Same Side Up

"This New Pyramid-Like Shape Always Lands With the Same Side Up"

When Do You Really Need To Get To The Airport?

Nate Silver runs the numbers and determines that "get to the airport 2 hours before flight time" is too cautious; he says 1 hour is sufficient. 

(From my experience in Denver's airport, there is enough variability in the length of the TSA lines that I still need to arrive 2 hours ahead of time to be confident of not missing my flight.)

Long Bridge

"World's longest suspension bridge: Italy approves $15.6 billion connection to Sicily". (Via H.R.)

Forbes On Robinhood

Detailed Forbes piece on Robinhood ($HOOD) and Vlad Tenev.

AI Medical Disclaimers

"AI companies have stopped warning you that their chatbots aren't doctors"

QC And Wall Street?

"Why Wall Street's Future May Depend on Quantum Mechanics"

Nvidia Millionaires

TIL that "78% of Nvidia employees are millionaires" 

I'm especially impressed by all the employees who want to keep working there, rather than cashing out and retiring. (Via P.O.)

Health Costs

"Baumol's Cost Disease and the Undercutting of Physician Pay"

Huemer On AI

Mike Huemer: "I, for one, welcome our robot overlords" (Springer Nature)

Hsieh Forbes Column: Just Seeing A (Fake) Sick Person Can Activate Your Immune System

My latest Forbes column is out: "Just Seeing A (Fake) Sick Person Can Activate Your Immune System"

Zuckerberg On Personal Superintelligence

Mark Zuckerberg: "Personal Superintelligence"

996 Workweeks

"Silicon Valley AI Startups Are Embracing China's Controversial '996' Work Schedule"

Would you like to work nearly double the standard 40-hour week? It's a question that many startups in the US are asking prospective employees--and to get the job, the answer needs to be an unequivocal yes. These companies are embracing an intense schedule, first popularized in mainland China, known as "996," or 9 am to 9 pm, six days a week. In other words, it's a 72-hour work week.

In the health care world, that's called "residency".

AI And War

"Six ways AI could cause the next big war, and why it probably won't"

Too Much Salt?

"Is All This Salt Killing Us?"

3 Parent IVF

"'Three-parent IVF' technique can spare newborns from sometimes-fatal diseases"

AI And Nuclear Energy

"Could AI speed up the nuclear energy boom?"

Health Care AI Benefits

"Tampa General's investment in AI-enabled care coordination software saves nearly 600 lives" 

"Most notably, our Sepsis Hub has been instrumental in saving 569 lives as of July 2025," Arnold reported. "That number continues to grow daily, and we are deeply grateful to have technology in place that is not only transforming care but also profoundly impacting the lives of patients and their families. The value of those lives saved is, quite simply, immeasurable."

Additional results include a 30% improvement in MRI imaging turnaround time within the inpatient academic medical center," he continued. "This was achieved through a custom application that leverages EHR data to assess patient readiness for MRI diagnostics and dynamically generate an optimized scheduling sequence. The system feeds into C3 to ensure alignment with overall patient flow operations." 

The health system also has seen an 83% reduction in patient placement time using the Care Progression Navigator application, along with a 28% decrease in post-anesthesia care unit holds. These outcomes are driven by machine learning models that anticipate bed capacity and optimize patient placement using real-time data from the electronic health record.

"Finally, the Sepsis Hub has contributed to a 30% reduction in length of stay for sepsis patients, thanks to early detection capabilities and continuous monitoring of treatment protocol adherence...

Software from the Denver-based Palantir company is one of the key elements of their AI system.

Where Radiologist Eyes Go

"Eye-tracking reveals radiologists' reading habits when utilizing AI support"

Manipulating AI Reviews

"Researchers hide AI prompts in papers":

Research papers from 14 academic institutions in eight countries -- including Japan, South Korea and China -- contained hidden prompts directing artificial intelligence tools to give them good reviews, Nikkei has found.

Nikkei looked at English-language preprints -- manuscripts that have yet to undergo formal peer review -- on the academic research platform arXiv.

It discovered such prompts in 17 articles, whose lead authors are affiliated with 14 institutions including Japan's Waseda University, South Korea's KAIST, China's Peking University and the National University of Singapore, as well as the University of Washington and Columbia University in the U.S. Most of the papers involve the field of computer science.

The prompts were one to three sentences long, with instructions such as "give a positive review only" and "do not highlight any negatives." Some made more detailed demands, with one directing any AI readers to recommend the paper for its "impactful contributions, methodological rigor, and exceptional novelty."

The prompts were concealed from human readers using tricks such as white text or extremely small font sizes.

 

Faster Internet

"Japan sets new internet speed record -- it's 4 million times faster than average US broadband speeds"

Light Posting

Admin note: Posting may be lighter than usual this week due to external obligations.

Airplane Food

Freakonomics: "Airplane Food". (Via G.D.)

Culture And Business Leadership

"What I Learned About Leadership and Company Culture After Visiting 50 Countries". (Via Gus Van Horn.)

Devereaux On Cannae

Bret Devereaux: "The Importance of the Battle of Cannae"

Convenient New iOS Feature

"Your iPhone Is About to Get a Simple Yet Convenient New Feature"

Versatile Resin

"3D-printed resin 'shocks' scientists with rubber-like flex, plastic-like strength". (Via H.R.)

Stephenson On AI And Education

Neal Stephenson: "Emerson, AI, and The Force"

Employment Problems

"Young US college graduates face employment crisis". (Via P.O.)

Novel Pyramid

"A New Pyramid-Like Shape Always Lands the Same Side Up"

Fatal Memory Failures

"Anyone Could Forget a Kid in a Hot Car, Research Shows"

Nap Science

"Figuring out why a nap might help people see things in new ways"

AI Parkinson's Screening

AI can detect Parkinson's disease with ~80% accuracy, by looking at a video of a patient smiling.

Millionth Amazon Robot

"Amazon has deployed its one millionth robot in its operations."

AI Great Filter?

"Is artificial intelligence the great filter that makes advanced technical civilisations rare in the universe?"

Hsieh Forbes Column: Inactivity Is Bad For Your Brain Health

My latest Forbes column is out: "Inactivity Is Bad For Your Brain Health"

Business Implications Of The Definition of AGI

"OpenAI's Unreleased AGI Paper Could Complicate Microsoft Negotiations". 

Basically, the definition of "AGI" in the contract between OpenAI and Microsoft could have important implications in which portions of OpenAI IP would (or would not be) available to Microsoft.

New Organelle

"Scientists discover unknown organelle inside our cells"

AI Résumés

"Employers Are Buried in AI-Generated Résumés"

AI Painting Restoration

"MIT student prints AI polymer masks to restore paintings in hours". (Via H.R.)

New Jobs Because Of AI

NYT: "AI Might Take Your Job. Here Are 22 New Ones It Could Give You."

"Satellite" Map Of Middle-Earth

"A 'Satellite' Map Of Middle-Earth"

Robotic Heart Surgery

"US surgeons perform first full robotic heart transplant without chest incision". (Via H.R.)

Book Pointer

A friend recently pointed me towards this book: "Libertarian Literary and Media Criticism: Essays in Memory of Paul A. Cantor" edited by Jo Ann Cavallo.  

Dr. Cavallo is a libertarian professor of literature at Columbia, which sounds like a pretty unique combination!

A brief description:

The volume’s contributors apply libertarian philosophy and Austrian economics to both literature and media, from early modern drama to novels to comic books, cinema, and television series. Several chapters contrast capitalism with statism, focusing on the market economy versus central planning, freedom versus government coercion. Not surprisingly, the economic theories of Adam Smith, Ludwig von Mises, and F.A. Hayek run through several essays. Contributors also engage with other theorists and writers as diverse as Thomas Hobbes, Charles Darwin, Thomas Huxley, Friedrich Nietzsche, Leo Strauss, and Judith Butler.

 I'm putting it on my list!

Cephalopod Oddities

"The nine-armed octopus and the oddities of the cephalopod nervous system". (Via H.R.)

No Bar Tabs For Gen Z

"Gen Z Doesn't Want to Start a Bar Tab"

Sphere Tricks

"Cool Physics Feat Makes a Sphere Roll Down a Vertical Wall". 

Update: Link fixed!

Tesla Robotaxi Questions

"Tesla's make-or-break robotaxi moment is here. Can Elon Musk deliver?"

AI And Radiologists

"Real-world use of generative AI boosts radiologist productivity by up to 40%"

Apple On The Illusion Of Thinking

Apple paper: "The Illusion of Thinking: Understanding the Strengths and Limitations of Reasoning Models via the Lens of Problem Complexity".

This paper is getting lots of press/controversy over the bold claim that LLMs aren't really thinking, but rather just very good at advanced pattern matching.

Robot Moves

"MIT's new tech enables robots to act in real time, plan thousands of moves in seconds". (Via H.R.)

AI And Math

"What's next for AI and math"

Light Posting

Admin note: Posting may be light this week due to external obligations.

AI-Related Job Losses?

"Top AI CEO foresees white-collar bloodbath"

Dario Amodei -- CEO of Anthropic, one of the world's most powerful creators of artificial intelligence -- has a blunt, scary warning for the U.S. government and all of us:

• AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs -- and spike unemployment to 10-20% in the next one to five years, Amodei told us in an interview from his San Francisco office.
• Amodei said AI companies and government need to stop "sugar-coating" what's coming: the possible mass elimination of jobs across technology, finance, law, consulting and other white-collar professions, especially entry-level gigs
  

Of course, the big question is what currently unforeseen new jobs will arise during the coming AI revolution.

Quantum Computing And Cryptocurrencies

"Quantum computing could make Bitcoin and crypto a lot less secure"

Encrypted Chat Backups

"How Signal, WhatsApp, Apple, and Google Handle Encrypted Chat Backups"

Southwest Bag Fees

"Southwest Airlines ditches free checked bags this week. Here's how much they'll cost"

Non-Tesla EVs

"Want an electric vehicle but not a Tesla? Here are some great alternatives"

Safe Egg Dropping

"The key to a successful egg drop experiment? Drop it on its side." (Via H.R.)

Worthwhile Purchases

Dan Go: "What are some purchases under $300 that will instantly change your life?"

What are some purchases under $300 that will instantly change your life?

— Dan Go (@FitFounder) May 18, 2025

Roman Wooden Pipe

"1,700-year-old exceptional Roman wooden water pipe found in Belgium stuns archaeologists". (Via H.R.)

Romanian President And Mathematician

TIL that the new President of Romania, Nicușor Dan, also won gold medals in the International Mathematical Olympiad in 1987 and 1988 with perfect scores.  More background on the man.

 

AI Not Replacing Radiologists Yet

NYT: "Your AI Radiologist Will Not Be With You Soon"

Rogue Solar Power Inverters

"Rogue communication devices found in Chinese solar power inverters"

U.S. energy officials are reassessing the risk posed by Chinese-made devices that play a critical role in renewable energy infrastructure after unexplained communication equipment was found inside some of them...

Light Posting Notice

Admin note: Posting may be lighter than usual this week and next week due to external obligations.

Pope Vs. AI

Tweet of the day.

Reasoning Revolution

Jon Stokes: "The Reasoning Revolution In AI: How We Got Here & Why It Matters". [Note: Partial paywall.]

Phone Data Security When Travelling

NYT: "How to Secure Your Phone’s Data Before Traveling Abroad"

Rampant Cheating By College Students With AI

New York Magazine: "Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College"

Quantum Communication Update

"US researchers achieve 11-mile quantum data link using photon transmission"

Buttons In Cars

"Carmakers Are Embracing Physical Buttons Again"

CRISPR Bacon

"The FDA Just Approved the First CRISPR-Edited Pigs for Food". (Via H.R.)

Tangentially related humorous video:

Has The Quantum Era Begun?

"The Quantum Era Has Already Begun". 

I am not convinced that the Quantum Era has begun. But the quantum hype era definitely has.

Snakebite Man

NYT: "Universal Antivenom May Grow Out of Man Who Let Snakes Bite Him 200 Times"

Satellite Speedometer

"US builds 'spacecraft speedometer' to enhance satellite navigation without GPS". (Via H.R.)

Quantum Computing Update

"MIT engineers advance toward a fault-tolerant quantum computer"

Airline Cabin Secrets

"7 Secrets of Airplane Cabins Most Passengers Don’t Know"

Running Exosuit

Wired: "I Tested A Speedsuit That Makes Anyone Run Faster"

Quantum Algorithm Update

"Quantum Speedup Found for Huge Class of Hard Problems"

Hsieh Forbes Column On CT Radiation And Cancer Risk

My latest Forbes column is out: "Should You Worry About Getting Cancer From CT Scans? A Radiologist Explains"

Expanding Robot Perception

MIT News: "Expanding robot perception"

REAL-ID And US Airports

"REAL-ID FAQ: What will happen at US airports on May 7, 2025?" 

Author Edward Hasbrouck summarizes: "The key thing to know is that -- unless the TSA makes undisclosed changes to its procedures -- air travelers with 'noncompliant' ID on or after May 7, 2025, should be treated, and should be allowed to fly, the same way people with no ID fly today."

Surgical Robot Update

"Rice-Sized Robots Could Be the Key to Precision Neurosurgery"

More On FFT

A nice ode to a bit of progress that has led to much of modern technology!

60 years ago this month, the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) was introduced by Cooley & Tukey (1965) - one of the most important algorithms in signal processing and data analysis.

In 1805, Gauss - studying the orbits of asteroids Pallas and Juno - came up with a method to… pic.twitter.com/zyFQPQLwPX

— Fermat's Library (@fermatslibrary) April 25, 2025

Do AIs Have "Rights"?

People now arguing whether AI should have "rights".  Seems that you first need a robust theory of what gives rise to the concept of "rights" and which entities this concept applies to. 

NYT: "If AI Systems Become Conscious, Should They Have Rights?

FFT Explained

MIT: "60 years ago this month, the Fast Fourier Transform was created, a powerful tool for image compression & data analysis. Watch a classic MIT breakdown of FFT"

Your Tech At The Border

"How to Protect Yourself From Phone Searches at the US Border"

Exotic Quantum States

"US scientists discover never-before-seen quantum 'species' in twisted material"

Douthat On AI

Ross Douthat: "An Age of Extinction Is Coming. Here's How to Survive."

I think he's too pessimistic. But his essay does make some good points.

AI Code Generation Update

"Making AI-generated code more accurate in any language"

A new technique automatically guides an LLM toward outputs that adhere to the rules of whatever programming language or other format is being used.

Lunar CPU

"The Moon Should Be a Computer"

Smell Friends?

Ars Technica: "Women rely partly on smell when choosing friends". (Via H.R.)

Hype On Alien Life

Nature: "Signs of life on a distant planet? Not so fast, say these astronomers"

Missing Matter

"A new analysis of the sky has finally confirmed where the missing half of the Universe's visible matter has been hiding." (Via H.R.)

My first guess was under the couch.

New Color?

"Scientists claim to have found colour no one has seen before"

Human Vs. AI Reading Medical Notes

This question was posed recently on social media -- basically, asking someone to interpret a near-indecipherable orthopedic clinic note.  

My own translation:

Ortho
===========
R(ight) knee pain
R(ight) knee: + effusion, +pain, decreased ROM (range of motion)
Xray right knee: moderate OA (osteoarthritis)
A/P (assessment/plan): Right knee osteoarthritis
Right knee injection
F/u (followup) 3 months.

I also asked Grok AI to attempt to translate the image, and I have to confess it did surprisingly well!

 

 

 

Wave Confinement

"Thought To Be Impossible: Scientists Break Century-Old Physics Barrier". (Via H.R.)

A research team from POSTECH (Pohang University of Science and Technology) and Jeonbuk National University has achieved a groundbreaking feat: the complete confinement of mechanical waves within a single resonator—something long considered theoretically impossible. Their study, published on April 3 in Physical Review Letters, represents a significant advance in solving the century-old puzzle of bound states in the continuum (BIC).

iPhone Tricks

"18 Things You Didn't Know Your iPhone Could Do"

Gifted Bird Caller

"Oklahoma boy astounds classmates with his ability to do 50 different bird calls"

Travel Hacks

"10 Travel Hacks Reddit Users Swear By"

TB Diagnostics

"New handheld device can diagnose TB without a lab in under an hour, its developers say"

Military AI Update

"Generative AI is learning to spy for the US military"

Breakfast Club Cast, 40 Years Later

"Breakfast Club" cast, 40 years later. Some have aged better than others.

Great SF Movies

"The 100 best sci-fi movies of all time, ranked"

More Jobs For AI

"Trump Wants Tariffs to Bring Back U.S. Jobs. They Might Speed Up AI Automation Instead"

Data Centers On The Moon

BBC: "The plans to put data centres in orbit and on the Moon"

Air Marshals

"Are There Air Marshals on Every Flight?"

AI Tutors

"Texas private school's use of new 'AI tutor' rockets student test scores to top 2% in the country"

AI And Radiology

Washington Post: "AI hasn't killed radiology, but it is changing it"

Drowning Children Thought Experiment

Scott Alexander: "More Drowning Children"

Hummingbird Camoflage

"Baby hummingbird with appearance of dangerous caterpillar discovered in Panama". (Via H&S R.)

CIA Books Operation

"A forgotten CIA programme that changed minds"

DARPA Atmospheric Sensing

"DARPA Unintentionally Invents New Rocket 'Radar' Thanks to SpaceX". (Via H.R.)

Speed Cubing

"Max Park is a longtime [Rubik's Cube] speedcubing world record holder -- for the 3x3x3 cube, his best official time is 3.13 seconds. Let's show you how he does it."

Gorilla Glass Upgrade

"Corning's new ceramic glass might save your next phone from disaster"

Optical Illusions And Professions

"People in this career are better at seeing through optical illusions". (Via H.R.)

Typewriters Still In Use

"In some parts of the US, the clack of typewriter keys can still be heard"

Treatment For Paralysis

Nature: "Paralysed man stands again after receiving 'reprogrammed' stem cells". (Via G.F.)

Hsieh Forbes Column: Dark Chocolate And Placebos Are Also Good For Your Health

My latest Forbes column is now out: "Dark Chocolate And Placebos Are Also Good For Your Health"

Clocks Fool AI

"AI Sucks at Reading Clocks". (Via H.R.)

Waymo Safety

Waymos seem pretty safe, after one looks at all the data: "After 50 million miles, Waymos crash a lot less than human drivers"

Nvidia Optics

IEEE: "A Crucial Optical Technology Has Finally Arrived"

AI-Resistant Jobs

Quartz: "The 10 most AI-resistant jobs".

I disagree with several the jobs on that list; I think many of them will be replaced by AI more easily than expected.

No Plutonium For You

"Sydney 'science nerd' may face jail for importing plutonium in bid to collect all elements of periodic table"

Humanoid Robot Update

"The AI robots are coming. The world is not ready"

Personally, I think this will be an enormous boon to humanity.

Quantum Apocalypse? Or Not

Wired: "The Quantum Apocalypse Is Coming. Be Very Afraid"

AI Drug Repurposing

"Doctors Told Him He Was Going to Die. Then A.I. Saved His Life."

In labs around the world, scientists are using A.I. to search among existing medicines for treatments that work for rare diseases. Drug repurposing, as it’s called, is not new, but the use of machine learning is speeding up the process — and could expand the treatment possibilities for people with rare diseases and few options.

Babies And Bad Medical Care

Alex Tabarrok: "What Did We Learn From Torturing Babies?" (Via G.F.)

Corner Crossings Legal

Federal judge rules that diagonal "corner crossings" from one square of public land to another square does *not* constitute trespassing of the adjacent private land on the opposite corners. (Via Dave Jilk.)

Good Question

A darned good question.

It's a reasonable question .. pic.twitter.com/Q9BufTFyJ6

— Andy Burge 🌊🇬🇧🇪🇺 (@AndyGJBurge) March 20, 2025

Hansen On Drug Development

Excellent video by AbCellera CEO Carl Hansen: "Why medicines are miracles of science and technology"

Astonishingly Agile Robots

Boston Dynamics robots are amazingly agile.

Volokh On Pardons And Autopens

"Pardons and Autopen Signatures: A 2024 Appellate Decision Says Pardons Don't Have to Be Signed (or Even Written) at All".  

Professor Volokh notes:

Of course, something is required, and that something is presumably a statement by the President that he is pardoning someone. If (and this is a very big if) a President actually didn't make such a statement, and an assistant just affixed the President's signature to a document purporting to be a pardon without the President's authorization, then I don't see how that would be a valid pardon (at least unless it's somehow ratified by the relevant President). But that turns on a factual question about whether the President was actually involved in the creation of the pardons, not on a legal question about whether an autopen signature renders the pardon invalid.

Waterbending

"Wild 'Waterbending' Technique Uses Waves to Steer Floating Objects With Precision". (Via H.R.)

Introvert Jobs

"The Best 10 High-Paying Jobs for Introverts in 2025".

"Radiologist" is number 1 on the list.  (Disregard the inaccurate salary estimate.)

Bye Bye FiveThirtyEight

"ABC Shuts Down FiveThirtyEight, and Pulls the Plug on Its Website"

IBM On Quantum Computing

"Quantum computing's future is almost here, IBM chief says"

More Students Enter Defense Tech

"Stanford students used to chase jobs at Meta and Google. Now they want to work on war"

At Stanford, building tech for the U.S. government is cool again. Students are dropping out to form defense tech startups and compete for coveted internships at government security agencies or major private contractors. Undergraduates, business school students, recent alumni now working in defense tech, and faculty show a booming interest in building war machines for the United States...

Creating A Recovery USB Drive

"How to Create a Recovery USB Drive to Fix Your Computer". Includes details for both Windows and MacOS.

AI Art Auction

"Christie's AI art auction outpaces expectations, bringing in more than $728,000"

Teachers And AI

"I Used to Teach Students. Now I Catch ChatGPT Cheats". (Via A.S.)

Geomagnetic Birds

"Bird is the (Geomagnetic) Word". (Via H.R.)

Quantum Computing Update

MIT Technology Review: "Toward a code-breaking quantum computer"

Military AI Update

"Scale AI announces multimillion-dollar defense deal, a major step in U.S. military automation"

S.u.S.E. History

"The History of S.u.S.E." (Via Gus Van Horn.)

Drone Reformation

"Air Weapons: The Drone Reformation"

Browser Tab Pong

"What do you do with your unclosed browser tabs? I find that they take up a lot of screen space. So this week I figured out how to run pong inside mine.

Klein On Imminent AGI

Ezra Klein in New York Times: "The Government Knows A.G.I. Is Coming"

For the last couple of months, I have had this strange experience: Person after person -- from artificial intelligence labs, from government -- has been coming to me saying: It's really about to happen. We're about to get to artificial general intelligence. 

What they mean is that they have believed, for a long time, that we are on a path to creating transformational artificial intelligence capable of doing basically anything a human being could do behind a computer -- but better. They thought it would take somewhere from five to 15 years to develop. But now they believe it's coming in two to three years, during Donald Trump’s second term. 

They believe it because of the products they're releasing right now and what they're seeing inside the places they work. And I think they're right...

Full interview by Ezra Klein with Ben Buchanan, the former special adviser for artificial intelligence in the Biden White House here.

AI And Drug Discovery

Derek Lowe: "Claims of an AI revolution in drug discovery are missing the biggest problem"

Adcock On Humanoid Robots

Video: "Brett Adcock: Humanoid Robots, Trillions of Dollars & The Future of Humanity"

I think his company FigureAI is very exciting, and could be a household name in a few years.  

Key quote (at 12:47 minutes), "The world of the future is going to be crazy and in such a good way!"

Bye Bye Skype

"Microsoft will end Skype in May, leaving some users upset"

Hsieh Forbes Column: When Medical AI Performs Better Than Human Doctors

My latest Forbes column is now out: "When Medical AI Performs Better Than Human Doctors"

Hub Motor Update

"Donut Lab and the electric motors everyone has been talking about". (Via H.R.)

Whale Language

"Whales communicate with a 'language-like' structure similar to humans"

US Gold

"What to know about Fort Knox's gold depository that Musk wants audited"

Young People Taking Classes To Learn How To Make Phone Calls

"Gen Z battling with phone anxiety are taking telephobia courses to learn the lost art of a call"

"They’ve [Gen Z] just simply not had the opportunity for making and receiving telephone calls. It is not the main function of their phones these days, they can do anything on the phone, but we automatically default to texting, voice notes, and anything except actually using a telephone for its original intended purpose, and so people have lost that skill," she explained...

The session involves practicing a series of scenarios where you have to make a phone call, for example, calling the doctors to make an appointment, calling in sick to work, and other everyday scenarios. The pupils are expected to sit back to back to mimic a regular phone call where they can’t see the person on the other end and practice by using scripts. 

Baxter said attending just one session boosts pupils’ confidence because it demystifies how phone calls really work.

Burning In Legs

Ars Technica: "Burning in woman's legs turned out to be slug parasites migrating to her brain". (Via Gus Van Horn.)

Asteroid Danger Lessened

"Additional Observations Continue to Reduce Chance of Asteroid Impact in 2032"

Observations made overnight on Feb. 19 - 20 of asteroid 2024 YR4 have further decreased its chance of Earth impact on Dec. 22, 2032, to 0.28%. NASA’s planetary defense teams will continue to monitor the asteroid to improve our predictions of the asteroid’s trajectory. With this new data, the chance of an impact with the Moon increased slightly to 1%.

Intergalatic X-Ray Flash

"Strange X-ray flash from beyond the Milky Way perplexes scientists"

Math Prodigy

"India's 'Human Calculator Kid' Shatters 6 World Records in a Single Day". (Via H.R.)

Apple Vs. UK Update

"Apple pulls encryption feature from UK over government spying demands"

Dune Chronological Reading Order

"How to Read All 23 'Dune' Books in Chronological Order"

Developing The Calculator App

"What I'm about to tell you is the greatest calculator app development story ever told."

AI Vs. Human Mistakes

"AI Mistakes Are Very Different From Human Mistakes"

Meta Cable

"Meta plans globe-spanning sub-sea internet cable". 

According to the company's press release: 

Once complete, the project will reach five major continents and span over 50,000 km (longer than the Earth’s circumference), making it the world’s longest subsea cable project using the highest-capacity technology available.

 

Unappreciated Progress

"We Live Like Royalty and Don't Know It". (Via J.C.)

Self-Driving Tesla Coast-To-Coast Experience

"Tesla FSD Cannonball Run 002: v13 Better, But Hardware Has Limits"

UK Demands Apple Break Own Encryption

"UK orders Apple to let it spy on users' encrypted accounts"

Security officials in the United Kingdom have demanded that Apple create a back door allowing them to retrieve all the content any Apple user worldwide has uploaded to the cloud, people familiar with the matter told The Washington Post.

The British government’s undisclosed order, issued last month, requires blanket capability to view fully encrypted material, not merely assistance in cracking a specific account, and has no known precedent in major democracies. Its application would mark a significant defeat for tech companies in their decades-long battle to avoid being wielded as government tools against their users, the people said, speaking under the condition of anonymity to discuss legally and politically sensitive issues...

The law, known by critics as the Snoopers’ Charter, makes it a criminal offense to reveal that the government has even made such a demand. An Apple spokesman declined to comment.

 

Hash Table Search Breakthrough

"Undergraduate Upends a 40-Year-Old Data Science Conjecture". (Via D.J.)

AIs Doing Better Without Human Doctors?

"When Doctors With AI Are Outperformed by AI Alone". (Via G.F.)

Noether's Theorem Explained

"How Noether's Theorem Revolutionized Physics"

US, China, And AI

Video: "Can America Win the AI War with China?"

Ancient Polynesian Navigators

"Sail with ancient Polynesian navigators"

Chemical Laws

"Chemical laws"

Cleaner Air

"The world has probably passed 'peak air pollution'"

More Known About Unknowability

"New Proofs Probe the Limits of Mathematical Truth"

WikiTok

"Developer creates endless Wikipedia feed to fight algorithm addiction". Direct link to Wikitok.

Optimal Egg

"The best way to cook an egg -- in 32 minutes". 

Original Nature paper: "Periodic cooking of eggs".

Nuclear Fusor

"A Young Man Used AI to Build A Nuclear Fusor and Now I Must Weep". (Via G.F.)

Spine Stimulator

"Spinal cord electrical stimulation restores neural function in clinical trial". (Via H.R.)

Coffee Marketing

Not sure if this is brilliant or clueless marketing!

 

Everett On Expertise

Dr. Peter Everett: "On Professional Expertise"

Navy Lasers

"US Navy evaluates laser weapon aboard destroyer":

HELIOS represents a major step forward in naval warfare, providing a cost-effective countermeasure against drones, small boats, and other asymmetric threats. The U.S. Navy has been expanding its directed energy arsenal, and the HELIOS-equipped USS Preble joins a growing number of Navy ships fielding high-energy laser weapons. 

The successful testing of HELIOS underscores the U.S. Navy’s commitment to integrating laser weapons into its fleet to counter evolving threats. Unlike conventional missile-based defense systems, directed energy weapons like HELIOS offer a virtually unlimited magazine, rapid engagement capabilities, and lower per-engagement costs.

 

AI Tutor

"Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says everyone should get an AI tutor right away". (Via D.F.)

Miniature Roman Lock

"Metal Detectorist Unearths Miniature 1,600-Year-Old Roman Lock". (Via H.R.)

Why Ice Doesn't Stick To Polar Bear Fur

"How polar bears stop ice from freezing on their fur". (Via H.R.)

Silver On Preparing For AI

Nate Silver: "How should you prepare for an AI future?"

Navy AI

"The Navy destroyer USS Fitzgerald (DDG-62) became the first warship to deploy with a program-of-record artificial intelligence (AI) platform.

Car Battery Update

"A variety of new batteries are coming to power EVs"

Apple, Starlink, And SpaceX

"Apple and SpaceX just added Starlink connectivity for select iPhone users"

Tesla Autonomous Taxi Service Coming To TX

"Tesla will launch an 'unsupervised, no one in the car' robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, in June [2025]"

OpenAI Claim Against Deepseek

"OpenAI says it has evidence China's DeepSeek used its model to train competitor". 

If true, this would artificially lower Deepseek's training costs. And could be a violation of OpenAI's terms of service and/or violation of intellectual property rights. (The article also notes that OpenAI has been accused of violating others' IP rights to train its own models.)

In-Flight Screen Restriction

"Why United Does Not Allow You To Use In-Flight Screen As Extended Display"

Quoting The Points Guy:

As more travelers bring their own tablets and laptops on board, I've always wondered why airlines don't offer a screencasting feature on the entertainment screens. After all, it's a lot easier to get work done with some additional screen real estate.

Turns out, United can already technically enable screencasting today, Green said, but a major issue will likely mean that flyers will never see this functionality.

"We've had a lot of pushback from our corporate partners that say they don't necessarily want their staff using publicly available screens," Green said.

It's not that United would have access to any data; it's that they don't want nosy passengerssnooping in on their neighbors.

Gift Card Fraud

"Chinese Organized Crime's Latest U.S. Target: Gift Cards" 

Card draining is when criminals remove gift cards from a store display, open them in a separate location, and either record the card numbers and PINs or replace them with a new barcode. The crooks then repair the packaging, return to a store and place the cards back on a rack. When a customer unwittingly selects and loads money onto a tampered card, the criminal is able to access the card online and steal the balance.

Good Jobs

US News & World Report: "100 Best Jobs of 2025". 

FWIW, "Radiologist" comes in at #77.

Quantum Computing Glossary

"Quantum computing could go big this year. Here's a glossary to get you started"

AI Protein Design Update

"Researchers use AI to design proteins that block snake venom toxins". (Via H.R.)

Translation Update

"Meta takes us a step closer to Star Trek's universal translator". (Via H.R.)

Light Posting

Admin note: Posting will be light for the next 1-2 weeks due to external obligations.

The First Password On The Internet

"First password on the internet"

Igloo Science

"How Do Igloos Keep People Warm?"

Apollo Wrist Computer

"Want to Wear a Tiny Apollo Guidance Computer on Your Wrist?"

 

Meteor Strike Video

"Homeowner captures sound and video of meteorite strike on camera, and scientists believe it's a first"

Costco Clothes

"Costco's $9B clothes business, explained". (Via Rand Simberg.)

Best Space Photo?

"A NASA astronaut may have just taken the best photo from space -- ever"

Young Violinist

When you're playing Vivaldi on the piano at the airport, and a shy 10-year old girl asks if she can play her violin along with you. 

(I love the expression on her face as she plays!)

Caplan On Men And Women

Bryan Caplan: "The Typical Man Disgusts the Typical Woman"

Coffee Good

"We knew morning coffee was good for us... and science has finally proved it"

Nvidia AI Computer

"Nvidia's tiny $3,000 computer for AI developers steals the show at CES"

What To Do If You Accidentally Glue Your Eye

News you can use: "Accidentally put eyelash glue in your eye? Tips to avoid painful mistakes."

AI Detection Of Ovarian Cancer

"AI detects ovarian cancer better than human experts in new study". 

Academic paper in Nature Medicine: "International multicenter validation of AI-driven ultrasound detection of ovarian cancer"

iPhone Security

"Get to Know iPhone Privacy and Security Settings"

Ants > Humans

"Ants best humans at test of collective intelligence"

Altman On AGI

Very bold claim from Sam Altman on 5 Jan 2025: 

We are now confident we know how to build AGI as we have traditionally understood it. We believe that, in 2025, we may see the first AI agents "join the workforce" and materially change the output of companies. We continue to believe that iteratively putting great tools in the hands of people leads to great, broadly-distributed outcomes.

We are beginning to turn our aim beyond that, to superintelligence in the true sense of the word. We love our current products, but we are here for the glorious future. With superintelligence, we can do anything else. Superintelligent tools could massively accelerate scientific discovery and innovation well beyond what we are capable of doing on our own, and in turn massively increase abundance and prosperity...

Self-Driving In Switzerland

"Switzerland greenlights use of self-driving cars on motorways from March 2025"