Joined April 2007
463 Photos and videos
Fun #ornithology fact for the weekend. Chickadees increase the number "dee" syllables in their calls as the potential threat of a predator increases. Small predators are considered more dangerous than big ones. Source: science.org/doi/full/10.1126…
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5 Jul 2024
Oh, how times have changed. #otd in 1993 @NewYorker published what’s now its most reproduced cartoon: “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” bit.ly/NYDogStrip (@plsteiner & @boingboing)
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It may have taken a few years, but @GSGLabs #Cynthion is finally here.
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29 Jun 2024
Beware of the book festivals! (My latest @GuardianBooks cartoon)
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Oh. My. God. LEGO Apollo Lunar Roving Vehicle coming this summer. lego.com/en-us/product/nasa-…
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Need big paper sheets? We got 'em! Find a tremendous selection of paper at our Spring Garage & Book Sale this Saturday! Museum of Printing Sat. April 13, 10 to 4 15 Thornton Ave., Haverhill, MA
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New Anthropic research suggests if violence doesn't solve your LLM problems you aren't using enough of it.
2 Apr 2024
Replying to @AnthropicAI
Many-shot jailbreaking exploits the long context windows of current LLMs. The attacker inputs a prompt beginning with hundreds of faux dialogues where a supposed AI complies with harmful requests. This overrides the LLM's safety training:
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Amazon Fresh failure. My third law of robotics, shared here yesterday is: 3. Technologies for robots need 10 years of steady improvement beyond lab demos of the target tasks to mature to low cost and to have their limitations characterized well enough that they can deliver 99.9% of the time. Every 10 more years gets another 9 in reliability. Looks to me like Amazon did not remotely follow this when they introduced Just Walk Out to their Amazon Fresh stores in 2016. Touted as cameras seeing what you put in your cart there was no need to check out. Service cancelled this week. Turns out there were 1,000 remote cashiers in India: "It often took hours for customers to receive receipts after leaving the store, largely because offshore cashiers were rewatching videos and assigning items to different customers." This story reports that in 2022 only 300 out of 1,000 walk outs did not need a human review, so 30% reliability against an Amazon target of 95%. Their business model built in a 5% failure rate, and even that was not even close to attainable. Not the magic of AI that consumers believed they were partaking in. Hubris gets you every time in robotics (and AI...). gizmodo.com/amazon-reportedl…

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Hey so maybe someone should do something about this before "Jia Tan" does github.com/libexpat/libexpat…
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28 Mar 2024
The "alphabet song" is a fragment of a much longer ballad, a list of every glyph, every name, every planet—when the angels sing it, you'll remember
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EXCLUSIVE: PRIVATE US INTELLIGENCE TRANSMITTED BY MAD RUSSIAN COMMANDER TO BIDEN EARLIER THIS WEEK
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Replying to @ebpetroff
I have always wondered why you didn't call it the 'terrestrial microwave background'?
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Mark Eichin retweeted
Well, that's it. I've peaked in life having been cited in XKCD *and* making it into the alt text. Going to retire to nerd heaven now. xkcd.com/2886/
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20 Jan 2024
I don’t care who’s in it, who’s doing the music?
‘TR3N’ (Tron 3) has begun filming. Starring Jared Leto, Evan Peters, Cameron Monaghan, Greta Lee and Jodie Turner-Smith.
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21 Jan 2024
Good news today: We've reestablished contact with the #MarsHelicopter after instructing @NASAPersevere to perform long-duration listening sessions for Ingenuity’s signal. The team is reviewing the new data to better understand the unexpected comms dropout during Flight 72.
20 Jan 2024
The #MarsHelicopter executed Flight 72 on Jan. 18, but on its descent, communication between Ingenuity and @NASAPersevere terminated prior to touchdown. The team is analyzing available data and considering next steps to reestablish comms. go.nasa.gov/4b3wRN6
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When your garage is like mine, you accidentally pull out a box that contains.. a prototype of the world’s first smartphone, the IBM Simon. Still works! It will soon on its way to a good home
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