{"id":5342,"date":"2025-02-09T15:10:52","date_gmt":"2025-02-09T22:10:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=5342"},"modified":"2025-02-09T15:10:52","modified_gmt":"2025-02-09T22:10:52","slug":"odd-lots-354","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=5342","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>That\u2019ll leave a mark, Mark: Unsealed emails indicate that <a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/tech-policy\/2025\/02\/meta-torrented-over-81-7tb-of-pirated-books-to-train-ai-authors-say\/\" target=\"_blank\">Meta downloaded 81.7 terabytes of pirated books<\/a> from sites like Anna\u2019s 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.<\/li>\n<li>After hearing how bad eggs are for your cardiovascular health for literally decades, <a href=\"https:\/\/behindtheblack.com\/behind-the-black\/points-of-information\/the-uncertainty-of-science-scientists-now-say-eating-eggs-reduces-your-chances-of-a-heart-attack\/\" target=\"_blank\">new research on the over-70 set<\/a> 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.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/tedium.co\/2025\/02\/05\/warner-bros-youtube-full-movie-releases\/\" target=\"_blank\">Warner Brothers has dropped more than 30 of its feature-length films on YouTube<\/a> without charge, including <em>Waiting for Guffman<\/em> and <em>Oh, God!<\/em> Note that this isn\u2019t the YouTube paid service, but just plain, ordinary free YouTube. People wonder why, though I\u2019d guess that WB is trying to establish itself as \u201cthe good guy\u201d vis-a-vis old content, unlike The Mouse House, which cannot let anything go no matter how old or bad it is.<\/li>\n<li>As my regular readers know, I\u2019m not much of a fan of AI\u2014but I am a <em>huge<\/em> fan of nuclear power. What AI seems best at right now is persuading power utilities to put unused (\u201czombie\u201d) nuclear plants back online, or even\u2014egad!\u2014building new ones. <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2025\/01\/22\/zombie-nuclear-reactors-could-be-revived-thanks-to-ai-data-center-demand\/\" target=\"_blank\">TechCrunch has a decent story<\/a>. Me? More AI! More AI!<\/li>\n<li>I remember reading about this, um, <em>eccentric<\/em>\u2014who claimed alien visitation and is now being sued by investors who were persuaded that he had invented an antigravity machine. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/features\/2025-02-05\/aliens-derailed-this-silicon-valley-exec-s-career-now-he-s-facing-prison\" target=\"_blank\">Here\u2019s the whole long-form story, from Bloomberg<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/forum.lazarus.freepascal.org\/index.php\/topic,69945.0.html\" target=\"_blank\">Lazarus 3.8, a bugfix release, is now available<\/a>. Worth it. Really. Pascal isn\u2019t dead.<\/li>\n<li>From robocop to rolocop: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.the-sun.com\/tech\/13058237\/china-spherical-robocops-criminals\/\" target=\"_blank\">Spherical Chinese robots are hitting Chinese streets to assist police in chasing crooks and breaking up riots<\/a>. One plus: They&#8217;re pretty rugged. I can think of some minuses, and I&#8217;ll bet you can too.<\/li>\n<li>Here\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/getpocket.com\/explore\/item\/the-most-common-last-name-in-every-country-mapped\" target=\"_blank\">a world map showing what the commonest last name is in every country on Earth<\/a>. Here? Smith. Same in Canada, Australia, and the UK. Who could have guessed?<\/li>\n<li>In the first cut of Google\u2019s AI Super Bowl ad, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/news\/606467\/google-ai-super-bowl-ad-gouda-error-removed\" target=\"_blank\">the ad claimed that Gouda cheese represents from 50 to 60 percent of all cheese consumed here on Earth<\/a>. They fixed it with a little non-artificial intelligence, heh. Ok, one could argue the point, since a lot of stuff labeled \u201ccheese\u201d isn\u2019t really cheese as I understand the term\u2014but even Velveeta doesn\u2019t have numbers like that. Come for the football, stay for the Super Bowl AI hallucination about\u2026cheese.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>That\u2019ll leave a mark, Mark: Unsealed emails indicate that Meta downloaded 81.7 terabytes of pirated books from sites like Anna\u2019s 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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[39,32],"class_list":["post-5342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots","tag-health","tag-programming"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5342"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5342\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5343,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5342\/revisions\/5343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}