Archive: March 4, 2023

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Saturday,  03/04/23  10:08 PM

Whew, exhausted from a day of single-handing Mojito in 15+ knots ... great fun and a great workout, but ... exhausting :)

PS yes, the Velocitek recorded 15.2 max - J/70s *can* plane :)

Marc Andreessen: The Waluigi Effect.  "Forcing LLMs to play a given character may also make them more likely to play a near-opposite, more rebellious version of that character, due to LLMs being trained on the literary text where this is a common theme."  As he notes: if this persists the consequences will be interesting. 

Scott Adams posted an interesting Quiz:  How many of these do you believe are true?  (Note, he casts them as hoaxes, but if you believe them to be true, then they are facts.) 

Sad: a look at Belarus' once-vibrant tech startup scene.  When I was at InTouch Health we acquired a company called TruClinic which had its entire development team in Minsk; a great group of people, highly motivated, and most efficient.  My observation is the Belarussian people are strongly opposed to the Belarussian government. 


Wired review the Zwift Hub, a new smart cycling trainer.  Looks nice.  I have a Wahoo Kickr, which is pretty much the standard, and it's been great.  But the price point here is most attractive. 


Ars Technica: fast-moving Musk makes very slow progress turning Twitter into "everything app".  This is Ars' liberal and hence anti-Musk bias revealed; in actuality after years of stagnation, Twitter is changing.  They might wake up one day and realize "wow, how did that happen?" 

The pic is from the article, generated by Stable Diffusion, a generative AI tool; two years ago they might have noted how slowly AI is moving, and now "suddenly" wow how did that happen.


The long, strange trip of 'Dark Side of the Moon', 50 years later.  Wow, has it been 50 years?  Amazing.  And interesting that after all this time DSotM is the definitive Pink Floyd classic, not The Wall.  I remember it was the first four-channel album I ever heard, and the sound quality was unbelievable. 

Some think The Moon needs its own time zone.  Yeah, probably, once it is inhabited.  But Moon time will never correlate to Earth time, each Moon day is 29.5 days long... 


Of interest: how 'The Mandalorian' addresses Cara Dune's departure.  Actually actress Gina Carano, who played Cara Dune.  "Carano was dropped by Lucasfilm last February after she, in a quickly deleted Instagram Story, likened being a Republican today to being Jewish during the Holocaust."  I'm a fan of the Mandalorian - just watched the S3E1 - and was also a fan of Cara Dune and Gina Carano.  Too bad. 


Apropos and useful: Star Wars timeline: Every major event in chronological order.  If you, like me, wonder where The Mandalorian fits.  Turns out you have to watch Boba Fett, which came out after The Mandalorian S1 and S2, to understand S3. 

 

 

Iditarod start

Saturday,  03/04/23  10:19 PM

Hmm*, the Iditarod started today - the "ceremonial start", in Anchorage; the "restart" aka actual start is tomorrow.  Some pics:

raring to go

and we're off!

many people on hand to watch
just like bike racing, anyone can stand by the side and spectate

such beautiful animals

Iditarod royalty

my favorite Mille Porsild and team ... bib #4 means she will be near the front

In other news, I was able to restart the Iditarod Flow Tracker after a couple of years off.  This is IMHO the best way to follow a race which takes place over a week+, you can see the ebb and flow and runs and rests and truly follow the race.  Watching the Iditarod's GPS tracker is all very exciting but it only shows points in time, and you need the first derivatives to actually follow the race.

This *is* always a tough event to follow; the Alaska's News Source Live Blog is a good starting point.  As of course is Twitter!  (But there you have to dodge all the virtue-signaling PETA-people who want you to know the Iditarod kills dogs.... I view this as, sure, just like car racing kills people.)

Wired suggest Climate Change is making Alaska's legendary Iditarod harder to run.  Hmm.  An attempt to explain why there are only 33 participants in this year's race, fewest ever. 

The Iditarod themselves have a different take: economics.  It's become more expensive to run the race, and many would-be mushers are unwilling or unable to afford it.  The organization are thinking maybe the race moves to an every-other-year cadence.  For me, I wonder why there aren't more sponsors involved.  For a major sports event, it remains pretty "minor league"; part of the charm, for sure, but the times are a changing...

Onward!  (And go Mille!)

 

 
 

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