{"id":5250,"date":"2024-08-07T12:32:19","date_gmt":"2024-08-07T19:32:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=5250"},"modified":"2024-08-12T13:29:24","modified_gmt":"2024-08-12T20:29:24","slug":"odd-lots-350","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=5250","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yes, I know I haven\u2019t posted since the end of June, but I had a <em>very<\/em> busy July. So bear with me; I\u2019m trying to get back in the Contra saddle on a much more regular basis. A fair bit of good stuff has piled up in my notes. Perforce:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>WordStar 7 for DOS can now be had as a free download, <a href=\"https:\/\/sfwriter.com\/blog\/?p=5806\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">thanks to the work of SF author Robert J. Sawyer<\/a>. The product has changed hands a great many times down the decades, and as best we can tell it\u2019s now abandonware. Caution suggests that if you\u2019re a retrocomputing fan, better snag it now, before somebody pops up with a copyright objection.<\/li>\n<li>The Heartland Institute has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heartland.org\/_template-assets\/documents\/Books\/CaaG-2022.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a very nice free 82-page full-color PDF<\/a> overview of climate issues from a skeptical perspective. Beyond global warming it covers sea levels, droughts, violent weather, crop yields, and much else. A lot of the data cited comes from the NOAA, which I still consider a reliable source.<\/li>\n<li>There\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.fal.ai\/flux-the-largest-open-sourced-text2img-model-now-available-on-fal\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a new image-generating AI called FLUX from Black Forest Labs<\/a> that apparently knows how many fingers and toes humans have. Sorry, guys: I\u2019ll believe it when I test it.<\/li>\n<li>Chris Martz put together a map displaying <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/ChrisMartzWX\/status\/1819879122094391705\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the record hottest day in August for all 50 states<\/a>. The hottest August temp we\u2019ve ever seen in Arizona was in\u20261905. Not much of a climate apocalypse, eh?<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/wattsupwiththat.com\/2024\/08\/03\/sunspot-counts-hit-a-23-year-high\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Solar cycle 25 has handed us the highest sunspot count in 23 years<\/a>. This cycle was supposed to be weak. And we haven\u2019t hit the likely peak yet. We may not see that peak until 2025 or 26.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/scitechdaily.com\/natural-compound-found-in-olives-found-to-reduce-blood-sugar-levels-and-promote-weight-loss\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">New research shows that elenolic acid, found in olives and olive leaves, brings down blood sugar and reduces body weight<\/a>. I have to wonder if this is why the Mediterranean Diet appears to work. Elenolic acid is available OTC, and I\u2019m tempted to try it and see if it will trim a little fat off my waistline.<\/li>\n<li>Here\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/future\/article\/20240626-the-priest-who-predicted-black-holes-in-1783\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a nice BBC piece<\/a> about an obscure British clergyman who predicted the existence of black holes in\u20261783. The guy should be <em>way<\/em> better known than he is, given that he also identified the inverse square law in 1750.<\/li>\n<li>For any of several reasons, electric vehicles are dangerous. [Link removed by me; see comments.]<\/li>\n<li>Copyright issues in training AIs are ongoing. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.technologyreview.com\/2024\/07\/25\/1095347\/a-new-tool-for-copyright-holders-can-show-if-their-work-is-in-ai-training-data\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">MIT summarizes the use of &quot;copyright traps&quot; that embed nonsense sentences into text by hiding it somehow.<\/a> (White text on white?) This allows software to determine if a piece of text was used in training. (Just how is too complex to explain here. Read the article.) My response is that finding &quot;invisible&quot; text in blocks of text is an easy challenge for software, especially with Web content. I envision a Web crawler that checks for copyright traps and either refuses to add trapped content to an index, or else scrubs the traps outright before copying the scrubbed text to a local database used for AI training. Bottom line: There is no easy solution to this problem.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yes, I know I haven\u2019t posted since the end of June, but I had a very busy July. So bear with me; I\u2019m trying to get back in the Contra saddle on a much more regular basis. A fair bit of good stuff has piled up in my notes. Perforce: WordStar 7 for DOS can [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-noneoftheabove"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5250"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5250\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5253,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5250\/revisions\/5253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}