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Has the next pandemic already started? by Ayoade Alakija (Al Jazeera, July 21 2024)

aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/7/

"At present, there are currently no commercially available diagnostic tests to detect H5N1 specifically. Nucleic acid-based (molecular) tests are the current gold standard for the detection of influenza viruses, but they generally require lab infrastructure to support their use. And even when such infrastructure is available, it may not function fast enough. For example, when a sick Australian girl was tested for bird flu in March, it took several weeks to get the positive result back.

...

Action is needed now, while human-to-human transmission has still not been detected, so that if and when it is, a rapid coordinated global response to H5N1 can be deployed.

The new cases in Colorado do not suggest the world is about to end, but are a signal worth heeding. While the US and other Western countries are able to take measures, poorer countries that do not have the resources or access to technology cannot."

@briankrebs Maybe WaPo is too old to carry on this kind of work anymore. Maybe they should consider passing the torch to some younger, more intelligent, better edited organization… before they embarrass themselves too… oh, nm, I see it’s too late.

@sue Wow. I just saw "talent" in the wild, on my timeline. I'm not gonna argue with the person who posted it, but it sounded even weirder now.

Someone recently suggested to me that AI systems bring the users' ability closer to the average. I was intrigued by this idea because it reflects my experience. I am, for example, terrible at any kind of visual art, but with something like Stable Diffusion I can produce things that are merely quite bad, whereas without it I can produce things that are absolutely terrible. Conversely, with GitHub Copilot I can write code with more bugs that's harder to read. Watching non-programmers use it and ChatGPT with Python, they can produce fairly mediocre code that mostly works.

I suppose it shouldn't surprise anyone that a machine that's trained to produce output from a statistical model built from a load of examples would tend towards the mean.

An unflattering interpretation of this would suggest that the people who are most excited by AI in any given field are the people with the least talent in that field.

@sue Thanks for dragging me into this rabbit hole. The usage of "talent" I knew referred to gold and silver coins, but, since I always doubt what I know, I now fact-checked. There are so many variations of this measure of weight, generally around 30 kg. So a man of many talents is a very heavy guy. And I agree – talent, in it's primary contemporary meaning – is problematic. I could live without it. Whenever I used the word over the past years it was sarcastically.

While we're at it, is there any possible use of the word "talent" that isn't riddled with bias? Isn't it invariably a distraction from opportunity as the determining factor in achievement? I think it maybe needs to get in the bin alongside merit tbh.

As the token poor kid who got to go to uni I can assure you the idea that policies like affirmative action lower standards is extremely hilarious. You want to see low standards? Surround yourself with the privileged LOL

A friend who's an artist living in #Ukraine struggles with daily power outages. A UPS allows them to save their work, but they are looking for some #photoshop / Clip Studio Paint capable #hardware which could allow them to work for 4-8h a day on battery.

I was thinking about #lenovo P52 #notebook with some spare, hot swappable batteries. Dedicated GPU, 32 GB of RAM.

Do you have any better ideas? The budget is around $1000 for everything.

If shipped from abroad, there's ~30% customs tax.

#art

The speed at which I reversed my car when I saw these ladies modding their yard sign

So, I just heard from a friend that said they are not voting because they feel it is “pointless”.

#US friends, please don’t go down that path. Don’t lose heart.

Please #vote. It is what we have.

#USPol #USPolitics

Własny ogród to najlepsza rzecz jaką można mieć

Aww... The battery feels safe enough to open it's shell. Hi there little guy!

Trump: I will crush you like the bugs you are.

Journalists: Haha there goes Trump again.

Biden: I'm incredibly disappointed in your coverage:

Journalists: How dare you? Resign immediately, you ungrateful pathetic SOB.

Stop doing billion dollar fines to Google, start with trillion dollar or percentages of yearly transaction values.

That will get them to sit the fuck down.

I'm sorry but CrowdStrike's "technical details" post is well below the expected standard in our field. What kind of logic error was it? More importantly, what was your QA process like? Why did CI not catch it? Why was there not a staged rollout? These are the absolute basics that should be expected.

crowdstrike.com/blog/falcon-up

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