Week 26

"@LukaszOlejnik@mastodon.social

Using AI in production is not 'call a model and it works'. Over the past year, I’ve often had to intervene at the boundaries: structured outputs that almost validate, retries that change behavior, runtime quirks, truncation risks, observability gaps. Running AI models on production via LLM is obviously very different from typing in a chat box."

404 Media: "Companies Are Throttling Employees’ AI Use Because It’s Too Expensive"

They are in deep shit and need money. Like all good capitalists they want hand outs when things go sideways.

The Guardian: "OpenAI is reportedly in early stage talks to give a 5% stake in the ChatGPT developer to the US government.. [OAI] has argued that giving the US public a financial stake in the company is the best way to share the benefits of AI, according to the Financial Times"

"@kubikpixel@chaos.social

Open source game engine Godot will no longer accept AI-authored code contributions: 'We can't trust heavy users of AI to understand their code enough to fix it'"

This is 2028 prep, the rhetoric will be his silver bullet against any potential opponent from the current administration. If the admin looks too buddy buddy with big tech and an admin flag bearer is in the race, RDS will be ready with his talking point to take a chunk out of his ass.

"DeSantis is emerging as a voice of AI skepticism in the Republican Party"

"Researchers at the University of Cambridge have scaled up a sunlight-driven panel that turns plastic bottles into hydrogen.. Sunlight striking the semiconductor frees electrons, each one leaving behind a positively charged gap called a hole. The holes pull electrons away from the dissolved plastic, oxidizing it, and releasing protons along with a few other useful chemical species. The catalyst then helps those protons combine with the freed electrons to form hydrogen gas...

Photoreforming isn’t new. The novel aspect of the Cambridge study is how the team built the cobalt catalyst that drives hydrogen formation. Earlier methods for attaching that catalyst to a panel required high heat or polymer binders, both impractical at large scale. Instead, the team used a single-source precursor: one molecule that contains cobalt and zirconium in a fixed ratio."

"@rahmstorf@fediscience.org

Our children and grandchildren will bitterly curse us.

Global warming cannot be reversed even with zero emissions; we can only stop further warming. Because CO2 remains in the atmosphere for millennia. Tipping points are approaching.

There will be no going back."

Meta has in-house know-how on scale, they know how to handle over 3 billion active users, they are able to manage that infrastructure they can easily spin that off as an external service, plus they already had experience with LLMs. It is easier for them to become a cloud LLM provider than OpenAI and Anthropic learning scale. The competiton on the tech itself is over. Now the competition is on infra, on reliably offering a known, commodatized, boring product.

Bloomberg: "Meta Is Planning a Cloud Business to Sell AI Computing Power"

Suriyak: "The systematic expulsion of Shiites and Alawites continues in Homs. After security forces and the STG gave the residents of Al-Mazra'a 72 hours to leave the town, the authorities in Damascus - using demolition techniques similar to those employed by the IDF in the West Bank - have begun destroying homes inhabited primarily by Shiites and some Alawites. Faced with the pain and helplessness of the civilians, some of them have put up resistance, only to be arrested in the end. The process of demographic change - under the pretext of expropriated land and the sectarian ties of minorities to the former political regime - is accelerating in Syria, while the international community turns a blind eye and whitewashes the current political regime led by Jolani."

The National Interest: "Russia Wants Four Ukrainian Regions Before Peace Deal, Putin Says"

#Ukraine 06/21 - 07/02

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CNN: "How a new super PAC formed to counter AIPAC is fueling democratic socialists’ wins.. Now AIPAC’s opponents believe that they are on the offensive – and a new group called American Priorities has a lot to do with it... The super PAC, which started just six months ago, has quickly emerged as an influential force in House Democratic primaries, spending at least $5.6 million to boost Democrats who are fiercely critical of Israel, its war in Gaza and AIPAC’s influence in Democratic primaries"

That incumbent had been in office since the Clintons.

"Fired Over Pro-Palestine Stance, Melat Kiros Defeats 15-Term Incumbent in Democratic Primary"

BMW: "The new BMW iX5 Hydrogen blends signature BMW driving dynamics with the power of a hydrogen drive. With its full xDrive, a range of up to 750 km (WLTP)*, a refuelling time of under five minutes and the full M Sport package, it delivers the performance of a true BMW X5. It also offers a host of additional practical features, such as towing capacity."

"Building a nuclear reactor is one of the slowest, most expensive things a country can decide to do. The typical plant takes the better part of a decade, runs into the billions, and gets poured in place one giant concrete slab at a time.

A Danish company called Copenhagen Atomics looks at that and sees a manufacturing problem, not a physics one. The plan is to stop building reactors like cathedrals and start stamping them out like cars. One per day, off an assembly line, each one small enough to fit inside a standard 40-foot shipping container...

[The reactor] is built in layers.. The outer layer is a blanket of molten thorium salt. Inside that sits a layer of heavy water. Further in is the fuel salt, a mix of lithium-7 fluoride and low-enriched uranium that runs into the core at around 1,100°F (600°C) and comes out hotter..

The heavy water is the moderator, which is the unusual part. Most molten salt designs lean on graphite or run a fast neutron spectrum, and Copenhagen Atomics went a different way with unpressurized heavy water instead.

The salt does double duty as fuel and coolant, and that is the whole reason these reactors behave differently from the pressurized water plants on the grid today. Water has to be squeezed under enormous pressure to stay liquid in a hot core. Molten salt is already liquid and stays that way at ordinary pressure, so there is no thick steel pressure vessel and no boiling-dry failure mode to design around. It is the same basic advantage behind the molten salt reactor America just cleared for construction in Oak Ridge, Tennessee...

Copenhagen Atomics says the entire point of shrinking the reactor into a container is so it can be built the way cars are built: on an assembly line, in sequence, from parts made by hundreds of suppliers."

IC: "It is rare that a single scientific paper shapes how people think about a challenge as daunting as climate change. But one, known as “Wedges,” published 22 years ago by researchers at Princeton University, told an irresistible story.

It made solving climate change seem possible, even simple. It claimed that the world didn’t have to wait for innovation because it had the tools to start work immediately...

The paper, written by scientists Robert Socolow and Stephen Pacala, became a phenomenon. Former Vice President Al Gore highlighted it in his Oscar-winning climate change documentary...

What they didn’t learn was this: “Wedges” was significantly shaped by the British oil giant BP — one of the single global entities most responsible for causing climate change."

The Lever: "Denver's fifteen-term congresswoman just lost her U.S. House primary race to a progressive endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America."

The Lever: "SCOTUS Hands Big Donors A New Loophole... Justices ruled 6-3 in favor of Big Business and the GOP to eliminate longstanding campaign finance limits."

"GeofCox@climatejustice.social

I'm reserving judgement on Burnham. I tend to think his record and instincts on many bread-and-butter economic issues are positive.

He's close to Matthew Brown, key advocate and implementer of the Preston Model, also enthusiastically supported by Corbyn. Burnham: 'We’ve been inspired by Pre­ston, and everything that Mat­thew Brown has done'.

Under Brown, Preston Council worked with other public bodies - health, education, etc - to direct public spend­ing away from multinationals to co-oper­at­ives and other social enter­prises, and local busi­nesses that pay decent wages and pro­mote diversity. It has achieved remarkable progress in restructuring a run­down, ex-indus­trial economy pre­vi­ously dom­in­ated by out­side cor­por­ate interests into 'a more self-reli­ant, dynamic, demo­cratic and equal city'. The progress is real: measurable"

"@GeofCox@climatejustice.social

I think not meeting ReformUK on their own ground is really important. Farage et al keep making outrageous announcements and both the left and centre keep getting outraged - and make themselves, and the media, complicit in creating the impression that politics is all about the right's culture wars.. while everybody is talking about that they're not talking about what the left is really interested in, and has a lot to say about: exploitative work, rents and house prices, not being able to see a doctor or dentist, how Big Oil broke the weather"

Politico: "‘We are screwed’: People near data centers dread heat wave pollution"

IC: "Netanyahu’s War on Humanity: Ethnically Cleansing the Palestinian West Bank.. The grand design is to blow up the Oslo Accords, and ethnically cleanse the West Bank one sector at a time, in preparation for annexation"

F24: "Oceans reach hottest June on record as El Niño threatens higher temperatures"

"@ProPublica@newsie.social

Oil companies are blasting millions of gallons of toxic waste underground each year — less than a half-mile from Enid, Oklahoma’s water wells."

Tehran Times: "The United States is currently conducting the largest logistical operation in its history.. We are talking about the largest aerial supply operation in American military history, which exceeds the scale of the 2003 Iraq War.

This level of cargo transport far surpasses routine supply replenishment. All American strategic warehouses in the region are almost fully stocked... The US military is not spending billions of dollars on empty threats or show-off maneuvers. All of this indicates readiness for a preemptive strike and possibly the start of a ground operation."

Right after that coverage on Israel and its US supplied genocide tech, they get debanked

"The Canary has been debanked by Lloyds. Despite banking with them for almost a decade they are currently withholding a substantial amount of our money. We are left with barely any funds.

Lloyds has not explained why it has taken this action. Despite multiple communications from us, the bank has not been forthcoming with its reasoning."

This tech is truly not a big deal. The press needs to stop exaggerating its capabilities.

CNBC: "Anthropic says Trump admin has lifted export controls on Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5"

"@pikesley@mastodon.me.uk

They are truly yet to invent a product that David Beckham will not advertise"

Maybe the problem is seeing Anatolia as the sole inheritor of its imperial past. Today's Asia Minor is a small piece of that larger construction. The resources, human or otherwise of that union are all gone. Greeks in Izmir who left were among the best educated in their day (culturally very similar to us of course), so Asia Minor lost something there. IOW it may not be fair to compare Asia Minor to Japan, the situation might be more like all Japanese prefactures except Hokkaido split up and became other countries, but ppl kept judging Hokkaido the inheritor of the previous civilisation. Surely Hokkaido would not be as rich as Japan today on its own, even on per capita terms.

One could make India comparisons; despite all its problems you see flashes of greatness in India... Look at their thorium reactor project - one guy, one visionary saw something in the tech and under his leadership they pursued a decades long plan to get where they are. This is the kind of thing that makes you say "these people were a great civilization once". You admire the courage and vision. Yes they fell behind during some periods, but now back in the game. In Anatolia, there is no spark. Homie bets on nuclear tech 80 years late, but on the wrong one, creating more import dependency.

TR gets a lot of undeserved flattery because they are a NATO partner, so people tell them "you're great, the bestest", to take advantage of their situation. It is the most backward country among its peers, which are descendants of empires that were around before World War I. Japan for instance. Compare both, the result is clear.

"Turkish" football project is broken like everything else in the country that is national. "The Turks" have a hard time to come together to achieve something because the very label they assigned to themselves is ill-defined. If you don't know who you are, you cannot row together with your brethren toward a common goal bcz your own identity ruled out a commonness, a common ground. TR founders pushed the country into a secterian existence, created a band of disparate parochial tribes defined by an outdated ideology and a man, on a whim, in the 1920s.

NYT: "It’s time to face facts. Never again should any of us tip Turkey as dark horses for the World Cup. They made the semi-finals in 2002, sure, but that’s a bit like saying the Miami Dolphins were big in 1973. Every dog has its day.

Turkey went out of the 2026 World Cup on day nine last night, the biggest waste of an airfare ever. I don’t know why we’re seduced by Turkey’s prospects. Most of the time, they don’t get as far as qualifying for the finals. This was only their third appearance but they have Arda Guler, Kenan Yildiz, Hakan Calhanoglu and others with passable talent, so there’s no excuse for being so bad.

I’ve been trying to think of the best way to sum up Turkey’s elimination, and it’s probably this: they hung on in the tournament for precisely two and a half hours longer than Haiti. "

Good call

Politico: "Supreme Court upholds laws banning trans athletes from women’s sports"

The rich / capitalists prefer any fascist rule to a left-wing alternative. Goebbels' observation is incorrect. They are not morons.

Joseph Goebbels: "[1932] These bourgeois morons are going to give us power"

"@avilewis@mstdn.ca

They’re going to call you a socialist regardless.

So be a socialist."

The Lever: "Sick Leave For Me, Not For Thee.. GOP Rep. Tom Kean Jr. took four months off from Congress, fully paid, to treat depression. Time and again, he’s voted against paid sick leave legislation."

The Lever: "What Socialism Critics Can’t Admit.. Opponents of Zohran Mamdani and his movement are slamming socialism without admitting that America’s most popular programs are socialist."

Canary: "On his final day at the company, a Microsoft worker in Italy has sent out an email to thousands of colleagues informing them of how the corporation operates as the technological backbone of the Gaza holocaust perpetrated by [Israel]." The hero, known to the Canary as ‘Nour’, said:

'After nearly two years as a Critical Environment Technician at a Microsoft Italy data center, I choose to resign. This is because, right now, Microsoft is massively expanding its European data centers (aka mass surveillance centers) to use Palestine as a laboratory for its experimental digital weaponry. For the past 994 days, Microsoft has powered the genocide of our people in Palestine, and the company’s European data centers are fundamental to how Microsoft abets crimes against humanity.'"

TAC: "Supreme Court Curbs Presidential Power in Major Rulings.. State of the Union: The court ruled in favor of the Trump administration in only one of the three decisions Monday."

Amazon used its 90s spending spree to build moats, it built warehouses, computing capacity. Walmart had warehouses too, but the combination of e-commerce and massive logistics presence was new, that was Amazon's edge.

For you OpenAI, there is no edge. There are other players who can do infrastructure better than you, your AI is not unique, not much better than other "frontier" models out there, and LLM tech hit a wall, it is stagnating, it is not possible to make them substantially better. Your spending spree makes zero sense, it will not generate massive returns. And now known infra companies, Amazon, Google are coming for you. You are fucked. You need to go back to researching, turn the org into a non-profit again, and get out while you can. You have no future in this space.

A trader shares two interesting statistics. First is spending per revenue. During their hyper growth phases (where they had to spend obscene amounts to grab market share first) Amazon 1999 and Uber 2018 were spending 24 and 27 cents per 1 dollar of revenue respectively.

OpenAI spends 1.60 dollars per dollar of revenue.

Second is a la researcher Jay Ritter, price-to-sales. "Of the 14 IPOs with sales>$100 million and a price-to-sales ratio at the offer price of more than 40, 12 of the 14 subsequently underperformed the market if bought at the first close during their first three years". According to this statistic SpaceX is in danger territory.

Lowkey: "How Tik Tok was bought, retrained, & weaponized to push you away from opposing genocide & into full-blown fascism.. A massive coordinated financial takeover just handed control of the world's most powerful algorithm to a network of billionaires, tech giants, & defense contractors with deep explicit financial ties to the Israeli military."

"Japan Bets on Hydrogen Highways to Stay Ahead of China.. Japan leads on hydrogen technology—but China is catching up fast."

The Lever: "Big Tech Is Trying To Kill A Major California Antitrust Bill.. Industry lobbyists have swarmed the Golden State to block new anti-monopoly reforms ahead of a vote this week."

"France is currently glowing red with heat. Not metaphorically. Literally. Land surface temperatures in parts of the country have been recorded at levels more commonly associated with the Sahara Desert."

Yahoo: "BP Secures Approval For Spain's Biggest Green Hydrogen Expansion"

Battery electric fail

WardsAuto: "Lucid Motors laying off 18% of US workforce, COO resigns"

"@pikesley@mastodon.me.uk

"That's because they used AI incorrectly"

The Slopbot Utopia can never fail, it can only be failed

Definitely not a cult"

Audience score is ok. But the flick lacked a certain shine, a big tent appeal, there can be problems w/ word-of-mouth.

u.rottentomatoes("Supergirl 2026")

Out[1]: {'critics': '56', 'audience': '77'}

The second movie from the Gunn universe - Supergirl. It was above average, but not by much. Lobo's inclusion felt artificial. The main character wasn't girlboss, nor she was annoying, but her co-roles could have been fleshed out more, like the Mad Max type bad guy. Some scene transitions felt disjointed, story flow suffered. The action looked generic.

#MoneyMoney

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Munee and bidness.. Munee rains down on corporate America

The Lever: "[2024] America's largest health insurers have raked in more than $371 billion in profits since the passage of the Affordable Care Act."

CNBC: "A ‘perfect storm’ points to a much smaller U.S. auto market by 2040.. 'The engine behind it is affordability,' [said expert who] does market research for the auto industry. New vehicle monthly payments are up 30% over four years, and nearly one in five new vehicles now carries a payment over $1,000 a month, he added..

'When you look into the future, younger people are more likely to use Uber or Lyft when they’re going somewhere,' [said VP] of global vehicle forecasting for the company. 'We’re still seeing groups of young people who enjoy driving and want a new car, but fewer can afford it.'"

Friedrich Engels complained about USA's burgeois prejudices in his day. Even back then the Anglo stood out with its over-the-top capitalistic ways.

Azerbaijan was part of both the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union for nearly two centuries. Because of this, Russian is still widely spoken as a second language, and the bureaucratic, educational, and urban structures resemble those found across the post-Soviet space...

Azerbaijan is one of the very few nation-states with a majority Shia Muslim population, a trait it shares directly with Iran... There are more ethnic Azerbaijanis living in northwestern Iran than in the independent country of Azerbaijan itself. The food, music, and historical architecture have deep Persian influences.

A major truth in anthropology is this: Language is a vehicle for culture, but it isn't the culture itself. Sharing a language family doesn't automatically mean you share a worldview, a lifestyle, or a historical memory... Just as Mexico or Argentina have a radically different cultural texture than Spain (indigenous history, geography), and the US evolved a completely different societal mechanism than the UK, Azerbaijan’s shared language with Asia Minor cannot cancel centuries of separate evolution.

Asia Minor is not really that close culturally to Azerbaijan.. AZ is more similar to Russia, and Iran.

Futurism: "Ford Scrambled to Rehire Engineers After Sabotaging Itself With AI.. Ford just admitted that it scrambled to rehire former employees and find new technicians after its AI systems simply weren’t good enough."

"@rzeta0@mastodon.ie

The USA bombed Iran again.

The USA failed to comply with it's own MoU, including in Lebanon.

The genocide of Palestinians continues with full US support.

I hope any Americans reading this feel deep deep shame about the United States of America and the suffering it has causes around the world for decades. From Iraq to Vietnam, from Hiroshima to Cuba, from Minab to Santiago."

"@Gargron@mastodon.social

This is the future those who push for age verification want for us [Mastodon users]."

AFP: "Algeria is emerging as an important partner in Europe's renewable hydrogen plans, with Germany and Algeria this month signing two new energy agreements"

Greenspan was first appointed as fed chair by Reagan. After reappointments, the libertard mucker managed to stay on until 2006, which was shortly before the GFC. That gives us a direct line between rabid capitalism, Reaganism and the crisis.

Huppke, USA Today: "I am a centrist Democrat and I am terrified of success.. We appeal to 'the center,' which is an ambiguous blob-like thing that exists only in the minds of Democratic strategists whose brains stopped working in the 1990s...

Like my good friends in the Republican Party, I fear any kind of democratic socialist as well as any progressives who are actually progressive. They all seem far too fixated on helping 'the people.' Blech...

As a centrist Democrat, I cannot accept new ideas. Or winning."