunt to catch crosswalk violators

“If you don’t see someone in a giant chicken costume, then we really have a problem,” he said.

Also awesome because after several years of apparently not enforcing traffic laws, SFPD has decided to start again.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Food Bay Area Law Enforcement California Culture Birds Government ]

Lots of vibe this morning on the socials about predicting when the bubble is gonna pop...

Thirsty Bear: Your AI code generators are your new net-negative developers

Where's your Ed at: The Subprime AI Crisis

The Guardian: Data center emissions probably 662% higher than big tech claims. Can it keep up the ruse?

RT Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦 @rysiek@mstdn.social

As of Q2 2024 almost half of all US VC investment is going into #AI hype https://sherwood.news/business...unding-ai-companies-investments/

That's $27.1B. Twenty-seven point one billion dollars.

[dr Evil's pinky-to-corner-of-mouth intensifies]

What I'm saying is: they are running out of marks to scam out of investment money, folks.

And as much as there is talk about OpenAI's revenue, I have seen nothing about OpenAI or anyone in this space actually making a *profit*.

Apart from shovel-and-pickaxe vendors like #Nvidia, of course.

RT Shannon Prickett @Binder@petrous.vislae.town

It’s called Gemini because it’s a smaller version of the LLM which General Electric uses.

[ related topics: Weblogs Invention and Design moron Space & Astronomy Current Events Graphics Sports Currency Artificial Intelligence Economics ]

Just a place to stash these links: RT Adrianna Tan @skinnylatte@hachyderm.io

The not remotely liberal Cato Institute (h/t @MLNow):

- 89 percent of convicted fentanyl traffickers in 2022 were US citizens

- Nearly 99 percent of America’s fentanyl buyers are US citizens

- At most, 0.009 percent of the people arrested mfor crossing illegally were in possession of fentanyl

Deporting dealers is, like every other tough on crime policy, just for show.

Goes without saying calling this out is NOT the same as supporting dealing.

https://www.cato.org/blog/us-c...victed-fentanyl-traffickers-2022

https://missionlocal.org/2024/09/fentanyl-san-francisco-deport/

[ related topics: Weblogs ]

Damn it, this Chuck Tingle fan service may be more than I can resist: Pounded By This Expanded Bike Lane Which Is An Important Solution When Creating A City That’s Less Dependent On Cars

[ related topics: Books Bicycling ]

EFF is looking for help in shooting down the Patent Eligibility Restoration Act. I'm in.

https://act.eff.org/action/tel...we-can-t-afford-more-bad-patents

[ related topics: Intellectual Property Politics Free Speech ]

You are missing out on the discussion of traffic impacts of micro-enterprise home kitchens... Policy discussions are fascinating.

[ related topics: Community ]

With the news that the NYPD spent $150M to catch $104k in fare evasion, I'm pondering what the world would look like if we put similar resources and deadly force towards, say, drivers who speed.

Kinda puts what the system is really there to accomplish in perspective.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Current Events ]

RT tillian (returning soon) @mynameistillian@plush.city

mozilla withdrawing from mastodon due to a lack of funds but having enough money to finance shitty ai research is like finding out your local library closed because they spent all their money on an inflatable dinosaur exhibit

[ related topics: Language Books Open Source Currency Artificial Intelligence ]

So yesterday, around 2,700 people were injured and 11 people were killed when pagers exploded across Lebanon: Hezbollah vows to punish Israel after pager explosions across Lebanon, 11 dead, thousands injured in explosive supply chain attack on Hezbollah pagers, and overnight it appears that walkie-talkies were also compromised: Hezbollah hand-held radios detonate across Lebanon, sources say.

Probably a fairly niche purchase, a couple of thousand pagers, but the notion that the supply chain could be this discretely compromised is interesting.

So there's a context into which to read this... Secure Boot-neutering PKfail debacle is more prevalent than anyone knew — Keys were marked "DO NOT TRUST." More devices than previously known used them anyway. ATMs, Point-of-sale terminals, voting machines...

Edit: Spencer Ackerman: A New Tactical Era of Supply-Chain Sabotage at Scale has some additional details and musings.

Edit 2: AP reports solar energy systems exploding, Via Slashdot.

[ related topics: Consumerism and advertising Shoes ]

SocialAI: we tried the Twitter clone where no other humans are allowed / Surround yourself with adoring bots instead of humans. Just like Twitter, only you get to choose the tone of the bots.

[ related topics: Artificial Intelligence ]

I have been in the "meh, smartphones are smartphones" camp, but my voice teacher and I have been playing around with video, and holy crap her iPhone of probably the same vintage as my Google Pixel 7 has a *remarkably* better camera. Jaw droppingly better dynamic range control.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Photography Graphics Video iPhone ]

A lot of folks are dunking on Mozilla for dropping its Fediverse instance, including me, but I think it really speaks to how difficult it is to run a social media node that isn't awful.

As I see the NextDOortion awfulness play out, and Facebook trying to cram content that isn't my friends down my throat, it's a reminder that social connection is hard to make profitable, and most vendors are horrendously exploitive to make it a business...

[ related topics: Open Source Journalism and Media ]

Fucking ouch (and Shoup is one of my heroes): RT Dan Savage @fakedansavage

Every city on earth older than 100ish years was a "car-free city built from scratch."

Donald Shoup @DonaldShoup

Culdesac, AZ, is the First Car-free City Built from Scratch - https://goo.gl/alerts/VFGqsH #GoogleAlerts

[ related topics: Automobiles ]

US Coast Guard Titan Submersible Marine Board of Investigation.

Via Tube🍂Time @tubetime@mastodon.social's thread, with highlights, including that hull testing was done to a safety factor of 1.09, some detail on how the o-rings were seated, and more.

[ related topics: Current Events ]

Why wordfreq will not be updated

I don't think anyone has reliable information about post-2021 language usage by humans.

The open Web (via OSCAR) was one of wordfreq's data sources. Now the Web at large is full of slop generated by large language models, written by no one to communicate nothing. Including this slop in the data skews the word frequencies.

So if the Saudis and petro-dollars are gonna go all-in on the AI bubble, can we agree to hang them fucking out to dry when the AI bubble pops? No more "too big to fail".

https://finance.yahoo.com/news...soft-aim-raise-30-202200420.html

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Humor Microsoft moron Current Events Artificial Intelligence ]

This is a devastating piece of reporting and an incredible read: SF Chronicle: This is the secret system that covers up police misconduct — and ensures problem officers can get hired again

In many cases, police departments hid alleged misconduct even while maintaining it occurred. In every case where reporters could establish the outcome of a department’s internal investigation through documents or interviews, they found that clean-record agreements were given after police agencies had fired the officer, or had begun the process of doing so, based on what they saw as clear evidence of wrongdoing.

Via

[ related topics: Bay Area Law Law Enforcement Woodworking ]

The radios that exploded had been off the market for over a decade, so had to have been sitting in the warehouse of some surplus dealer for a while.

And I'm thinking about all of the haggle-expected cut-rate electronics and music gear vendors that ... have a stereotype..., and wondering how that inventory gets tracked.

[ related topics: Music Economics ]

Finally got out at dusk to see A Fine Balance illuminated.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Just another shot of A Fine Balance.

[ related topics: Photography ]

RT skinnylatte@hachyderm.io Adrianna Tan @skinnylatte@hachyderm.io

In America there are six seasons. Spring, tax season, summer, fall, open enrollment season and winter

Apropos of that, though not actually news if you've been paying attention: US health system ranks last compared with peer nations, report finds

The United States health system ranked dead last in an international comparison of 10 peer nations, according to a new report by the Commonwealth Fund.

In spite of Americans paying nearly double that of other countries, the system performed poorly on health equity, access to care and outcomes.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics Health Invention and Design Current Events Work, productivity and environment ]

I think my favorite new "so close to getting it" story is the letter to the Petaluma mayor on the D Street rework complaining that they "...had to slow down to figure out what to do."

[ related topics: Invention and Design ]

The Royal Armory gets hip to modern lingo.

[ related topics: Consumerism and advertising ]

Currently wondering if an LLM wrote this Google Identity doc. At any rate, wow MacOS is the stepchild of this system.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Macintosh ]

Continuing to log my razor blade sampler from West Coast Shaving: Gilette 7 o'clock Super Stainless: fine first shave, fast degradation.

Feather New Hi-Stainless platinum coated might be my favorite so far. Not super long lasting, but so smooth during the useful period.

[ related topics: Invention and Design California Culture ]

How come all of this fentanyl awareness advertising feels more oriented pro than the presumably intended con? Feels like there's some fundamental flaw in humanity.

[ related topics: Photography Consumerism and advertising ]

Russia goes all-out with covert disinformation aimed at Harris, Microsoft report says

Microsoft explained that the video blaming Harris for a fake hit-and-run incident came from a Russian-aligned influence network it calls Storm-1516, which other researchers refer to as CopyCop. The video, whose main character is played by an actor, is typical of the group’s efforts to react to current events with authentic-seeming “whistleblower” accounts that may seem like juicy unreported news to U.S. voters, the company said.

Microsoft blog entry.

[ related topics: Humor Weblogs Microsoft Movies broadband moron Current Events Video ]

RT skinnylatte@hachyderm.io Adrianna Tan @skinnylatte@hachyderm.io

Everything makes sense when you think of everything in America as simply a tool of financial engineering.

It's breathtaking really. Even stuff that's supposed to help you: various healthcare benefits, etc, they're all tax things, they're all financial instruments.

The other day I tried to call someone about a vet bill with a question and I got a machine pitching me A CREDIT CARD ONLY FOR VET BILLS, FOR LOW INCOME PEOPLE

What is this timeline, let me get off the bus

to which 😀🚲 @enobacon@urbanists.social added:

The design of our cities is a product of financial engineering herding people into ongoing payments for a mortgage, car, and gas.

[ related topics: Politics Automobiles Graphic Design Public Transportation ]

NBC catching on to what Kevin Beaumont saw: How Elon Musk amplified content from a suspected Russian election interference plot. NBC's spin is interesting:

Musk, apparently unaware of the company’s Russia funding source, engaged with content from Tenet Media and its creators at least 60 times.

Given that the dude is clearly deeply engaged with foreign interests on many fronts, I think Mike Spooner's observation that "Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice" applies.

[ related topics: Space & Astronomy Journalism and Media Woodworking ]

I remember...

Post in the local give stuff away group: "ISO river rocks for edging", and the Internet has ruined me.

[ related topics: Net Culture ]

It is astounding how much of Facebook is built on pushing web comics piracy into my feed. If we had an RIAA equivalent for web comics, they'd go the way of Napster.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Comics ]

Charlene has COVID, tested solidly positive yesterday. So far I'm testing negative...

Anybody have a favorite introduction to Georgism speaker, or even video? We're looking for program for Know Before You Grow.

The BritMonkey 101 video is okay, though Charlene had some questions after it, and it's a bit absolutist in application: https://youtu.be/smi_iIoKybg

This one feels like it should go deeper. https://youtu.be/kxvXzM1mBWo

The others we watched felt very 1970s...

[ related topics: Movies Software Engineering Video ]

RT Sophie 🎲🧩🏳️‍⚧️ @Sophie@dice.camp

Ok so here’s something everyone should be aware of:

Computer mice are facing you.

The wire is the mouse’s tail, right?

That means those things you push down on aren’t buttons,

they’re buttocks.

LMB= Left Mouse Buttock RMB = Right Mouse Buttock

So re this "CREDIT ARTISTS. ON EVERYTHING.", all the time, toot, Charlene and I have been enjoying the singing circle community, and that's one of the strong practices. And it's awesome.

https://mastodon.social/@edk/113188414533006442

[ related topics: Art & Culture Community ]

RT Joe Groff @joe@f.duriansoftware.com

Our stopped clock technology is still in its infancy, but it's already reached an accuracy rate of two or more times per day, and there's no reason for us to believe that won't improve dramatically in the future

Hmmm. Now that I know I'm interacting with blind people on Mastodon, I need to figure out how to up my alt-text game, especially since my image posts there are links back to my personal site, and the uploader to the that site doesn't know how to do alt text easily.

Which means reworking the CMS, which means...

[ related topics: Games Content Management Handicaps & Disabilities ]

Some notes on adversarial attacks on LLMs.

RT Lukasz Olejnik @LukaszOlejnik@mastodon.social

GREAT change is approaching. NIST will standardise prohibition of requirement of composing passwords from various character styles, and requirement for periodic password changes. These are harmful and obsolete rules. Now they will be treated as a cybersecurity weakness https://pages.nist.gov/800-63-4/sp800-63b.html

See 3.1.1 Passwords

Wrote a parser for command interaction and simple scripting with work product. Adding flow control. Nothing like writing a language to remind oneself about how LISP happened, and how JavaScript evolved from that.

[ related topics: Writing Work, productivity and environment ]

Daniel might come down to use the shop to do some mods on the guitar we built almost 12 years ago, and we've been throwing around ideas for another one. One of the concepts tossed about involved infinity mirrors. I had some LEDs and some mylar and a small hobby mirror, so I decided to make a small lamp, and Charlene interrupted me for a test...

[ related topics: Music Photography ]

Another infinity mirror test

[ related topics: Photography ]

A third infinity mirror test

[ related topics: Photography ]

No lights, no mylar

[ related topics: Photography ]

Fixing the third view

[ related topics: Photography ]

Fixing the third view for real

[ related topics: Photography ]

No lights, no mylar

[ related topics: Photography ]

Retail Brew: Two in three shoppers won’t buy products in locked display cases

A September 13 CNN article noted that retail executives seem to be sounding the alarm less about theft, which they speak about under the rubric of “shrink.” Mentions of “shrink” on earnings calls for the first two quarters of 2024 were down 20% compared to the same period a year ago according to a FactSet analysis cited by CNN.

“A year ago, America’s stores declared a shoplifting epidemic,” stated the CNN article. “This year, retailers are telling a very different story—or no story at all. It’s as if the shoplifting crisis suddenly vanished.”

Consumer World: Shoppers rebel against stores with products in locked displays, most say they will buy them elsewhere

So on Saturday evening, we needed a COVID test. I checked the CVS website, but foolishly didn't order. I went over to CVS and bought a single test in a box, that the guy retrieved from behind the counter, for $10.

Later we needed a few more, so I went on to the CVS website and ordered the two-in-a-box for $16.

If you're gonna put stuff behind the counter or behind locked glass, online ordering becomes the way to shop, and fulfillment is a different business than retail browsing.

And, of course, my previous experiences with Petco apply here.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Consumerism and advertising Archival ]

LAPD raid goes from bad to farce after gun allegedly sucked onto MRI machine. Cops claim they smell cannabis, get a warrant for busting into a medical imaging facility on the basis of it being an unlicensed grow operation, and shit just gets weird from there...

An officer then allegedly pulled a sealed emergency release button that shut the MRI machine down, deactivating it, evaporating thousands of liters of helium gas and damaging the machine in the process. The officer then grabbed his rifle and left the room, leaving behind a magazine filled with bullets on the office floor, according to the lawsuit.

Based on this article on Law360 that requires registration and a log-in, has this delightful bit of shade:

Franco discovered that the "target premises" was a medical diagnostic center, but it did not have a cultivation license, the suit said. That, and all of the other bits of information he gleaned from looking at the building, was enough for Franco to seek a search warrant. Franco has been a police officer for 15 years and apparently has had 12 hours' worth of narcotics training.

[ related topics: Privacy Law Enforcement California Culture Guns ]

Nature: Larger and more instructable language models become less reliable.

We also find that early models often avoid user questions but scaled-up, shaped-up models tend to give an apparently sensible yet wrong answer much more often, including errors on difficult questions that human supervisors frequently overlook. Moreover, we observe that stability to different natural phrasings of the same question is improved by scaling-up and shaping-up interventions, but pockets of variability persist across difficulty levels. These findings highlight the need for a fundamental shift in the design and development of general-purpose artificial intelligence, particularly in high-stakes areas for which a predictable distribution of errors is paramount.

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07930-y

Via.

[ related topics: Nature and environment Invention and Design Graphic Design Artificial Intelligence ]

Oh fun. Chrome as my system browser, and Firebase "log in with Google" works just fine. Safari as my system browser, and... we can't figure out what it's doing, but no joy.

Really wish Apple would support Safari on the Mac platform (and support the Mac platform generally).

Also, why does Sequioa seem to often drop my window resize cursors?

[ related topics: Apple Computer Macintosh ]

Reuters: Exclusive: OpenAI to remove non-profit control and give Sam Altman equity.

RT Kit Bashir @Unixbigot@aus.social

Shocked, *shocked* to hear¹ that OpenAI was three VCs in a nonprofit trenchcoat.

¹ https://arstechnica.com/?p=2052614

Yale School for the Environment: Road Hazard: Evidence Mounts on Toxic Pollution from Tires

Via

[ related topics: Children and growing up Nature and environment ]

Dear Google Gemini, if the Airbus A330 actually burned 2.6GPH we'd be having a very different climate discussion right now.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography Aviation Community Global Warming ]

I mean, yeah, laws serve capital, but it's nice to have specifics. The Guardian: Revealed: how the fossil fuel industry helps spread anti-protest laws across the US

Emails between fossil fuel lobbyists and lawmakers in Utah, West Virginia, Idaho and Ohio suggest a nationwide strategy to deter people frustrated by government failure to tackle the climate crisis from peacefully disrupting the expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure by enacting tough laws with lengthy jail sentences.

Via

[ related topics: moron Current Events Civil Liberties Global Warming Government ]

Dumb Runner: New App Will Automatically Detect Pedestrian Collisions, Pay Nominal Fine

“With today’s large trucks and SUVs,” Rudd said, “drivers often find it hard to even see pedestrians from their elevated vantage points and over their vehicles’ enormous hoods.”

“An app like BoomZoom means they don’t have to. In the unfortunate event of a collision, drivers pay their nominal fine, justice is served, and everyone can move on.”

[ related topics: Weblogs Invention and Design Current Events Law Enforcement Machinery Handicaps & Disabilities ]

Meta hit with $101M fine in Ireland for storing passwords in plaintext.

Based on a bunch of conversations I've had in the Bay Area, I think there was a fundamental shift with kids who went to school in the late '90s and early noughts who didn't love computing, just the money it brought. And Facebook hired and promoted them.

https://arstechnica.com/securi...-storing-passwords-in-plaintext/

https://arstechnica.com/securi...-storing-passwords-in-plaintext/

[ related topics: Children and growing up California Culture Currency ]

Down with the sickness, so went for some mindless TV last night. Subscribed (8 day free trial) to Apple+ to watch Wolfs with a Google Chromecast.

So now I have 3 different Apple IDs (because I can't find the password for my other personal ID and didn't have time to deal with that shit), and the only explanation for the user experience of subscribing is that Apple wants to make the non-Apple device UX so crappy that you consider switching.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Technology and Culture Movies Television ]

ACG Case Reports Journal: Unusual Finding of an Intact Moth During Routine Colonoscopy

doi: 10.14309/crj.2014.21

[ related topics: Law ]

Over on Nextdoor, Teddy asked:

Can you articulate a positive vision for the future? Not a story about what’s wrong or who’s to blame but can you speak of a better world that you and I will leave behind after we are long gone?

And I answered:

I'd like to help my community create enough housing to meet the needs of all of its occupants. To allow for a variety of non-car solutions to mobility, so I can walk or use other modes (who knows, at some point it might be mobility scooter or wheelchair...) for most of my trips. A municipal government that's fiscally robust enough to support amenities like parks and public art and open spaces and infrastructure that help make a robust and vibrant space to visit and live in. And a community that's resilient to the challenges of climate change, and able to be a leader in policies that help mitigate the impacts of our life and lifestyle on climate change.

I'd like to foster a diverse community that exposes me to a variety of experiences and cultures. That celebrates the creative endeavors of those within it. A local economy that lets a variety of people live here in all stages of their lives. And a society that's dynamic and open to change to meet the needs of all of its people.

Continued in comments.

[ related topics: moron Theater & Plays Space & Astronomy Graphics Art & Culture Automobiles Community Handicaps & Disabilities Economics Real Estate Global Warming ]

Watching TV with the Second-Party: A First Look at Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) Tracking in Smart TVs (PDF). Or: your smart TV is watching everything that comes over the HDMI port and sending that info back to the manufacturer. Turning off ACR seems to work, but... you should probably just buy a monitor .

Our findings indicate that (1) ACR operates even when it is used as a “dumb” display via HDMI; (2) opt-out mecha- nisms stop ACR traffic; (3) ACR works differently in the UK as com- pared to the US.

Via

[ related topics: Technology and Culture Work, productivity and environment Television Handicaps & Disabilities ]

Listening to Kirk Hamilton, of Strong Songs, talking with Dave Hamilton (no relation) on Gig Gab, and they're talking about media fads.

I think we can draw a line from Facebook faking video engagement numbers through VR/AR to the LLM bubble.

(Aside: identifying "Wendy" in Springsteen's "Born To Run" with Peter Pan is cool...)

[ related topics: Star Trek Journalism and Media Pop Culture Video ]

It occurs to me that, by examining Google Maps route choices between tolls and no tools, we might actually be able to put a time value on driving...

[ related topics: Maps and Mapping ]

That realization that it's the people who've made social media unpleasant, especially local social media, who are loudest about their determination to guide the future of a city...

[ related topics: Journalism and Media Douglas Adams ]

Among the listenings in the shop today, Evan Mast talking about the relationship between market rate housing and rents. Supply and demand still applies. Go figure.

https://www.lewis.ucla.edu/pro...sing/ucla-housing-voice-podcast/

[ related topics: Economics Real Estate ]

And Friday was miserable, yesterday I was a total lump, today I got out in the shop and did some stuff (built some fixtures for bandsaw bearings, still don't know why the blade is drifting like it is, need to get work sorted so I feel justified in springing for the Carter upgrade rather than something I built myself with a file and a hack saw and skate bearings).

But I'm definitely testing positive for COVID now. Ugh.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment Heinlein Skating Woodworking ]

Okay, now it's fall. And, gulp, fire season. Heat advisory through Wednesday, I'm working from home because COVID, so we pay for our own AC...

[ related topics: Photography Work, productivity and environment Pyrotechnics ]

Charlene and I finally got around to watching "To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar", 29 years after its release.

It's kind of a subdued episode of "We're Here", with more buffoonish villains.

RT Sven S. Svensson @wegonnaseeno@thepit.social

parts of north carolina received FORTY FOUR inches of rain over 48 hours.

keep arguing about parking spaces, fuckheads #environment #climate #helene

[ related topics: Nature and environment Global Warming ]

RT Andrea Junker :verified: @Strandjunker@mstdn.social

It’s quite fascinating how so many are ashamed of their bodies, but so few of their brains.

Ethically sourced Lena image.

Wikipedia on the Lena (pronounced "Lenna") image