Sylvain Miermont @miermont@qoto.org

#Canada is *finally* moving forward on fast trains in the heavily-populated #Montreal - #Toronto corridor.

Three high-speed rail powerhouses are in the bidding.

#France (SNCF) — land of TGVs
#Spain (Renfe) — AVEs
#Germany (DB) — ICE trains.

Decision coming, stay tuned...

When asked if creators should be compensated for their work being used to train AI, Mark Zuckerberg said, “I think individual creators or publishers tend to overestimate the value of their specific content in the grand scheme of this.”

That's pretty rich coming from someone who never had an original thought in his life. Someone whose empire is based on stealing and buying ideas.

I promote pedal-powered parklets for people, not parking for petrol-powered Pontiacs and Porsches.

GREAT change is approaching. NIST will standardise prohibition of requirement of composing passwords from various character styles, and requirement for periodic password changes. These are harmful and obsolete rules. Now they will be treated as a cybersecurity weakness https://pages.nist.gov/800-63-4/sp800-63b.html

Imports of Russian LNG via the Rotterdam LNG terminal recently doubled. Share of Russia in overal EU gas imports rising again too, to 17% in the first half of the year, helping to fund Russia's war against Ukraine.
https://www.telegraaf.nl/nieuws/2059999398/haven-rotterdam-plots-vol-met-russisch-gas-maas-in-de-wet

@ladyada with the GIANT PINK SCISSORS ✂️

Sad to see that it's New Zealand's turn to suffer the potentially deadly costs of a right wing government's contempt for scientific expertise.

Skimping on geohazards monitoring and risk assessment in a country bisected by a plate boundary? What could go wrong?

#geology #NZ #earthquakes #volcanoes

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/gns-cuts-could-devastate-critical-work-according-to-85-international-scientists/NO5K3PBALRE2RBSZXO4EQ4GSEU/

LinkedIn is now using everyone's content to train their AI tool -- they just auto opted everyone in (except folks in the EU, it seems)
I recommend opting out now (AND that orgs put an end to auto opt-in, it's not cool)
Opt out steps: Settings and Privacy > Data Privacy > Data for Generative AI Improvement (OFF)

We shouldn't have to take a bunch of steps to undo a choice that a company made for us.
Orgs think they can get away with auto opt in because "everyone does it".
If we come together and demand that orgs allow us to CHOOSE to opt in, things will hopefully change one day.

LinkedIn seems to have auto enrolled folks in the US, but hearing from folks in the EU that they are not seeing this listed in their settings (likely due to privacy regulations).
If you're outside of the US, I'm curious if you're seeing this?

It's Ig Nobel season again! This one's remarkably depressing! 😀

"Longevity data are used for projections of future lifespans, and those are used to set everyone’s pension rate. You’re talking about trillions of dollars of pension money. If the data is junk then so are those projections. It also means we’re allocating the wrong amounts of money to plan hospitals to take care of old people in the future. Your insurance premiums are based on this stuff."

https://theconversation.com/the-data-on-extreme-human-ageing-is-rotten-from-the-inside-out-ig-nobel-winner-saul-justin-newman-239023

It has been a tremendous privilege to be part of a 68-strong international cross-disciplinary team of scientists trying to solve the puzzle of a #seismic signal that was observed around the globe for nine days. A massive #rockslide into a #Greenland #fjord generated a #tsunami with 200 meter run-up that coalesced into a long duration seiche. Our findings are published in the journal Science this evening.

https://www.science.org/content/article/megatsunami-remote-fjord-rang-earth-bell-9-days

After decades of stagnation, Japan is engaged in a multibillion-dollar industrial policy to jump-start the lackluster economy and recapture its position as a tech innovator. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/business/2024/09/14/tech/japan-tech-leader-reclaim/ #business #tech #rapidus #semiconductors #chipmakers #hokkaido #globaleconomy

Fun* fact in this video: the 'disposable' vapes thrown away in Britain alone contain enough lithium batteries to make 1.2 Million e-bikes.
I've been independently powering things with vape batteries that I've rescued before seeing this video. Pull out the cell, add a cheap usb charging module and you have a fully rechargeable 3.7v power source. If you need higher voltage you can put them in series and you can even get multi-cell balancing modules for next to nothing if you want to have a few in parallel for more current.
I don't trust them for anything critical, but they're great for low-budget projects as the cells are completely free. My bike lights are all powered by them (one can run a flashing bike light for a couple of weeks' use), as well as various other things that had their batteries die, or that didn't come with rechargeable batteries.
I also only charge them somewhere flameproof, though I haven't had any issues so far.
#making #electronics #reuse
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehp23hrrEHY

Architects and civil engineers are licensed because their mistakes can bring down bridges and buildings. Electricians are licensed because their mistakes can burn down houses. Their work is inspected by third parties because the stakes are so high.

None of this stops small scale folks from doing their own DIY electrical or construction, given that it passes inspection when it's important enough.

At this point, software developers can have this level of financial and now physical impact. Smart cars are killing people. IoT devices are getting hacked and they could destroy massive amounts of infrastructure, burn down houses, bring down airplanes, etc. So when do we start requiring SDEs to be licensed and bonded?

Neither Elon Musk Nor Anybody Else Will Ever Colonize Mars (2024) - Albert Burneko

«This ordering of priorities, in which the sacrosanct goal is to extend "the probable lifespan of consciousness" and space colonization the means, is above all else a monstrous permission structure for this outspoken bigot's vile social ideas, a kind of reductio ad absurdum for what's been doing business as "effective altruism" for a while now. The fantasy—and it is a fantasy—isn't one of space travel and exploration and some bright Star Trek future for humanity, but one of winnowing and eugenics, of cold actuarial lifeboat logic, of ever greater reallocation from the dwindling many to the thriving few. That's the world as Elon Musk and his cohort want it; Mars colonization is just a pretext.»

https://defector.com/neither-elon-musk-nor-anybody-else-will-ever-colonize-mars

#mars #musk #spacex #ecology

@mcc Another angle: I don't want another agency inserting themselves as a service to interpret information that I request, regardless of whether it's 'AI/ML/LLM' or not.

I object to the gatekeeping (and the AI), from a chargeable gatekeeper perspective and I don't want an agency weighting data for importance; that's my job as a reader/researcher.

Further, it will transform how web content is produced: from skillfully written content into AI-SEO metadata prompt garbage that's hard to read.

There seems to be 3 types of studies on "sustainable" levels of material use :

• "There seems to be a consensus that this level of extraction is sustainable, I'll just use that"
• "Here are all the target proposals, I'll just choose that one for no reason at all"
• "Hey this target could be feasible because surely there will be some ENORMOUS MATERIAL EFFICIENCY GAINS in the decades to come. Let's also assume that it is desirable."

This is, once again, your reminder that declining birthrates is only a problem of you've built your economy to be a giant Ponzi scheme.

Rather than looking at historically low US birthrates as "the biggest danger civilization faces," maybe we make it the catalyst to charge away from the extractive #capitalism that is sucking the life out of the planet.

Families choosing to have fewer kids fits in really nicely with #degrowth. Just saying.

https://www.axios.com/2024/09/09/us-birth-rate-low-policy-solutions

#economics