- An AI company went bankrupt after it came out that its supposed “vibe-coding” AI was a team of 700 Indian software engineers. Even Microsoft fell for it, and threw gobs of money at them. Which brings up an interesting question: How do possible investors (or anyone else) know where (and even what) an AI is?
- Not everyone thinks that vibe coding is slam-dunk easy. A Stanford prof does it, and says it’s intellectually exhausting—just like “manual” coding is. The trick with all AI work is knowing how to create the prompts that will deliver the desired results. Although I’ve not tried vibe coding with an AI yet, my experience with text and images suggests that “prompt engineering” is the real challenge, and to me, prompt engineering looks like programming in yet another English-like language.
- Meta signed a 20-year deal with Constellation Energy, to help fund new nuclear generation capacity, starting with a plant in Illinois. If carbon is indeed the problem, nuclear is the solution. I have had some peculiar experiences with AI over the past months, but I’m willing to root for AI as a way to bring nuclear power back from the grips of those Atomic Scientists who simply can’t force themselves to go fission.
- In case you missed it: Lazarus 4.0 is out. Compatibility with Delphi is high. The 4.0 system was built using FreePascal 3.2.2. Go get it here.
- Here’s a wonderful short-ish article on Mark Twain’s rowdy early years in (bogglingly) rowdy Virginia City, Nevada.
- Today is the semiquincentennial of the US Army. Also the sestercentennial. Oh, and the bisesquicentennial too. Big words rock. I love ’em. And next year will be all those big words for the US itself, not to mention Carol’s and my 50th wedding anniversary.
- Classmates continues to send me nonsense. I supposedly have a private message waiting from a Maria G., who was in De Paul University’s Class of 1971. (The message was posted in 2007.) Well, I have that yearbook, and she’s not in it. (Her name, which I won’t quote here, is very unusual and I have been unable to find her online.) Some years back Classmates asked me if I knew a girl named Linda something, who was in the Lane Tech Class of 1970, like me. Uh…no. Lane was an all-boy school until a couple of years after I graduated. I gave Classmates money once. I won’t be giving them money again. They make up stuff like a…like an AI.
- Well, as far as I’m concerned, the famous TED talks are now over. An Australian prof who did all the necessary research was tossed out of the TED universe for a presentation that cast doubt on the perpetrators of useless COVID reactions like lockdowns, and showed evidence that the not-really-a-vaccine (you can get it and spread it!) caused more harm than good. TED stated right out that criticism of political and health leaders was verboten. Read the whole thing. (H/T to Sarah Hoyt for the link.)
Odd Lots
Short items presented without much discussion, generally links to other Web items
Odd Lots
Odd Lots
- I wrote about the dearth of color variety in cars a few years back. This morning I ran across an article about the same topic. And not only in cars, but in clothes and much else. He sees color variety as way down, along with color saturation.
- He may be on to something: There’s a new style of houses being built here in our area that I refer to as “Etruscan tombs” because they’re entirely white and all right angles, without curves or any kind of ornamentation. They look like they’re made of limestone or white marble:
- And cars, well, it’s not all bad news. Carol and I are seeing a lot more colors in cars around town these days, and the majority are bright and sometimes electric blue. But there are also yellows and oranges; not as many as blues but way more than we saw four or five years ago.
- By now I’m sure you’ve heard the buzz about “de-extincting” the dire wolf. I was suspicious of that claim, and turns out I’m right: What the genetic engineering firm did was modify gray wolf genes to make them look like what we think dire wolves looked like. The same firm created “woolly mice” through a more authentic process, by injecting a few recovered woolly mammoth genes into lab mice. Whether this is a good idea I’m not sure. We’ll see how far they can take it.
- As I wrote about sometime back, we dodged what might have been global extinction in the thick of the last ice age, when CO2 levels fell to the edge of what could support plant life on Earth. The claims of the climate doomscreamers haven’t panned out, and now we’re discovering that more CO2 in the atmosphere has led to a new greening peak, enlarging crops and reducing deserts. This looks like a big win to me.
- Computer modeling has solved one of mankind’s greatest problems, what some call “tinkle sprinkle”: urine splashing to one side of a urinal or another, getting on the floor, on adjacent urinal users, or on the user himself. The designs are clever and interesting in a number of ways, and one has to wonder what took us so long.
Odd Lots
- That’ll leave a mark, Mark: Unsealed emails indicate that Meta downloaded 81.7 terabytes of pirated books from sites like Anna’s Archive and LibGen. Why? To train their AIs. Most people would consider that a violation of copyright law all by itself apart from seeding the monster files while torrenting them.
- After hearing how bad eggs are for your cardiovascular health for literally decades, new research on the over-70 set finds that people in that age bracket who eat eggs six or seven days a week see a 29% reduction in heart disease. I have an extra-large egg every morning (I used to have two, until I realized one would carry me to lunch) and am much relieved. Carbs are the enemy. Eggs are your allies.
- Warner Brothers has dropped more than 30 of its feature-length films on YouTube without charge, including Waiting for Guffman and Oh, God! Note that this isn’t the YouTube paid service, but just plain, ordinary free YouTube. People wonder why, though I’d guess that WB is trying to establish itself as “the good guy” vis-a-vis old content, unlike The Mouse House, which cannot let anything go no matter how old or bad it is.
- As my regular readers know, I’m not much of a fan of AI—but I am a huge fan of nuclear power. What AI seems best at right now is persuading power utilities to put unused (“zombie”) nuclear plants back online, or even—egad!—building new ones. TechCrunch has a decent story. Me? More AI! More AI!
- I remember reading about this, um, eccentric—who claimed alien visitation and is now being sued by investors who were persuaded that he had invented an antigravity machine. Here’s the whole long-form story, from Bloomberg.
- Lazarus 3.8, a bugfix release, is now available. Worth it. Really. Pascal isn’t dead.
- From robocop to rolocop: Spherical Chinese robots are hitting Chinese streets to assist police in chasing crooks and breaking up riots. One plus: They’re pretty rugged. I can think of some minuses, and I’ll bet you can too.
- Here’s a world map showing what the commonest last name is in every country on Earth. Here? Smith. Same in Canada, Australia, and the UK. Who could have guessed?
- In the first cut of Google’s AI Super Bowl ad, the ad claimed that Gouda cheese represents from 50 to 60 percent of all cheese consumed here on Earth. They fixed it with a little non-artificial intelligence, heh. Ok, one could argue the point, since a lot of stuff labeled “cheese” isn’t really cheese as I understand the term—but even Velveeta doesn’t have numbers like that. Come for the football, stay for the Super Bowl AI hallucination about…cheese.
Odd Christmas Lots
- Be careful with your art and writing, making sure it can’t be misconstrued. (See above.) In the original draft of my story “Whale Meat” (which I wrote when I was 18) I used the word “frot” as the name of a magical power. I thought I invented the word. A friend later took me aside and told me what “frot” meant. I gulped and changed it to “zot.”
- My old friend Lee Hart took a forgotten 1844 Charles Dickens Christmas story, trimmed it down some, and modernized some Victorian archaisms. It’s free and very much worth reading. The Chimes is a short novel (about 20,000 words) so budget some time. I did a copy/paste into a Word .docx, so I could control the type size for the sake of these old eyes.
- While we’re talking Christmas stories, just a reminder that my Christmas story “The Camel’s Question” is still available for 99c on Amazon. More on the story in this entry from a few days back.
- While troubleshooting my Lionel ZW train transformer, I ran across a nice article on the ZW, which Lionel sold from 1948 to 1966. I may try to repair my ZW, though it won’t happen in time for Christmas this year. Or I may just hunt around on eBay until I find another one.
- (Not Christmas, but timely): The Altair 8800 personal computer, the one that began the desktop computer revolution, went on the market 50 years ago last Thursday, on December 19, 1974. I found it at the same site with the ZW article. Other interesting stuff there too.
- Our favorite spiked egg nog is Van Der Haute Egg Nog Traditional. Review here. We get it from Safeway, because Total Wine doesn’t carry it, nor Fry’s, though I won’t claim that no Kroger grocery does. Jewel-Osco carries it, if that’s your local store.
- If you’re mulling the issue of spiced holiday wines, consider Firebrand Spiced Red Wine, which Total Wine carries. It’s a sweet red with cinnamon, vanilla and fruit flavors that most people would consider a dessert wine. There is no vintage year on the label, which for wines of this sort really isn’t an issue.
- Sarah Hoyt recently published a book of four SF-flavored Christmas stories, called Christmas in the Stars. $2.99 on Kindle. I bought it but haven’t read it yet, although I’ve always enjoyed Sarah’s writing. And it’s making me wonder if there’s an AI SF story I could spin about Christmas. I haven’t written a short story since 2008, so it’s about time.
- Some of my older readers will know why lead tinsel was a forbidden pleasure back in the 50s and 60s. Well, you can buy it on eBay. Just search for “lead tinsel.” No shortage of choices. (It seems like the Germans may still use it!)
Odd Lots
- PLAUD recently announced their NotePin, a little AI device that hangs from a string around your neck. (I assume you could clip one to your lapel, which is what I would do.) I wrote about that concept in my SF and my magazine between 1984-1992. I called them "jiminies" after Pinocchio’s little advisor. Nice to see it become real!
- This is clever as hell: A sizeable chicken coop without a floor that moves to a new grassy spot in the pasture every day and thus gives chickens fresh grass, fresh bugs, and exercise. Some are even solar powered, wow.
- Here’s yet another reason to go low-carb and especially low-sugar: a study showing that high-sugar diets may inhibit neuron growth in the brain. I’ve been doing low-carb/sugar for 27 years now. I sure hope this study is correct!
- Wegovy and similar weight-loss drugs may treat alcoholism and opioid addiction. More research needed, obviously, but boy, that would be HUGE if proven.
- Lazarus 3.6 is now out. Built with FPC 3.2.2. Bugfix release, but why not have the latest?
- The Moon is getting its own time zone—or at least a system of standard time that would greatly help calculations of lunar missions. It’s made complicated by the fact that gravitational time dilation is involved; i.e., the gravity of the moon is less than Earth’s gravity, which makes a lunar second shorter than an Earth second. Not much, but at the speeds of spacecraft, that tiny difference can really mess up a mission. [Note well: I got this wrong the first time, and corrected the error here. Alex Dillard pointed out my error and provided a long and detailed explanation of the problem in the comments. Definitely read his comment!]
- Roy Harvey sent me a link to a BBC article about “knocker uppers,” the people who woke people up to go to work during the British industrial revolution by tapping on their windows with a long pole (especially for upper stories) or (egad) with little hammers. I guess the British never knew that “knocked up” meant “got pregnant” out here in the Colonies.
- From my friend Pete comes a report of a study indicating that high cholesterol isn’t a heart disease risk if you keep your diet low in carbs and sugar. I’ve heard that in a few other places, but this is a real study, and I sure hope it’s true, as I’ve been low carb/sugar now for over 25 years.
- Charlie Martin recently posted a number of superb astrophotos, including a picture of hurricane Milton from orbit. I can call them superb because astronomy has been a hobby of mine for over sixty years. Don’t miss it.
- Carol and I did see comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS from our front yard, but it was a bare smudge by naked eye, and only showed a trace of coma in binoculars. Yes, we live in Phoenix and light pollution can be intense here. That said, I’m pretty sure that comet Hale-Bopp (1997) and Hyakutake (1996) were lots brighter, and Hale-Bopp was visible for a very long time as comet appearances go.
Odd Lots
- It’s a little late but there’s still time to see it: Tonight will be the full Moon, and also a partial lunar eclipse. 7:45 PM makes it about ideal for the Pacific and Arizona time zone, with all the usual adjustments for Mountain, Central and Eastern.
- Scott Pinsker posted an article on PJMedia back on September 9th, about dogs allowing humans to out-compete Neanderthals. I wrote about that back in 2010: Dogs were alarm systems that made dawn raids ineffective. Lacking dogs, Neanderthals may have simply dawn-raided themselves into extinction.
- I’m looking for a book that defines terms and instruments used in classical music. Andante, allegro non troppo, adagio, the viola, the celesta, and that instrument consisting of a series of pieces of metal tubing hung from strings under a bar, whose name I just cannot recall. A lot of that stuff can be found online, but, well, I’m just partial to books. If you have one that you like, please mention it in a comment.
- The blinking cursor on our computer screens is now 54 years old. Here’s a short history of how it came about.
- It’s been a pretty sparse hurricane season, with the single exception of Beryl. Right now on NOAA’s hurricane map there is a dying hurricane in Arkansas, one named tropical storm, Gordon, and two disturbances with less than 40% chance of becoming cyclonic. We’re halfway through hurricane season, and not much has been happening. My take: predicting a hurricane season’s severity is a fool’s model. Too much chaos and butterfly effect. It could get worse any time. Or it might not. We won’t know until we get there.
- Who had this on their 2024 bingo cards? Good ‘ol Yellow #5 dye, in large quantities, makes living tissue temporarily transparent. Scientists have created temporarily transparent mice. No human trials have happened as yet. So go easy on those Cheetos, ok?
- This is boggling but perhaps inevitable, assuming it’s true—and I’m skeptical: A chemhacker group is creating software and desktop labware allowing people to synthesize expensive prescription medications at home. An $800 pill becomes a $1 pill. Yes, there are risks, but if you’re dying for lack of an expensive drug, well…
- Over on City Journal Michael Totten has a long-form meditation on Liu Cixin’s SF trilogy Remembrance of Earth’s Past that bears on the Fermi Paradox and the question of whether we should actively seek out alien life–or hide from it. A little outside what I see in City Journal, but well-worth reading.
Odd Lots
- The Sun spat out an X5.8 flare last night, the strongest of this solar cycle so far. I went out in the back yard and looked northeast, and damned if I didn’t catch fleeting glimpses of faint flickering light. Was too faint to discern color, but if it was an aurora, seeing it from Phoenix must be some kind of record.
- If you don’t have a link to the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center, bookmark it. I suspect that they’re going to have a lot to say during the solar maximum that’s now bearing down on us.
- I’m not expecting a Carrington-class event, but my longwire, by default, is switched to my engineered ground. I’m of two minds about listening to the low bands (or lack of low bands) while this storm is underway. 77 feet of wire is more than enough to develop enough voltage to spark with a strong enough coronal mass ejection. I don’t want to fry the front end of my IC-736.
- From the "That’s a Very Low Bar" Department: AIs can pretend to be stupider than they actually are. Forgive me if I say that they may be able to do it, but they’ll be BAD at it. Still, could AI’s "four-finger problem" be a joke on us? (By that I mean the tendency of AIs not to “know” how many fingers or toes a human being has.)
- Francis Turner’s opinions on LLM-style AI pretty much map to mine, and his Substack essay on the topic is a must read.
- I ran across an intriguing piece of music listening to KBAQ, our local classical station. It’s “Sky Blue After Rain” by Joseph Curiale, and consists of a piano and a Chinese erhu 2-stringed violin alternating with full orchestra. The piece is short (4:48) punchy, melodic, and when the orchestra picks it up, energetic. You can hear it on YouTube. Be sure to listen to the whole thing, even if the erhu grates on you. The orchestral part is worth it.
- Here’s a good short article explaining how cloud levels help regulate Earth’s temperatures.
- The highest observatory on Earth is now open for business, atop Cerro Chajnantor mountain in the Chilean Andes. The observatory was designed to capture infrared images with its boggling 6.5 meter (22 feet) clear aperture telescope.
- I have a robot dog with a 9mm gun in the (for now) dormant version of The Molten Flesh. What I didn’t imagine was a robot dog with a built-in flamethrower and laser targeting.
- While I was writing this entry, I had an idea: What if I unplug my antenna from the Icom and in its place on my antenna switch, put a coax plug with an NE2 neon bulb soldered across the connector. Well, it didn’t take but ten minutes (I’ve got plenty of neon bulbs and PL-259s) and the experiment is in place. Tonight when it gets dark I’m going to spend a little time out there in the garage, watching that NE-2.
Odd Lots
- Alas, we have lost my favorite country music star, Toby Keith, of stomach cancer, at 62. He had lots of hits, but may be most famous for “Should’ve Been a Cowboy,” the most-played country song of the 1990s. (And if you’ve never seen my filk “Should’ve Been a Jedi,” you can find it here.) Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him.
- Ever heard of Venus’ moon Zoozve? You say Venus doesn’t have any moons? Well…it’s complicated. And interesting. Not to mention funny as hell.
- Orkin (the bug people) posted a list of the top 50 US cities for bedbug infestations. My home town is #1. My current metro isn’t even on the list. I guess I chose wisely.
- February is National Grapefruit Month, and today is National Fettuccine Alfredo day. Alas, my birthday is National Mud Day—granting that when I was a kid, I played happily in the mud. How do I know such important things? Of course: There’s a website for it. Select a day, week, or month, and who knows what people will be celebrating?
- Well, it’s not exactly a flying car, but…it’ll do, it’ll do.
- Three million malware-infected smart toothbrushes were gathered into a botnet that tormented Swiss servers with DDOS attacks. Uggh. My toothbrush is smart enough to be dumb. And hey, it smells like Pepsodent. Can’t beat that!
- Trout gonads can cure baldness when injected into your head. So just eating the trout doesn’t work? Bummer. I’m out.
Odd Lots
- Happy New Year, gang! My prediction: 2024’s gonna to be a wild ride across the board. If popcorn weren’t so fattening I’d buy a pile of it.
- The Quadrantids meteor shower is tonight. The shower’s characteristic behavior is having a brief peak but an intense one. The predicted time of the peak is 7:53 AM EST, which would be 6:53 CST and 5:53 MST on 1/4/2024. That may sound awfully early to some of my night-owl readers, but Dash typically wakes us up by that time. I intend to be out watching for it, even though we have a first-quarter Moon—and it might rain. Hey, if you don’t play you can’t win.
- The JWST has begun showing us how many odd chunks of stuff are drifting around the galaxy without actually orbiting stars. Some of these rogue planets are in pairs, orbiting one another. Fascinating long-form piece on the phenom if astrophysics—or writing science fiction—is your thing.
- Here’s a dazzling video of a volcano erupting in Iceland. It’s unique because it shows the very beginning of the eruption, which almost resembles a sunrise. But then, boom! It gets spectacular!
- Sports Illustrated was buying articles generated by AI, with authors also invented by AI, right down to the author headshots. Futurism called them on it, and all questionable articles vanished. That doesn’t mean a few weren’t so ridiculous as to stand out and may still be there.
- Old timers like me will recall text user interfaces (TUIs) which, when we got started in computing, were what was on the menu. (It was a one-line menu.) Here’s a fun Substack piece about TUIs, and how in truth, modern GUI programming editors in IDEs don’t really give us much that we didn’t already have back then. Hell, when I was at Xerox in the early 80s somebody was passing around a Pac-Man game written in text mode for a 24X80 display.
- Alas, Bill Gladstone, who founded Waterside Productions, passed on to higher realms on 12/27. Waterside is the agency that represents my book-length nonfiction via agent Carole Jelen. We acquired a fair number of books through him during the Coriolis years. He knew what he was doing, and the world could use a few more agents with his savvy.
- New research suggests that red meat is not fatal. Body weight, not meat consumption, appears to cause the inflammation behind much cardiovascular disease. It’s carbs that put the weight on, as I’ve found over my past 25 years eating low-carb.
- Back before Christmas I was over at Total Wine buying vino to honor the Bambino, and was standing in the (long) line for the checkout beside a spinrack of hard liquor shooters. Most were things I’d heard of. But there…does that little bottle say it’s peanut butter and jelly sandwich whiskey? Yes, it did—so I bought one. Hey, 99c is cheap thrills. Carol and I tasted it when I got home. I expected to spit it out, but…it wasn’t half bad. From Skatterbrain, though Total Wine tells me it’s no longer available. Maybe the shooters were market research, and it flunked. So it goes. Alcohol is a volatile business…
- Cheap thrills? There’s a cheap ($10) red blend called Sheep Thrills, which was vinted in Italy but bottled here in the US. I bought some. Like PB&J whiskey, it wasn’t awful, but I still don’t recommend it. Too thin, too dry.
- I assumed that Skatterbrain’s PB&J whiskey had to be the weirdest whiskey in America. Silly boy. Have a look at this. Sorry, I’ll pass.
- If you’ve ever wondered what shallots were, well, here’s how to tell a shallot from an onion. I like the notion of shallots as heirloom onions (imaginary band name alert!) and Carol and I are going to try a few recipes that might tempt Tennyson’s Lady of Shallott. Ok, sure, it’s the Lady of Shalott. Maybe that’s the British spelling. Or Tennyson’s spellchecker wasn’t working. Yes, ok, I’ll shut up now.
Odd Lots
- My 2020 novel Dreamhealer was at heart about lucid dreaming. Now a startup is attempting to create a wearable device that can trigger lucid dreams on demand. I wish them all the best, but my own research on lucid dreams and dreams in general suggest that it may not be as easy as they make it sound.
- The Raspberry Pi 5 has been a huge success since its release in October, but it runs hot compared to older versions. Here’s a review of RPi5 cases and coolers (and cooler cases) from Tom’s Hardware.
- I missed this piece last year, but it’s an overview of what software can be had to make a Raspberry Pi usable as a desktop PC. Most of this I’d at least heard about, but the notion of Zoom running on an RPi threw me back in my chair.
- This may strike some as clever. It may strike others as deranged. But what better way to make ice cream cake the standard dessert for Thanksgiving dinner than making dessert look like…thanksgiving dinner? BR’s Turkey Cake is an ice cream cake in the shape of a turkey, with caramel glaze and two sugar cones for legs. But it gets better: There is also Turkey Fixins Ice Cream, which contains spiced sweet potato, honey cornbread pieces, and swirls of Ocean Spray cranberry sauce. Yum? You tell me.
- On the other hand, a similar effort from Brach’s is certifiably deranged: Turkey Dinner Candy Corn. Each bag includes six different flavors: Cranberry, Green Bean, Stuffing, Roast Turkey, Apple Pie & Coffee. I burned out on candy corn when I was 9 or 10. Green-bean flavored candy corn will not bring me back into the fold. I will give thanks that this, um, turkey is not getting anywhere near our house.
- The largest lighter-than-air airship since the Hindenburg is about to begin testing. What surprised me the most is that the German dirigible firm Luftschiffbau Zeppelin is still in business (since 1908!) and built the new airship’s gondola.
- New(er) research suggests that Viagra and Cialis are not preventive against Alzheimer’s Disease, as was reported with much fanfare back in 2021. Bummer.
- Who could have seen this coming: Microsoft’s MSN news portal is pumping out tons of news pieces created by generative AI, and quietly pulling the items reported as false or simply absurd. Sigh. People who pretend to think seem to be drawn to software that pretends to think.
- They’re having a problem in Montana: Overfilled railcars spill grain on the tracks; rain wets the grain and starts it fermenting; bears lap up the ferment and get drunk and try to outrun the trains. The race ends as you probably suspect. The state wildlife people aren’t sure what to do: The railroads want full cars, and the wildlife people want live bears. Getting there could be a challenge.
