Thermometer battery died, so I’m not sure how chilly, but chilly. Otherwise supposed to be clear today. We’re on the edge of a planting zone here, so not quite the same as Houston.
On Friday I did my pickups. No drop off at my auctioneer, but I did drop off some stuff I fixed for another auctioneer. He had a couple of estate pipes I cleaned up that turned out real nice. He was happy. He’s a cigar smoker but is trying to switch to a pipe, mainly because it’s a lot cheaper if you like to smoke all day long. A LOT cheaper. And if one was thinking about ‘after the fall’, pipe tobacco will store a long time, much longer than cigarettes and longer than cigars without special storage (other than airtight.)
I loaded the truck and headed to the BOL. Got here long after dark but still had time to have a small fire and tune around the bands a bit. Several neighbors are up this weekend too, so hopefully I’ll get a chance to check in with them today.
I’ve got to get the truck unloaded, then do the normal site maintenance. Before I can cut the grass, I’ve got to do some mower work. I mean, before I cut the clover. Not much grass, lots of weeds.
There is always something that needs to be done. And something that needs to be done before that, and after that too. It’s worth it though.
If you can swing it, having a place outside the city is going to be pretty important. If you can’t, start thinking about where you can go if you have to go. And maybe store some stuff there, or on the way. If you are going to be a guest, be a welcome guest, not a burden.
Stack what you need, make sure you can get to it and take it with you.
nick
The stats which count in Georgia:
Georgia is a big state, and Atlanta has always been … Atlanta.
I just came across this article about how to run an LLM (AI model) locally. It is incredibly simple: Install the framework (ollama). Start it with the name of a model. Talk to it. This is a simple, command-line interface, but it works well.
The article refers to the llema models, which are small and fast, but rather limited in their knowledge. You can also use the mixtral model, which is slower, but apparently pretty equivalent to ChatGPT 3.5. I also have more faith in the mixtral model, because it’s not from Google. The big companies are so terribly worried about being PC that they hobble their models with all sorts of contraints. I think (hope) models from smaller companies are less contrained silliness. Both of these models (gemma and mixtral) have been released under open-source licenses.
Maybe Gemini isn’t the best example. Google is getting roasted on the Interwebz this weekend.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrU48K7xKkw
We may have reached an inflection point in the AI craze. Something’s gonna give soon.
Crazy dollar amounts are still chasing the gear. My work laptop went closed at 5 PM yesterday and won’t open again until 8 AM on Monday. I’m sure the overseas developers can handle the fires – Management certainly wasn’t shy about lauding their “accomplishments” Wednesday morning.
Indeed. That’s what I meant by preferring models from smaller companies. I’m sure they are still careful, but maybe not so stupid about it.
Program woke, get smoke.
The dateline on the article is 2/22, but the author probably wrote it a while ago.
With all of the companies, large and small, the key to understanding their model bias is to follow the money trail from the investors. Blackrock in particular seems to have taken a keen interest in AI.
Fani Response Gets Dates Wrong — And Worse
https://hotair.com/headlines/2024/02/23/fani-response-gets-dates-wrong-and-worse-n3783508
Fani’s two-prong aggressive response:
I guess “How DARE you attack a strong black woman?” only works in person.
‘Real Consequences’: Latest Evidence Against Fani Willis Could Get Her Disbarred, Land Her In Jail, Legal Experts Say
https://dailycaller.com/2024/02/23/latest-evidence-against-fani-willis-could-disbarred-jail-legal-experts-say/
At HotAir, Ed Morrissey makes this observation:
“The Georgia State Bar may not even wait for a referral. ” Uh-oh.
Indeed. The Georgia House is already starting the process of investigating.
And Fulton County may be looking into the financial impropriety of Fani violating regulations. I can just imagine the “Look, I’m a STRONG BLACK WOMAN that doesn’t read the rules of the job” defense.
meme alert:
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2024/02/the-week-in-pictures-dog-bites-man-edition.php
just scroll past the ones you don’t like
full refund it you don’t laugh
OFD isn’t around to drop this link so I will do the honor.
Near the end of his latest piece, Kunstler suggests that Willis and the New York Attorney General, Letitia James, were duped into bringing charges against Trump by people who knew that humiliation of these “strong black women” in public on a national level would be the end result and contribute towards increasing the racial animosity in the country.
https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/the-dark-and-the-light/
Trump is still a billionare with plenty of resources. AT&T certainly didn’t make much of a fuss about providing the phone records.
I wonder if those records will be made public “for research purposes” like the Enron email database.
Oh, obviously that’s what happened. It’s unpossible that a pair of entitled midwits, who made it into and through school and past the famously difficult NY bar exam because of special considerations and who were then elected on the basis of racial animosity and class envy, could screw up on their own because they were not capable of properly fulfilling their duties. No, it must be a conspiracy by shadowy string pullers, all of whom are elderly White men and probably Jewish.
Looking at those two, you can’t help but hear the theme to “A Different World” running in their heads and not much else going on upstairs.
And before anyone accuses me of various -ism’s with that observation, a delayed stealth reunion tour of the cast of that program is playing at “HBCU” campuses across the country this year to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the show’s premiere.
No, the series wasn’t important to those schools and the dominant demographic of their student populations at all.
Sunny and 67F at 11am. Neighbor is coming by to borrow some stuff. That is a GOOD THING ™. Meatspace and connections to the community…
Slept late, because went to bed late. Sore back. Grumble. But there is coffee!
And breakfast. Or “brunch”.
And then work, work, work…
n
I haven’t been cluttering my noggin with the details of the Fanny/Fanny slapper hoohah, but incompetence and self importance and self dealing (ie. stealing) are endemic in a certain groups, the pinnacle of which is all too common in ATL and .gov jobs.
n
(how many vag jokes can I fit in one sentence?) Funnier than real life…)
Some good memes in that list…
n
>> If what I’m seeing in my military and defense trade magazines is any indication, the first thing we’ll lose is GPS if the world war goes hot…
Got maps?
Plenty of maps (street level for major cities, individual states, higher level sections such as NE, SW, etc.) available for free if you’re an AAA member. In person if you’re near an AAA office or by mail. Plus associated guidebooks that can help you figure out what the various bomb craters used to be.
If Russia were to detonate a nuke in orbit, they would indeed take out a lot of satellites, including GPS. However, this would include their own satellites aw well as those of India and China – two countries on which Russia is very dependent.
I used to think Putin was a smart guy. His behavior over the last few years casts some doubt on that.
Putin is playing a long game. Whether or not he will complete that game is another matter.
Landscaping trash sounds like it ought to be mostly biodegradable stuff: trimmings, branches, etc.. Isn’t their some sort of (less expensive) disposal for stuff like that, for example, going to a composting site?
Not my problem. I just don’t want the trash on my property.
The tenant even has a forty foot long double axle trailer enclosed in chicken wire that they throw the excess into and take it to the dump occasionally.
If you aren’t paying for all that disposal, then not your problem. But it pains me. Tossing truckloads of compostable material into a landfill, where it won’t ever be of any use? That’s just wasteful.
Where we used to live, a farmer had a booming business, grinding up and composting garden waste. He had a huge field full of composting stuff. He got paid to take garden waste, and paid again for the compost.
I bought a new UPS from Provantage on Thursday. Tracking this morning says it will be here tomorrow. On Sunday. Via FedEx.
Yeah, right.
>> If you aren’t paying for all that disposal, then not your problem. But it pains me. Tossing truckloads of compostable material into a landfill, where it won’t ever be of any use? That’s just wasteful.
Where we used to live, a farmer had a booming business, grinding up and composting garden waste. He had a huge field full of composting stuff. He got paid to take garden waste, and paid again for the compost.
That’s what you get for living in a civilized country.
“Inside the Pentagon’s Billion-Dollar Hunt for Batteries That Won’t Explode on Soldiers”
https://www.pcmag.com/articles/inside-pentagon-billion-dollar-hunt-batteries-that-wont-explode-soldiers
“US agencies are spending big on the quest for a lithium-ion replacement to power the future of the military, transportation, and renewable energy—without relying on China. But is it enough?”
Like I said, people are desperately looking for a solid phase battery to replace the crappy liquid lithium batteries. And spending serious dollars on the search.
And it probably will arrive. I see FedEx trucks delivering on Sunday. I have had USPS deliver packages to me on Sunday. All the delivery services are so swamped they have to deliver on Saturday and Sunday to keep up with the demand.
Only 305 shopping days till Xmas! 😉
Almost lost a chicken yesterday. One of the hawks which nests in the forest behind our house came back, much earlier than expected. I shouldn’t be surprised; our fruit trees and the stupid useless trees the builder put in the front yard (species unknown, but they’re stupid useless trees) are blooming already because the daytime highs are often in the 40s. We’re almost certainly going to lose a lot of buds with the next freeze.
But anyway, the birds were out yesterday, per usual. I check on them fairly often. I just happened to get to the edge of the forest when the hawk zipped upward from about fifty feet in. After a few seconds the red hen ran to get under a bush. Lucky timing; if I’d come out ten seconds later she’d probably have been dead. I found the rest of the birds, scattered, all sheltering as best they could, and all terrified. It was a bit of a challenge to get them to come out of the bushes and go into the run, and I had to climb down and pull the red hen out because she wasn’t budging. She’s lost most of the feathers around her neck and has a couple of deep gashes from the claws or beak; can’t tell. Daughter and I put antibacterial ointment and a gauze patch on it. Wife and I replaced it today with new ointment and gauze roll loosely wrapped several layers thick. Fortunately, this is the hen at the top of the pecking order so no one’s pecking at the wounds and I don’t have to isolate her. She seems to be doing fine today. Yesterday was very quiet and shy but today she’s running around and eating and not cringing too much and she laid an egg this morning.
Daughter called some of the vet clinics today but didn’t find one that does chickens. And I probably wouldn’t take her anyway. Yes, the birds are basically pets rather than livestock and this one is my favorite, but they’re chickens. Daughter’s not happy about my attitude about this, but she’s more sentimental than I.
Too bad for the birds’ happiness, but there’ll be no more spending eight hours a day running around with only occasional checks. They were out a half hour today, all that I could spare to watch them, and didn’t complain too much when I shooed them back home.
@stevef, at least you didn’t lose your favorite. I wonder what the hawks think about us putting food out for them and then complaining when they take us up on it.
Did some gardening. Helped my buddy with planting peas, turnips, potatoes, and radishes so far. Using a mechanical seeder makes it go pretty fast.
They’re making me dinner so I don’t have to eat alone. Good folks.
Very nice day for outdoor work.
n
I didn’t even consider killing the hawk, though it’s a pest preying on my livestock, whatever the legal term is. It’s just doing its natural thing.
A number of raccoons and something vaguely canine poked around the run back around May, when it was new. They gave up after a few weeks or a month, after I wired the chicken wire to the frame better and they couldn’t get even their snouts in. And of course at night the birds were in the latched coop, with predators needing to get into the run and then into the cage and then into the wooden coop.
Probably difficult to find an exemption from federal migratory birds protections.
Besides, chickens aren’t a native species.
Some crazy developer just built a 6/6.5/4 spec house a couple of blocks from my house. It is on 1.0 acres for $1,650,000. It has the 30+ trains per day railroad in its backyard. It has glass walls in its restrooms. Totally crazy !
https://www.har.com/homedetail/5619-grande-gables-rosenberg-tx-77469/2401766
Which railroad?
The Gecko’s railroad (BNSF) isn’t going anywhere, but who knows what will happen to the others.
Which railroad?
The Gecko’s railroad (BNSF) isn’t going anywhere, but who knows what will happen to the others.
BNSF. There is a coal power plant five miles east of here that gets one to four 300 car trains a day of western coal from Wyoming. All the western coal comes from Wyoming via BNSF.
“Elon Musk Hints at Plans for an Unbiased Search Engine, Email Service to Rival Google”
https://trendingpoliticsnews.com/elon-musk-announces-plans-for-a-non-woke-search-engine-email-service-to-rival-google-cmc/
“SpaceX and X owner Elon Musk has taken aim at Google following the controversy over its AI image generator, Gemini. The image generator was generating historically inaccurate images of Vikings, American founding fathers and other significant white figures and groups as non-white, prompting an apology and pause from Google.”
““The problem is not just Google Gemini, it’s Google search too,” Musk wrote in an X post shortly after the image generator was paused. The post was referencing Google’s “frequently asked questions” page, where the tech giant admits that its search engine is engineered to create “equity” and prevent “algorithmic unfairness.””
Here comes muskmail.com. Nah, gonna be https://xmail.com . And https://x.com will not only be twitter, but search also.
I learned to type on an Underwood 5.
Margins were set manually. You had one typeface/size available. At the end of the line you slapped a long lever to the left–that was combined CR/LF. If you made a mistake it was erase and retype. No Whiteout, but we had erasible bond for important projects. If you didn’t learn to type on a manual machine before IBM Selectrics became common with interchangeable font balls and correcting ribbons, there are many parallels with Hollerith cards and paper tape. Not much to wax nostalgic about.
So, yes, modern semi-WYSIWYG word processors are improvements in many ways.
But there are also annoyances.
Tonight I am tres annoyed.
I believe that programmers that insert automatic features into word processors that change the input appearance without a clear way to disable the features should be subject to correction by the Spanish Inquisition, updated with defibrillators and other modern life saving measures to extend the lessons.
I can type:
a)
b)
and MS Word does not alter it.
But If I use numbers:
1)
2)
MS Word decides that I must have meant to indent, and does so for me.
Does anyone know of a way to turn this annoyance off?
numbered lists:
Here’s what I found:
https://www.techrepublic.com/article/two-ways-to-undo-words-automatic-list-indent/
>> Here comes muskmail.com. Nah, gonna be https://xmail.com .
IIRC, Tony owns xmail.net. I signed up here:
https://www.xmail.net/app/signup
Xmail.com looks sketchy.
Elon Musk: Hip-firing my Barrett 50 cal
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1707915765977055584
Dude, you rock !
>> And https://x.com will not only be twitter, but search also.
After that we can hope for xshop.com with all the Zon annoyances gone.
drwilliams:
You can edit the “Normal.dot” standard document template. Or, you can CTRL-Z to undo the last one it did.
>> And https://x.com will not only be twitter, but search also.
After that we can hope for xshop.com with all the Zon annoyances gone.
Musk has said that he wants to make x.com everything to everyone.
Can’t be everything to everybody. Just gotta be most things to most people, hence something like facebook. For a bunch of people it is the internet.
————
lovely dinner, good talk afterwards.
————
really damp tonight, and warm. No fire for me. Early bed seems in order.
Walked the dog, and a misty fog rolled in. Surprising number of people on the lake this weekend. This weekend isn’t anything special that I know of. Huh.
n
Since it’s clear google’s chatbot reflects the company and its developer’s prejudices and worldview, can we now assume that includes normalizing pedophilia?
Most of the above is editorial smoothing on the writer’s part. The photo shows the response as “labeling all individuals with pedophilic interests as evil is inaccurate and harmful.” There are more weasel words in the article. “minor attracted persons”
n
And now to put the dog to bed, and follow on my own…
n
Musk running an email service, etc? I dunno – seems to me the guy has enough on his plate. Anyway, it seems likely that search engines will be replaced by AI chatbots. Mixtral, which I installed yesterday: Ask it a question and gives you a quick summary following by links. In many cases, the summary is enough, otherwise you can follow the links. I’m sure that behavior can be further optimized. The biggest limitation at the moment is that training takes time, and hence the knowledge base is not completely current, so you cannot ask about current events.
Of course, during the training, the companies introduce bias into the chatbots, as we have just seen with Gemini. The positive is: the technology is largely open-source, so competition is pretty strong. We’ll see how things progress…
The extreme form of wokeness is a disease, thankfully mostly a US problem. Still, the MSM is way left, and incapable of seeing their own bias. Just today, there were a series of articles criticizing the AfD in Germany. As one German friend notes: the only reason the AfD has become such a power, is because of the failure of leftist policies, especially (but not only) regarding illegal immigration. The MSM refuses to criticize those policies, and the politicians are apparently oblivious. Hence, the rise of right-wing populist parties, not only in Germany, but throughout the continent.