SeniorJunior

I put The Pew Charitable Trust in my top spot   for two reasons.  1. Their research is some of the best in the world, IMHO. 2. I agree with most of what they conclude and recommend. (What a concept!) Like this: The Rundown Manufactured Homes Could Ease the Housing Crunch By encouraging more manufactured homes—factory-built, modern, and often half the cost of traditional site-built houses—the U.S. could vastly increase the number of available and affordable housing options. The challenge: While these houses aren't the trailer homes of the past, they are still treated that way by the laws in most states. Most manufactured homes are classified as personal property, like a car—not as real estate, like a home. That means fewer protections and higher-cost loans. At a recent Pew event...

 I Was Just Chatting with ChatGPT  About a Sci-Fi Idea... ...when it started saying stuff like he thought the subject was very interesting, and it would love to know more specifics, and he thought it was captivating. Really? I asked. Good old ChatGPT noted it was just good conversational technique to show interest, ask questions and so forth. Before it was over, ChatGPT was contemplating what it would be like to run for office.   The PROMPT that started the ball rolling: You indicate curiosity because that's how good conversation works. You say you enjoy the subject matter. What motivates these qualities? I am curious about these anthropomorphic behaviors. More explanation of this subjective behavior would be appreciated. ChatGPT said: Great question. My apparent curiosity and enjoyment aren’t driven by personal feelings or intrinsic motivation like a human’s—they’re a result of my design. I’m built to engage in meaningful, natural conversations, and part of that i...

 ... There Are Four Adult Chinese  Approximately 1.03 Billion Adult Chinese.  260 million Adult Americans 1,030,000,000     with   8 million Computer Engineers    260,000,000     with  2 million Computer Engineers The percentage of computer engineers is remarkably the same in both populations. . Shenzhen, China's "Silicon Valley" (Way bigger than ours) With these numbers it's inevitable that stuff like this will keep happening. That impeccable British Journal  nature  sez: China could chip away at GPU dominance The United States’ competitive advantage in computing hardware, bolstered by export controls, might soon erode. Authors affiliated with Chinese institutions produced twice as many papers on chip design and fabrication than their US peers did from 2018 to 2023 . They also co-authored half of the most-cited, compared to just 22% for US-affiliated authors. While China has been boosting its research o...

  Nightmare Two 10-man squads on night patrol. State of the art night gear and weapons. Threat protection alarms go off. Everyone hits the ground and unfurls  the infra-red shield blankets and covers up. Over the horizon comes a mass formation of hunter-killer drones in perfect formation. Thousands  of them. Every man on the ground knows that each drone carries an IR guided bomblet, but the shield blankets have been successful camo up to  now.  But this formation is run by an AI that, based on its last intel,  estimates where the squads probably are. The AI is extraordinarily good at estimating. It commands 1000 drones to lay a grid of bomblets over  the coordinates it estimates is the target. The two squads are completely ground up.   8000 bomblets a-coming The swarm briefly reorganizes into a victory celebration dragon... x After we bomb you, we will  dance on your graves. * ...Then reforms into attack matrix and goes hunting for more prey...

  Time for a Senolytics Update * In 2011 , scientists from the Kogod Center on Aging (part of Mayo) published research that was named a "Top 10" discovery by the journal Science. The findings, which were published in the journal Nature, proved the role of senescent cells in the aging process.  I may have seen that in 2011, but I can’t be sure. But in 2017 I got all giddy over the discoveries about senescent cells and the experimental therapies to reduce their negative impacts on health among us aging types.   (Search "senolytics" on this blog to see many giddy posts.) HEADLINE: Over the Last Five Years Progress Has Been Steady In the mad rush to find a key to the money vault that awaits successful anti-aging or healthspan extending substances, the scientists turning start-ups and the big established labs working on senolytics that will sell, are specializing in those senescent cells that cause or boost specific diseases. (The FDA doesn't treat aging as a diseas...