#JawnCon George Sanford talking about lessons learned from working physical security. There’s a benefit to having a line at the door because it gives a chance to see how people react when frustrated (standing in line). Can spot problematic behavior early, before people get drunk.
Worth doing the same in your hiring process to avoid hiring “brilliant jerks”
(I’m reminded of the “see how a prospect treats service workers” test)
Meet the West Australian seahorse, or Hippocampus subelongatus, and learn about all its special quirks!
Use these key identifying features to spot a West Australian seahorse in the wild, then snap a photo and report your sighting to the iSeahorse project hosted on https://iNaturalist.org. Your photos can provide crucial data, helping our scientists fill research gaps to better protect seahorses and the seas.
🔗 Learn more about iSeahorse here: https://www.iseahorse.org
Terence Tao is typically described as one of the world’s greatest living mathematicians
“I’m on a war footing,” he said while grabbing coffee during a two-day math workshop at the University of California, Los Angeles, that was
rife with talk about the existential crisis that artificial intelligence has created in his field.
Days earlier OpenAI had announced that it had solved the Navier-Stokes problem,
one of seven “Millennium Prize problems” that had stymied the greatest minds in math for nearly a century.
“There are no rules any more,”
Dr. Tao, 51, said in an interview before the workshop in his modest office on the U.C.L.A. campus,
his home since 1996, when he arrived after completing his doctorate at Princeton at the age of 20.
“I’m just numb to what would have been jaw-dropping events for me a year ago.
At some point, maybe I’ll get hit by a whole wave of PTSD.”
Instead he was hit by a bigger bomb on Oct. 6,
when OpenAI released more than 350 findings in nearly every subfield of the profession,
including algebra, number theory, theoretical computer science, mathematical logic and topology.
Stunned mathematicians,
some who were close to solving problems they had worked on for years,
found themselves beaten in an instant by A.I.
Dr. Tao, who has been a tenured professor since the age of 24,
said senior academics like himself are not as threatened by A.I. as those starting out.
But the math world is looking to him for answers.
He has accepted that his celebrated status has made him an unofficial spokesman for the field, a job that for now is consuming most of his time.
Until recently his job was as a bridge between the slow-moving world of higher math and the scorching speed of A.I.
Dr. Tao, who uses A.I. as an assistant to run calculations, write code, search vast troves of literature and brainstorm ideas,
has been experimenting with OpenAI’s models since 2023.
He was an enthusiast for a “best of both worlds” future.
OpenAI’s releases have now left him feeling used.
“As recently as a year ago, I had a pretty good relationship with many employees at OpenAI,” he said in a recent phone conversation.
"A lot of people I interacted with shared a very common vision of how A.I. should be used
— you know, to empower scientists.”
But the rush to publish new findings, he said,
shows their true purpose.
They “used math for what they needed,
which was to evaluate their models,” he said.
“At this point, I don’t see a way to constructively engage.”
His anger was clear in a post on the widely read math blog
Proofs and Prompts
after OpenAI’s Oct. 6 release.
“I am horrified by the many person-years” of research,
particularly by young mathematicians,
“being casually disrupted or destroyed,” he wrote.
“Much as one cannot unhear a movie spoiler or a crossword clue,
one cannot explore a problem as profitably and richly once one is aware of an existing solution.”
He mourned, he added, “the path not taken,
and the opportunities lost in the frantic race to develop this technology.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/16/us/math-ai-terence-tao.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share
Move carefully and fix things.
(I think something cozy similar to Stardew Valley, or something visual novel -ish is probably the extent of what I can manage.)
recommend me a video game i can play while my brain is feverish and slow.
on the subject of old, dead, German philosophers:
I've read a lot of Schopenhauer. There's a lot to disagree with, but I morbidly enjoy the radical pessimism - and how he manages to wrest a deeply humane, and compassionate ethics from his conviction that we live in the worst possible world and that the universe is a penal colony where we are punished for being born. He was way ahead of his time on animal rights (he was perhaps the first European philosopher to even take the subject seriously); animals are our fellow inmates - if they have a somewhat dimmer awareness of the nature of their punishment than we do, then it is still only right to treat them with compassion.
But if I ever reference or recommend him, I always add a caveat: He was rather badly misogynist.
Why do I single out the misogyny, given that he was also a bit of a racist and an antisemite? Mostly because the time he lived in was quite different from ours, and he wasn't any more racist or antisemitic than the cultural baseline (if anything he was *less* racist in practice; he was fiercely opposed to transatlantic slavery and European colonialism). But even for his own time, he was a misogynistic troglodyte. He *really* hated women, and actively fought against the advances of the women's suffrage movement. You could dig up 2000-year-older dead Greek philosophers and *still* find Schopenhauer to be a regressive throwback in comparison.
Sometimes I think about what historical philosophers would have been like if they'd grown up in the modern day, but still had the same foundational guiding values or ideas as they did. Eg. nu-Plato wouldn't have had kooky physics, but he'd still have been an idealist and an authoritarian. And I think if we did that to Schopenhauer, we'd get a nu-Schopenhauer who probably wasn't racist or antisemitic at all, but who'd probably be posting angry rants on manosphere forums.
"but you'll be left behind!". yes. i probably will. so go ahead and leave me behind.
When a bunch of weird Christians 20 years ago kept telling us all that we'd be staying here on Earth while they all got raptured away to heaven, i felt much the same way: if *you lot* are going to heaven, then please, by all means, go ahead without me.
In this thread, please post pictures of interspecies friendships.
(Ones where none of the involved friends is a human!)
@datarama I hear where you're coming from, but also strongly disagree.
Technical illiteracy is a critical thing that the bastards are preying on right now. And when all this selfish bullshit implodes, we'll have a great need for people who can rebuild properly.
I don't think CS on its own is adequate, sure - it always needed to be accompanied by and mingled with the humanities. But that's a problem we need to start addressing today, which is harder to do if we're mentally trapped in regret for yesterday.
‘Weather under Fire’: The climate change film we’ve been waiting for.
Due out in early 2027, it’s the best climate change documentary I’ve ever seen. The producers need donations to finish it.
Bron: Woonbond
Het kabinet wil huurders met een hoger inkomen of spaargeld fors meer huur laten betalen. Met een nieuw meldpunt brengt de Woonbond in kaart hoe deze huurdersbelasting mensen in de problemen brengt.
Wie volwassen inwonende kinderen heeft, kan door het totale huishoudinkomen een forse inkomensafhankelijke huurverhoging krijgen.GettyAls het aan het kabinet ligt, moeten woningcorporaties de inkomensafhankelijke huurverhoging toepassen. Die mogelijkheid bestaat al sinds 2013, maar was tot nu toe een keuze. De bedoeling is dat alle corporaties deze extra huurverhoging straks verplicht moeten opleggen als huurders boven de inkomensgrens vallen. Inwonende kinderen van 23 jaar en ouder tellen ook mee bij het bepalen van dit huishoudinkomen.
Naast de inkomensafhankelijke huurverhoging onderzoekt het kabinet de mogelijkheden om een vermogensafhankelijke huurverhoging in te voeren. Hoe deze plannen eruitzien en hoe dit straks in zijn werk gaat kun je terugzien in het webinar dat de Woonbond op 13 oktober organiseerde.
Tot nu toe heeft zo’n driekwart van de corporaties de inkomensafhankelijke huurverhoging al toegepast. Reacties van huurders die bij de Woonbond binnenkomen laten zien dat dit tot financieel pijnlijke situaties kan leiden:
“Dit is een scheve regeling. Kinderen kunnen tegenwoordig geen huis krijgen en zijn gedwongen thuis te blijven wonen, anders worden zij bankhoppers of dakloos. Het grootste probleem is dat hierdoor de woonlast verhoogd wordt met 50 tot 100 euro per maand.”
Huurder via het meldpunt van de Woonbond
“Ik had gehoopt mijn spaargeld, waar ik mijn leven lang zuinig voor heb geleefd, te kunnen gebruiken als extra pensioen. Als ik door dat spaargeld extra huurverhogingen krijg, heb ik dus voor niets zo zuinig geleefd. En als het spaargeld opraakt door die hogere huurstijgingen, kan ik mijn vaste lasten niet meer betalen.”
Huurder via het meldpunt van de Woonbond
De Woonbond is fel tegen het verplicht doorvoeren van een inkomens- of vermogensafhankelijke huurverhoging. Beleidsmedewerker Marcel Trip: “Via de huur extra geld binnenhalen over het inkomen of het vermogen van een huurder is eigenlijk gewoon belastingpolitiek. Het is daarom beter en duidelijker om het beestje bij de naam te noemen en te spreken over een ‘huurdersbelasting’.
De huurverhoging levert corporaties geld op, maar dit bedrag zet geen zoden aan de dijk als het gaat om het bestrijden van de woningnood. Het is niet zo dat corporaties met dit geld straks opeens duizenden sociale huurwoningen kunnen bijbouwen. Dit terwijl de verhalen die binnenkomen bij ons meldpunt laten zien dat de maatregel wel flink ingrijpt in de persoonlijke levens van huurders.
Het plan om de huren extra te verhogen voor huurders met hogere inkomens is bedacht op de tekentafel in Den Haag. Hoe deze verhoging in de praktijk uitpakt en ingrijpt in de persoonlijke levens van huurders is voor politici niet altijd direct duidelijk. Deel daarom jouw verhaal en wat jij van deze plannen vindt, bij ons Meldpunt Kabinetsplannen Huurverhoging. De Woonbond verzamelt zoveel mogelijk praktijkvoorbeelden, om duidelijk te maken dat deze plannen onrechtvaardig en ineffectief zijn. Ook vragen we aandacht voor dit onderwerp via de media.
Doe een melding
Moet je extra huur betalen vanwege een iets hoger inkomen? Maak je je zorgen over de plannen voor een vermogenstoets? Laat het ons weten.
Bericht op oorspronkelijke website . Bron: Woonbond
#huurstrijd #huurverhoging #socialeHuur #woonbondi've been looking at the student protests in #france and in #albania, wondering why this strong solidarity between students, professors and the general population is so intense there, and so anemic in #romania
in the press and in chit-chats, i've mostly heard derisive attitudes towards professors protesting against the abject defunding of education in my home country. "they just want money", people would say. as though wanting a decent living through wage labour is morally bankrupt
mum bought me a glasses holder :neofox_glasses:
In just one more month, the European Space Agency’s Hera mission will make history. Moving at 12 km/s versus Earth, the mission is about to rendezvous with the binary Dimorphos-Didymos asteroid pair. NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission slammed into Dimorphos in 2022, and now Hera will provide a follow-up view of the mission’s resulting handiwork. The European Space Agency (ESA) recently released a thought-provoking look at the perspectives of Hera, and what an astronaut might see from the surface of the asteroids as the mission speeds by.
Here’s our latest post on the Hera mission for @universetoday - https://www.universetoday.com/articles/esas-hera-mission-targets-binary-asteroid-pair-in-november
Hail Freya, it's Friday! Time for a #FridayPaganPoll:
Part of many pagan paths is the shifting and changing of practices over time. Someone might start as a Wiccan and then later become a Druid. They might try out pendulums or astrology and eventually decide it's not for them.
So today I'm wondering: What do you usually do with pagan items that are still useable, but that you no longer have a use for?
(multiple choices)
RE: https://infosec.exchange/@0xabad1dea/112279265373393160
Thinking about this again as the train stops at Schiphol and an exhausted stewardess collapses into the seat across from me while three young boys swing their suitcases around dangerously taking selfies of their first trip to another country
I live about a mile from a major international airport runway and as the planes come down directly over my house I think about how on every one of them are people making a trip so routine they won’t remember it in a month and people who are on the most important journey of their lives
So Google is killing Android Freedom but can't even keep its official Play Store safe?! 😡
A fake version of #Chrome app appeared on the Google Play Store above the real one - And Google is trying to stop you know side loading apps and only use its Play Store for 'Security reasons'. THIS DOES NOT MAKE SENSE.
Take action & sign the petition: https://keepandroidopen.org/cta/
#Android is supposed to be open, & your phone should be yours → NOT GOOGLES.
😔😔😔😔☹️ Trans staff getting less safe in the NHS.
@transactualuk https://mastodon.social/@transactualuk/117451005143129622