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The Chinese release an open source chatbot AI, slams American stocks
This is pretty amusing, funny, and ironic, for certain values of amusing, funny, and ironic ( Read more... ) -
Utah students can no longer bring banned books to school
The books are still available in book stores and online, etc., and ownership is not prohibited, but there's a troubling line in the state code that "...explicitly states, “Sensitive materials are prohibited in the school setting.”"Suggestions in the Library Reddit include fake book covers, and of course reading ebooks would make it a bit difficult ( Read more... ) -
The recently pardoned Jan 6 offenders may not be completely off the hook....
This is lovely, we'll see if it actually happens ( Read more... ) -
Two January 6 rioters are refusing their pardons!
Amongst the flurry of presidential orders that were issued Monday after a weird old felon from Florida was sworn in to allegedly lead the USA for the next four years, was a pardon for all of the people convicted of crimes involved in the infamous January 6 riots. This was a campaign promise, though Vance the Veep had stated that the most violent ( Read more... ) -
Monday's inauguration TV viewership numbers: poor
I know that my having my TV play Inglorious Basterds for many hours made no difference, but it amused me. regardless, Monday's viewer numbers were lower than the 2017 numbers, and also lower than Biden's or either Obama inauguration numbers!
This makes me smile.
I did have to pay $4 to rent Basterds for 48 hours, I consider it money well-spent.< -
Let's talk about the Chinese Salt Typhoon hack attack
Well. This is a bit involved.
Last year it was detected that the Chinese had infiltrated at least nine major American telecommunications companies, including Verizon and AT&T. It was so bad that the FBI was telling government workers to not use secure messaging apps and phones and email and talk to people face to face ( Read more... ) -
So, Americans, what are you doing on Inauguration Day tomorrow?
As it happens, the day that we're inaugurating that weird old felon from Florida also falls on the day that we're remembering Martin Luther King Jr., and it's a federal holiday, which means a lot of us have the day off ( Read more... ) -
The original code for the first AI chatbot, ELIZA, was recovered after 60 years!
The code was written by Joseph Weizenbaum, a German Jew whose family fled Nazi Germany for the USA and studied at Wayne State in Detroit. He wrote ELIZA in a programming language that he created called MAD-SLIP, Michigan Algorithm Decoder Symmetric List Processor, in only 420 lines of code! It was quickly translated into Lisp, a language well- ( Read more... ) -
RIP: David Lynch, 78: iconic film maker
David Lynch passed away today, no cause of death given but it was known he suffered from severe emphysema from years of smoking ( Read more... ) -
Last week the weird old guy from Florida was sentenced in his hush money trail
Last Friday the sadly (for us) once and future president was ordered back to court in New York, and appeared via a video link from Florida. This occasion was to close the case: this occasion was for Judge Merchan to sentence the convicted felon, who was found guilty of all 34 counts of conspiracy other crimes of paying hush money to Stormy Daniels ( Read more... )