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Rwanda’s rapid Marburg response is a lesson in global health
Another win for Rwanda. In October, it reported its first Marburg virus outbreak, for which there are no vaccines or treatments. Following a COVID-19-style mass test, track, and trace operation, the case fatality rate plummeted, and the outbreak has now been declared over - it's been a month since the last death was recorded. NPR buff.ly/49f7esn
#ShareGoodNewsToo
#sharegoodnewstoo

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The people who are most optimistic about AI are people who've never tried to use it for anything they're expert in. Its reputation seems to rely almost entirely on the Gell-Mann amnesia effect. I try to explain this to people; I just wish people who know something about something just ask it a question.

I keep on giving it a go our of desperation, just to get some kind of lead in something I can research manually (which I'd investigate separately).

It always disappoints me.

Here's a great example:

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fl

I tried an AI about a subject I know (the types in C). It made mistakes. I pointed them out to it. It acknowledged them. It was extremly courteaous. And the next time I asked a question, it continued to make mistakes with the same coutreaous politeness.

Unfortunately I can't remember the questions. It's a pity it was interesting to see how incompetent an AI can be.

Very quickkly it proposed me to send money to continue to use its expertise. I turned off the computer.

This entry was edited (1 year ago)
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Sheldon

I worked on an AI based news engine 2 decades ago. It was obviously much more primitive tech, but I saw a similar effect and it was what ended up tanking the project.

We were using vector based AI to find and categorize obscure news items. Human editors were used to babysit and fix the results when it was wrong.

The AI outperformed the editors at first, but within a couple of months, the human editors started catching up and eventually became better than the AI. At some point, it was a waste of time to use the AI as anything more than a brute phrase matching engine to shovel stuff to the human editors.

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

There's this thing that seems to be happening in western democracies recently where leftish liberal politicians look at their right-wing-going-on-fascist opposition and say "they're right, but don't vote for them". The result is that people shrug and think they may as well vote for the real fascist rather than the guy doing fascist cosplay.

But does this ever happen the other way around? You never get Trump saying "The socialists are right, don't vote for them". Possibly I'm asking why the Overton window only ever goes rightwards.

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Miguel Arroz

The real problem to me is the left/liberal pretending the populist far right is just another player in the democracy game, when it obviously isn’t. They’re treating equally something that is not equal. They’re debating something that can’t be debated, with people who go to debates do everything but debating. It’s like history taught them nothing and they don’t understand this is something that needs to be eliminated while we can, before we need to do it with guns and bombs again.
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We've released #PuTTY version 0.82.

The biggest change is improved Unicode support. Usernames and passwords read from the terminal or the Windows console now support full Unicode, so that you can use characters outside the Windows system code page, or the character set configured in PuTTY. The same is true for usernames and file names provided via the PuTTY tools' command line and via the GUI (but unfortunately not yet if you save and reload a session).

#Putty

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Researchers from Zayed National Museum have discovered text concealed beneath a layer of gold leaf on a page of the Blue Qur’an - one of the world’s most well-known Qur’an manuscripts.

zayednationalmuseum.ae/en/abou…

#islam #religion #IslamicArt
@histodons @historikerinnen @medievodons @dh #MiddleEast #geschichte #histodons #MedievalStudies #medievalists #MiddleAges #Mittelalter #ReligiousStudies #paleography

#histodons #Religion #geschichte #islam #MiddleEast #MiddleAges #islamicart #medievalstudies #medievalists #paleography #mittelalter #religiousstudies @histodons group @Historikerinnen group @Medievodons group @dh group
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Miguel Arroz

@ifixcoinops This may be a good time to mention my new Sony TV came with two remotes, and I wish I was kidding. There’s the traditional TV remote, and the “smart” one. Where, and I kid you not, some buttons work via Bluetooth, others via IR.

I’ve never seen such a great example of what results from stitching two products together in something barely sellable. Sony is a shadow of what it used to be. Just like every other electronics brand.

@Dan Fixes Coin-Ops
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Mouin Rabbani on What Really Happened in Amsterdam Between Israeli Soccer Fans & Local Residents
youtube.com/watch?v=ttS8pKwvoI…

Mouin Rabbani on What Really Happened in Amsterdam Between Israeli Soccer Fans & Local Residents

Support our work: https://democracynow.org/donate/sm-desc-ytDutch Palestinian analyst Mouin Rabbani discusses the violence that broke out last week between v...
YouTube

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friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

Dear Apple, when the device is localised (see that S there?) into British English, "chips" does NOT go under "confectionary" in the shopping list.

Goddam fuckmuppet seppo nonsense.

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

youtube.com/watch?v=jN7bQ0MnP3…

This is Porterbrook's protoype hydrogen train. It's kind of nice but to me it begs the question: why not just electrify the lines in the conventional way? Producing and transporting the hydrogen for these things is surely going to consume many times more energy than conventional electric traction.

The Class 799 Hydrogen Train

Let's go for a ride on the Hydrogen Powered Train! This is an old 'Thameslink' train now converted by Porterbrook to be the Class 799 "Hydroflex" unit. I ...
YouTube
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glitchsoc - Link to source

Cyberspice

depends just how much infrastructure is needed to electrify. The TP route is taking years because they are having to raise bridges, rebuild stations and so on. Not including track straightening which they are also doing. If there’s an infrequent service on this line then it may make sense. Refuel at the depot end. Also if the depot IS electrified then that’s how you get the hydrogen there
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Americans: if you're thinking of leaving, beware before considering an asylum claim.

"Safe" countries have treaties recognising each other as safe, and do not recognise asylum claims from each other as valid. So if you as an American try to claim asylum there, at the moment you will be automatically rejected.

Instead, travel on a tourist visa. If things get bad for US trans people, this may eventually change.

#trans #TransRights

#trans #transrights
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Leon P Smith

@pigworker @johncarlosbaez

Honestly I remember one university who's main IT help desk was comically incompetent, and incredibly user hostile. For example, you could customize parts of your user experience on lab computers, but the settings would never stay.

The CS department handled their own IT at the time, and it was a _much_ more tolerable situation.

I've yet to understand why IT departments are typically so incredibly user-hostile, like they forget what purpose they actually serve.

@John Carlos Baez @Conor Titania Mc Bride
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Leon P Smith

@pigworker @johncarlosbaez

> I used to specialise in manufacturing specific needs. In fact, I still do.

Nice quote. That's certainly true of myself as well, to greater or lesser extent depending on whatever tends to capture my attention at that moment in time.

That's probably also why I found it pretty easy to get a bit crosswise with IT departments of all stripes.

@John Carlos Baez @Conor Titania Mc Bride
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This is a brilliant take by Gianmarco Soresi on the absurdity of comparing any criticism of #Israel to antisemitism

youtu.be/jhST1Q230zI

The Redefining of Antisemitism | Gianmarco Soresi | Stand Up Comedy

Words should mean things.🎤 Check Out my Tour Dates! 🎤Tour Dates: https://beacons.ai/gianmarcosoresi📱 Get a text next time I'm performing in your city 📱ht...
YouTube
#israel

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Janey Godley has died.She's been going to do so sometime soon for a while now, and very soon indeed for the last couple of weeks, and now she's gone.
She was always a proper ally, and the world is poorer for her absence.
Long may she be remembered and celebrated.

Trump is still a cunt.

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friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

So I know it’s all very funny, ha ha, but here’s why the orcas don’t go after the boats of the ultra rich.

Two photos. One a multi million euro luxury yacht. Notice it has two props. They steer by vectoring the thrust. There is no rudder.

The other, my boat. It costs what a new car costs (like if you were buying a low end Tesla. Expensive, but not stupid money). It has a rudder because it’s a sailboat. It can’t rely on thrust being present.

No rudder - no orca attack. People who can afford sailboats, which the orcas are attacking, cannot afford luxury motor yachts, which they aren’t.

A sailboat is like a mouldy caravan, but floating, and slower.

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On my quasi-blog: "Separation of concerns in a bug tracker"

A thought about bug trackers I've used, how they make some kinds of database query difficult, and how one might be designed more sensibly.

chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtath…

Separation of concerns in a bug tracker

www.chiark.greenend.org.uk

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Simon Tatham

@jackv the other almost unrelated question is: does a bug describe a user-visible misbehaviour, or an error in the code? They don't match up 1–1, because sometimes one code error can lead to what _looks_ like three separate bugs. And I've seen people have arguments about whether to merge them in the bug tracker, because some people want to count the errors in the code and others want to document all the user-visible badnesses.
Unknown parent

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Simon Tatham

@jackv ah, I see – you're distinguishing the notion of 'bug' vs 'feature' as users see them, from the strongly correlated but not identical idea that 'bug fix' means finding one small typo or missing statement or whatever in the code, whereas 'feature' means writing a whole pile of new stuff or massively refactoring things?
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