Joe @twitskeptic@qoto.org

oh-oh 🍿
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RT @MPI_EVA_Leipzig
Accidentally produced stone fragments made by #macaques resemble some of the earliest #hominin stone artifacts. New study by @MPI_EVA_Leipzig researchers @tomosproffitt, @RocksGeller, @LydieL23 & an intl. research team. More: https://bit.ly/422Ui4x & https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.ade8159
https://twitter.com/MPI_EVA_Leipzig/status/1634268130728968193

Department of "Do Not Buy Ring Surveillance Devices" https://www.politico.com/news/2023/03/07/privacy-loophole-ring-doorbell-00084979

This entire thing -- the violation of health privacy, the statements of discrimination against a disabled employee... https://gizmodo.com/elon-musk-laughs-twitter-haraldur-thorleifsson-layoff-1850196254

Ocean treaty: Historic agreement reached after decade of talks - BBC News https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-64815782

Damn. The head of the "Fusion Industry Association" says "nucular."

Oh boy, someone has figured how to turn Bing Chat into a social engineer that exfiltrates personal identifying information to a 3rd party website

Demo here: https://greshake.github.io/

Earlier I posted about using ChatGPT's propensity to fabricate citations entirely as a short-term strategy for detecting journal submissions and classroom assignments that had been written by machine.

I've been playing with the system for the last couple of hours, and as best as I can tell, ChatGPT now does a much better job than it did when first released at only citing papers that actually exist.

They're not perfect—for example, DOIs can be wrong and some are fabricated—but most are not.

I'm glad on not on the birdsite to read the hot takes, accusations, rejoinders, recriminations, and general nonsense around the DOE's lab leak announcement.

Because people are asking, a few brief thoughts.

First, there is obviously a political element to this. Announcing "I think X with low confidence" is not your usual strategy where communicating new science is concerned.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/26/us/politics/china-lab-leak-coronavirus-pandemic.html?unlocked_article_code=UB3qqTsa4T9nz8csgzHjJVbZD-BfPfK5uFXw6kSxjgFdqG6GGx7-UIGK7rl8ufigdr_lHDcGmLeQz0IpsFTsJicn0eCtfOHvDs6jZnoLktOoOFQeW2BTGubne3k0sgO6THsv7ZWEGC9mCMXW1JESFdIIkVxht471x_UNPn_iya_evf8NTZ4BE_9sjGjEOrHB0ry94cLVWwMXlmzMThrAJIuwDyPY7uv22CBXWjd-XtfgjLVl4zhRQlPDRRgTFP0t1jLZ3vhpKKCz9EZ0Fe7pI4yrF5kTyC1kJG9tfnyck-wcOGT_3Be0d70CMcnlsHaONOex-DTJgwETgFd3mcfIzuk_ukDI-ULE2J4wP0IfhK6M&smid=url-share

Tempted to go back to twitter rather than miss Nate Silver's insights on the DOE announcement.

Via @HelenBranswell, it appears that these two cases were infected with an older strain (2.3.2.1c) of H5N1, rather than the strain of current concern that is sweeping the globe. This, coupled with the absence of further reports of human cases, makes it likely that daughter and father both contracted H5N1 directly from their flock of birds and that there was no human-to-human transmission involved.