At 93, he’s as fit as a 40-year-old. His body offers lessons on aging. Champion rower Richard Morgan started his exercise routine at age 73.
Cory Doctorow @pluralistic@mamot.fr is kickstarting the audiobook of his new novel, “The Bezzle,” second in a trilogy about two-fisted forensic accountant Marty Hench. The first volume, last year’s “Red Team Blues,” is a white-knuckle ride and I’m looking forward to the latest. Wil Wheaton is the narrator. The print book is due in a month.
This morning I looked at a “this day in history” calendar and saw that Martin Luther King was born on this day.
What a coincidence! I said to myself.
Some days I think I’m pretty smart. And then there are other days.
On Reddit, somebody asked how non-Americans identify Americans visiting their country. The top answer: Men wearing jeans, T-shirts, sneakers and ball caps.
I went to the supermarket later that day and can confirm.
Also, hoodies. And, this being San Diego, many of the men were wearing board shorts and flip-flops, even in January.
Allie Brosh at Hyperbole and a Half: Dogs Don’t Understand Basic Concepts Like Moving (2010). Hilarious.
Sympathy for the spammer. Cory Doctorow @pluralistic@mamot.fr posts a terrific essay about how scammers and spammers are often themselves victims of “passive income” and “rise and grind” hustlers, who prey on desperate people:
In any scam, any con, any hustle, the big winners are the people who supply the scammers – not the scammers themselves. The kids selling dope on the corner are making less than minimum wage, while the respectable crime-bosses who own the labs clean up. Desperate “retail investors” who buy shitcoins from Superbowl ads get skinned, while the MBA bros who issue the coins make millions (in real dollars, not crypto).
Also:
Con artists start by conning themselves, with the idea that “you can’t con an honest man.” But the factor that predicts whether someone is connable isn’t their honesty – it’s their desperation. The kid selling drugs on the corner, the mom desperately DMing her high-school friends to sell them leggings, the cousin who insists that you get in on their shitcoin – they’re all doing it because the system is rigged against them, and getting worse every day.
And:
… while we’re nowhere near a place where bots can steal your job, we’re certainly at the point where your boss can be suckered into firing you and replacing you with a bot that fails at doing your job.”
While most big companies are only in the proof-of-concept stage with AI, Wells Fargo is moving fast. The bank’s assistant, powered by Google’s AI, has done 20 million transactions. The company put 4,000 employees through Stanford’s Human-centered AI program and has many generative AI projects in production, including projects to make back-office tasks more efficient.
AI models can be trained to deceive and the most commonly used AI safety techniques had little to no effect on the deceptive behaviors, according to researchers at Anthropic.
The Texas National Guard has seized control of Shelby Park in Eagle Pass, Texas, and is denying U.S. Border Patrol agents access to the area. Maybe they can rename the park Fort Sumter?
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott also says he wants to shoot migrants dead, but he won’t do it because Biden would say it’s murder. That’s because it would be murder, Greg.
Haxby-Jones, a longtime San Diego resident and nurse-anesthetist was found in December in the home she’d lived in for many years.
… someone visiting the home opened an unlocked, plugged-in freezer. There, folded inside, was her body…. The frozen corpse was discovered Dec. 22 by out-of-town family members related to the current resident – not Haxby-Jones, police said.
Artifact, the social news app founded a year ago by Instagram’s co-founders, is shutting down..
I thought Artifact sounded intriguing and kept meaning to try it but I never got around to it. As it is, I see far more interesting links than I will ever have a chance to read. I have zero interest in an app that will show me more.
Apparently, many people felt the same way.
John Gruber says the reading experience on Artifact was not great.
OpenAI Quietly Deletes Ban on Using ChatGPT for “Military and Warfare”. Generative AI’s tendency to hallucinate makes it seem like a bad fit for military applications.
Your pacemaker and open source software. Using embedded medical technology, such as a pacemaker, defibrillator, or insulin pump? What’s running inside is a complete mystery.
Implanted medical devices running proprietary software present security vulnerabilities and lock up data where doctors can’t get to it when needed. That’s a problem open source advocate Karen Sandler knows about firsthand because she has an implanted pacemaker/defibrillator running proprietary software.
Why Google will waive egress fees for customers ditching GCP. The Register says Google is trying to placate regulators in the US and Europe even as Google tries to push those regulators to turn the screws on Microsoft.