Turns out the AI are learning to code. Two immediate takeaways from that:
1) There goes another career path.
2) Dear Sweet Baby Jeebus, have none of these people ever watched *any* science fiction? Giving an AI that has a demonstrated lack of morality the ability to re-write itself is the very height of “I *told* you not to do that!” insanity.
I saw a somewhat astonishing thing today. GPT was asked a question that it needed to write code to answer, and given access to a Python REPL. It wrote buggy code, then based on the error message it fixed its own code until it worked (and gave the correct answer). It debugged. pic.twitter.com/O6cdxH8gvC
A university in Tokyo has made a four-legged spider robot. That’s nothing too special, except that it can fly. Unfortunately, in order to fly it has to be extremely light weight, which means its joints and servos are incredibly weak. In order to walk it needs its thrusters to fly its legs from position to position.
The train crash in East Palestine Ohio was a toxic mess. Those claiming that everything is just fine now seem to not be entirely accurate in their assessments.
NEW – Today, U.S. Senator Vance visited East Palestine, Ohio, where a train carrying toxic chemicals derailed.
A lot of people are trying to shift blame, including (of course) blaming Trump because he cancelled regulations about adding electronic braking to trains carrying certain dangerous payloads. It’s not at all clear that that would have made the slightest difference here. Especially when you look at the video below: those tracks are so screwed up that I don’t imagine any brakes in the universe would have prevented derailing if the train went too fast. These are just awful. However, I believe the video is fairly old and from a minor rail line; it’s doubtful that a *major* rail line that would carry dangerous chemicals in large quantities would even try to run on rails like this. Nevertheless… yow.
Shocking! This is an actual freight train moving over a twisted, "bendy" railway track linking Ohio and Indiana in the USA!!
Debunkings can be fun, once you get past the headache and heartache of having to debunk nonsense in the first place. Penn & Tellers “BS” is sadly missed here, but this video might help tide you over a bit. It has become politically fashionable in recent years to erase the actual inventors of numerous objects and ideas and replace them with people more politically expedient and useful, despite the fact that their roles in the inventions are often minimal, or misunderstood, or simply nonexistent.
The woman responsible for the original video claims to be a historian, or at least getting schooled in history. Yet her “history” is filled not just with factual inaccuracies, but easily fixable factual inaccuracies. She was either lazy or, as I think more likely, willing to dupe herself to reach a desired conclusion. Neither is a good look for a “historian.”
I have a particular hatred for re-writing the history of science. Science is a process; it is probably mankinds greatest invention. It has allowed us to rise up out of the muck and we’re now on the precipice of launching ourselves out into space. This will be the greatest moment in human history. But science cannot function if you are so readily willing to lie about it. If verifiable objective facts can be swept under the rug in favor of a preferred outcome, science collapses. Women like this would, given their druthers, bring about a new dark age.
The idea that there are bioweapon labs in Ukraine is pretty effectively debunked by Ryan McBeth:
The fact that there are *biological* labs in Ukraine strikes me as entirely unsuprising… and entirely to be expected. Ukraine is an agricultural nation, and where you find agriculture *and* modern society, you find laboratories that study agriculture. And a large part of that is studying the diseases and pests that can damage agriculture. The midwest of the United States is littered with such labs, many in local universities, where researchers study everything from anthrax to locusts, aphids to fungi. But the Russian propagandists months ago made a big, fake deal of this, and a distressing number of people in the West fell for it.
I don’t know how reliable this is, but if it’s accurate… yee haw. 2023 is just the year that keeps on giving. A small asteroid 9~1 meter) is aimed at the south side of the English channel, impacting 03:00:03 UT tomorrow. Probably won;t make it to the water as a single object, but most likely will kerplode at altitude.
🚨ATTENTION! A small asteroid is expected to safely impact the French-English channel in ~4 hours time, 03:00:03 UT tomorrow. Object size is around ~1 meter and should appear as bright as the Moon momentarily as it enters the atmosphere. Approx visibility circle posted below. 1/ pic.twitter.com/Ckh5OBsz4l
It’s the sort of terrain where, on Earth, I’d not be surprised to see a fossil shell or footprint. That’s doubtless too much to ask *here,* but the evidence of water just sitting there like that is pretty spectacular.
Feel free to try to imagine “other ways of knowing” providing this.
Turns out the Chinese are zapping surface targets with lasers. This *seems* to be a benign scientific technique, checking atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide and pollution and whatnot… but this is the Chinese Communist Party we’re talking about, so…
This sort of thing would be weird as hell to see out in the wild. I’m not sure if this is naked-eye visible, however, or if it took sensitive cameras to pick this up.
… photos taken by high-altitude U-2 planes confirmed the presence of the equipment, including “multiple antennas … likely capable of collecting and geo-locating communications” and “solar panels large enough to produce the requisite power to operate multiple active intelligence collection sensors.”
So, it was listening to us. Interesting to ponder just what it was listening *for.* Being a balloon, it would have had only minimal ability to target a specific site; it would have been able to scan a swathe of the country. Was it listening to cell phones? Was it listening for military-type transmissions and where they came from (looking for hidden bases/missiles/whatever)? Is the US going to start taking air defense seriously?
