2024-11-11
not gambling but info finance, run monkeys, run!. bogus brick patent prevents progress, interred file systems, prepper popularity, Bernie bleats "class", sanction waivers, Bulgarians protest Malkovitch
etc
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Scans help solve a 3,000-year-old mystery of a high-status Egyptian woman
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From prediction markets to info finance
To many people, prediction markets are about betting on elections, and betting on elections is gambling - nice if it helps people enjoy themselves, but fundamentally not more interesting than buying random coins on pump.fun. From this perspective, my interest in prediction markets may seem confusing. And so in this post I aim to explain what it is about the concept that excites me. In short, I believe that (i) prediction markets even as they exist today are a very useful tool for the world, but furthermore (ii) prediction markets are only one example of a much larger incredibly powerful category, with potential to create better implementations of social media, science, news, governance, and other fields. I shall label this category "info finance".
- The old proscriptions about gambling probably had more, better reasons for existing than we know now. Certainly these possibilities should have been noted and explored sometime previously in human history, right?
Horseshit
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I Took a 'Decision Holiday' and Put A.I. In Charge of My Life
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(March 2024) How are brains of Liberals and Conservatives different?
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Brewington Hardaway Becomes First U.S. Born Black Grandmaster
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German museum worker fired after hanging his own art in gallery
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Feds spend $2.1M per homeowner in bailout of one of LA's richest burbs
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Redditor spies Wicked toys mistake: URL on children's toys are for adult website
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Unveiling the Hidden Order in James Joyce's 'Finnegans Wake' Punctuation
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Why luxury cheese is being targeted by black market criminals
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It's 10am and Dad's Doing Jell-O Shots. Must Be Parents' Weekend
Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation
Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts
Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising
TechSuck / Geek Bait
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Brick Layers: The Promise Of Stronger 3D Prints And Why We Cannot Have Nice Things
The idea of ‘brick layers’ with FDM prints was brought to the forefront earlier this year by [Stefan] of CNC Kitchen. Seven months after that video you still can’t find the option for these layers in any popular slicers. Why? Because of a 2020 patent filed for this technique by a 3D printing company which offers this feature in its own slicer. But is this patent even valid? Considering the obviousness and that FDM printing hardly began in the 2000s, it’s no surprise that prior art already exists in the form of a 1995 Stratasys patent. The above image shows an excerpt from the 1995 Stratasys patent, covering the drawings of FDM layers, including brick layers. This covered all such ways of printing, but the patent expired in 2016. In 2019, a PrusaSlicer ticket was opened, requesting this feature. So what happened? A second patent in 2020.
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Even if these "secure datacenters" almost never succeed (and rarely even make it to a first paying client), they've provided a lot of stories over the years. CyberBunker, one of the less usual European examples (a former NATO facility), managed to become entangled in cybercrime and the largest DDoS attack ever observed at the time, all while claiming to be an independent nation. They were also manufacturing MDMA, and probably lying about most of the equipment being in a hardened facility to begin with.
AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World
Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO
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Ex-Google exec attracts financial backers for LEO megaconstellation.
- All the astronomers bitching about Starlink interference should be strangling this one before birth, surely?
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Nearly three years since launch, Webb is a hit among astronomers
Crypto con games
Economicon / Business / Finance
Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making
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AI didn't sway the election, but it deepened the partisan divide
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Unpermitted food vendor violations have exploded in Seattle in 2024
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The Americans Prepping for a Second Civil War | The New Yorker
According to an analysis of FEMA data, some twenty million Americans are actively preparing for cataclysm—roughly twice as many as in 2017. Political violence, including the spectre of civil war, is one of the reasons. A recent study conducted by researchers at U.C. Davis concluded that one in three adults in the U.S., including up to half of Republicans, feel that violence is “usually or always justified” to advance certain political objectives (say, returning Trump to the White House). In May, Ray Dalio, the billionaire founder of Bridgewater Associates, one of the world’s largest hedge funds, told the Financial Times that he believed there was about a thirty-five-per-cent chance of civil war breaking out in America. “We are now on the brink,” Dalio said, noting that a modern civil war—though it might not involve muskets—would see the fracturing of states and widespread defiance of federal law. In June, Dalio upped his estimate to “uncomfortably more than 50 percent,” predicting “an existential battle of the hard right against the hard left in which you will have to pick a side and fight for it, or keep your head down, or flee.”
Trump
Democrats / Biden Inc / Left Angst
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Far-Left Socialists Plot MASSIVE Protest for Donald Trump’s Inauguration.
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Scientific American Editor-In-Chief Has Spectacular Post-Election Social Media Meltdown
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Bernie Sanders: Democrats must choose: The elites or the working class (Archive)
Trump’s “genius” is his ability to divide the working class so that tens of millions of Americans will reject solidarity with their fellow workers and pave the way for huge tax breaks for the very rich and large corporations. While Trump did talk about capping credit card interest rates at 10 percent, and a new trade policy with China, his fundamental explanation as to why the working class was struggling was that millions of illegal immigrants have invaded America and that we are now an “occupied country.” In his pathologically dishonest world, undocumented immigrants are illegally participating in our elections and voting for Democrats. They are creating massive amounts of crime, driving wages down, and taking our jobs. They are getting free health care and other benefits that are denied to American citizens. They are even eating our pets. That explanation is grossly racist, cruel, and fallacious. But it is an explanation.
And what do the Democrats have to say about the crises facing working families? What is their full-throated explanation, pounded away day after day in the media, in the halls of Congress, and in town meetings throughout the country as to why tens of millions of workers, in the richest country on earth, are struggling to put food on the table or pay the rent? Where is the deeply felt outrage that we are the only major country on earth not to guarantee health care for all as a human right while insurance and drug companies make huge profits? In my view, the Democrats lost this election because they ignored the justified anger of working class America and became the defenders of a rigged economic and political system.
This election was largely about class and change and the Democrats, in both cases, were often on the wrong side. As Jimmy Williams Jr., the president of the Painters Union, said, “The Democratic Party has continued to fail to prioritize a strong, working-class message that addresses issues that really matter to workers. The party did not make a positive case for why workers should vote for them, only that they were not Donald Trump. That’s not good enough anymore!” As an Independent member of the US Senate, I caucus with the Democrats. In that capacity I have been proud to work with President Biden on one of the most ambitious pro-worker agendas in modern history.
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Harris campaign spending data: Top 500 recipients up to Oct 16
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Democrat Yadira Caraveo concedes to Republican challenger in swing Colorado House race.
External Security / Militaria / Diplomania
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Marine pilot loses command after ejecting from F-35B that kept flying
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The State Department, in a non-public notice to Congress, determined that the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) are not complying with agreements to curb terrorism against Israel and end the "pay-to-slay" program, which rewards imprisoned terrorists for committing acts of violence. Those violations should trigger American sanctions, barring members of the Palestinian government from obtaining U.S. visas. The Biden-Harris administration nonetheless used its executive power to waive the sanctions. "A blanket denial of visas to PLO members and PA officials, to include those whose travel to the United States to advance U.S. goals and objectives, is not consistent with the U.S. government’s expressed willingness to partner with the PLO and PA leadership," the State Department told Congress in the private notification obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
World
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Hologram in Amsterdam window aims to solve sex worker's cold case murder
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John Malkovich premiere sparks protests in Bulgaria
The premiere of a 19th century play directed by John Malkovich was performed in an almost empty Sofia National Theatre after angry protesters irritated with the way Bulgarians are portrayed prevented visitors from entering the building. One hour before the opening of George Bernard Shaw's Arms and The Man on Thursday evening, protesters started gathering in front of the theatre, Nova TV reported on its website.
China
Health / Medicine
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In the moral panic over vaping, we risk forgetting that cigarettes kill
- one would think the instances of cancers that had been caused by cigarettes would have been almost eliminated along with smoking, right? Apparently not: Lung and Bronchus Cancer — Cancer Stat Facts
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Tuberculosis is rising in the U.S. again. How did we get here?