Home » Open thread 4/3/24

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Open thread 4/3/24 — 25 Comments

  1. Carville: Young Voters Quit Democrats in ‘Droves’

    “It’s horrifying, our numbers among younger voters, particularly younger Blacks, younger Latinos … younger people of color. Particularly males.” – “We’re not shedding them, they’re leaving in the droves.”

    Election 2024: Are Republicans Turning Isolationist? – when will they want to cut military aid to Israel & Taiwan?

    Is Israel in trouble? Delays in defeating Hamas are causing troubles for Jordan – can Jordan continue to ‘Hold the Line’ against the growing Axis of Resistance? Iran Update, April 2, 2024

    The world turns on Israel after World Central Kitchen slaughter: International fury grows, with UK possibly axing arms deals as IDF is accused of war crimes and aid worker death toll exceeds that of any other conflict – Seriously?!? The “world” had turned on Israel long before this accident in a War Zone…

  2. Has anybody seen any pictures of starving Palestinians?
    I recall seeing pictures of starving Biafrans, starving prisoners in Japanese POW camps, starving Jews in concentration camps- ribs sticking out, sunken eyes, protruding bellies.
    All of the pictures of grieving or protesting or shooting Palestinians have appeared quite well-nourished.
    Just as they have redefined the definitions of man and woman, racism, genocide, they have now redefined “famine” to include “well-fed.”
    They’re not even trying anymore.

  3. In the video, Items 1,2 and 3, again show that Webb is turning cosmology inside out. Still amazes me that cosmologists are desperately trying to pretzel the current BB model to fit Webb. As Feynman said in his famous 5 minute statement on the scientific method, If the observations don’t match the theory, then the theory is wrong.

    Webb is the most exciting thing to come along in cosmology in generations. What brave young theorist is going to take the data and build a new structure? We await their arrival.

  4. I wonder what the effect of the big earthquake in Taiwan will have on chip production? I guess it depends on how much damage the TSMC fabs took. But there could be some significant, far reaching economic ramifications since at the moment we’re in the midst of a so called “AI boom” that is powered by chips that are almost exclusively produced in Taiwan.

  5. Is the AI Boom the same as the .com Boom or the Y2K Armageddon?

    It’s the same in that vast sums of money are being thrown at any company that uses the buzzword “AI’ to describe what they’re doing. And also that ultimately once all the dust settles there will likely be only a small number of players left in the market. And most of those players will be pretty familiar I suspect. The thing about AI is that it requires a lot of expensive computing power and infrastructure to do effectively. So the rich will get richer.

  6. “The thing about AI is that it requires a lot of expensive computing power and infrastructure to do effectively. So the rich will get richer.”

    Either that, or AI will collapse because the power grid can’t support it. When people realize they can have AI or lights, but not both, decisions will have to be made.

  7. Great video. At first I thought, “Wait, did this start out on accelerated speed?” No, he’s just a fast talker. Excellent material.

  8. ‘NATO Lite’: Finland is Latest Member to Sign 10-Year Defence Deal With Ukraine

    An agreement that reaffirms Finnish support for Ukraine militarily, financially, and politically while stating Finland will be involved in efforts to prosecute Russian figures for war crimes

    Eight NATO members have now signed such deals with Ukraine. The first was the United Kingdom in January, followed by Germany, France, Denmark, Canada, Italy, the Netherlands, and now Finland. The deals have been characterised as creating a ‘NATO lite’-type security guarantees for Ukraine with key alliance members on a quasi-bilateral basis without actually inducting Ukraine into the alliance.

    Bet Yan Petrovsky’s ar*eh*ole puckered to the size of a mustard seed when he saw “prosecute Russian figures”. Yan was a member of the Rusich Group (2nd in command, I believe) – working within the Wagner Group, and has been locked up in Finland since facial recognition technology recognized him. 🙂 🙂 🙂

  9. I notice that Carville doesn’t address WHY they’re leaving in droves. Too risky to tell the Emperor why he feels chilly. Or maybe he (Carville) has drunk too much cool aid.

  10. Either that, or AI will collapse because the power grid can’t support it. When people realize they can have AI or lights, but not both, decisions will have to be made.

    Kate:

    The power demands of AI are indeed enormous. The big AI corps can’t centralize their compute (new noun for *all* the resources required for computation) in one area, though it would be more efficient, because it would collapse the grid of that state!

    However, the stakes for AI dominance are so huge, that the elites cannot maintain their luxury virtue signaling about climate change and Net Zero.

    Elon Musk, among others, realizes this and is calling for *tripling* the capacity of the grid. That is flat impossible with renewables and today’s technology.

    Nukes are the only way to go. Microsoft, the biggest backer behind OpenAI (responsible for the breakthrough ChatGPT AIs), is now funding research into small modular reactors (SMRs) and even nuclear fusion.

    https://www.popsci.com/technology/microsoft-nuclear-power/
    https://singularityhub.com/2023/05/14/microsoft-signs-contract-to-buy-power-from-nuclear-fusion-reactor-by-2028/

    The rich are still going to get richer, but the rest of us will be able to keep our lights on.

  11. Is the AI Boom the same as the .com Boom or the Y2K Armageddon?

    –om

    Y2K was way oversold. However, the dotcom boom? You’re soaking in it.

    The initial boom got ahead of its skis and the junk stocks got deservedly killed, but if you bought and held Google and Amazon you did more than fine.

  12. Good on you, Finland.

    Putin’s war is accomplishing precisely the opposite of what he wanted from it. Whatever the outcome of that war may prove to be — probably a stalemate — it will spell the end of Russia as a major player on the geopolitical stage. And that’s a good thing in my estimation.

  13. As in ” Learn to code” is now not such a grand and secure career choice?

    Boom and bust.

    The Gods of The Copybook Headings might have a word to say.

    But of course the Google insect overlords were only interested in doing good, not F’en with society, because they recognized the actual span of their competency and ethics.

  14. As in ” Learn to code” is now not such a grand and secure career choice?

    No, it isn’t. Big Tech is laying off tons of tech people. Musk axed 3/4 of Twitter and it’s twittering along — or Xing along — just fine. Other tech companies have taken notice.

    Good experienced programmers will have jobs for the time being, but it’s brutal for junior programmers and new programmers looking to break in.

    The majority of programmers are now using AI assistance to write code. The programming language of the future is English or one’s own natural language.

    My niece was considering programming as a career. I told her not to.

  15. Have a self-hosted blog after years of blogging on Blogger first and then WP from 2004. Themes that worked great on WP didn’t have all the bells ‘n whistles at Hostinger. Ended up buying a premium theme for a one-time price of about $30, and about 17-months later have finally gotten it where I want—well, bullet List still has issues, but have found workarounds for it.

    Had ran classifieds for help at Fiverr, but no one ever answered – probably because I was just looking for minor stuff. Then I started asking ChatGPT & Copilot and they created 4 or 5 widgets/CSS code that worked. Some took a little tweaking, but most were fine.

  16. See Anton Petrov’s youtube channel for MUCH more on James Webb discoveries and related topics.

  17. To state that something that exists should be impossible is to reveal a decidedly incomplete understanding of the phenomena. If it exists… by definition it has by existing proven to be possible.

    Perhaps the most famous example of pronouncing something to be essentially impossible is a 1903 article in the New York Times, which predicted that manned flight would take between 1 and 10 million more years to achieve, in an article titled, “Flying Machines Which Do Not Fly.”

    Just nine weeks later, the Wright Brothers achieved manned flight…

  18. Geoffrey. I believe it was in “Profiles of The Future” that Arthur C. Clarke had a chapter of those never-happen predictions. Fun to read. And that was maybe fifty years ago.

  19. Kate @ 11:43 am wrote:
    “… The thing about AI is that it requires a lot of expensive computing power … ”
    I thought crypto mining was a dangerous power hog!
    Now, it seems more companies are willing to invest in AI.
    How I’d love to see an honest comparison of the top 10 … 5? …. unnecessary electric grid sinks.
    Where would AI and crypto stack up?

  20. In the video, Items 1,2 and 3, again show that Webb is turning cosmology inside out. Still amazes me that cosmologists are desperately trying to pretzel the current BB model to fit Webb.

    physicsguy:

    I would be happy to hear you elaborate. I like to kick the Big Bang around, but I know I’m an amateur.

    My impression, as an amateur, is that the Big Bang satisfies enough observations, as no other theory does, that it can’t immediately be replaced or easily modified.

    Physicists, as human beings, are reluctant to retreat to admitting that they are not so sure anymore. Plus there are many career and financial pressures to juggle.

    So, apparently, the default is to wait for a generation of scientists die off as Kuhn called it in “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” (1962). (Boy, that far back!)

  21. Unnecessary grid sinks?

    Electric automobiles, all of them.

    Backup generating capacity made necessary by green energy.

  22. In the U.S., EVs only make sense to people living in cramped, congested, (stinking and despoiled) urban areas – clearly not in the wide open spaces and fresh air of the rest of the country. EV road trips across the U.S. are impractical.

    Israel is a different story. It’s a small country.

  23. Geoffrey – another take would be to say that if it is “impossible” then we have to take a fresh look at our theories, and also at our observations. So many of these things are so far away that one look may not be enough. We cannot always be sure that what we think we are seeing is actually what it is.

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