Posted on by Eddie

Interesting articles, November 2024

The pace of Russia’s territorial gains in eastern Ukraine has accelerated.
https://www.twz.com/news-features/ukrainian-defenses-in-east-are-buckling-russian-advance-is-accelerating

However, this is coming at the cost of enormous Russian casualties.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp3nv7j1xkxo

One of Russia’s biggest tank storage bases has 75% fewer tanks than it did before the Ukraine War, and most of the remaining vehicles are in such poor condition that they can’t be restored for combat.
https://youtu.be/mUzuAMp73I4?si=6E3JubyT_Xg8fh7B

The Red Army is so low on weapons that Russia’s biggest film studio donated to it dozens of antique tanks and other vehicles that it normally used for making war films.
https://www.twz.com/land/russias-largest-film-studio-donated-antique-tanks-to-the-military

With North Korean help, Russia is recapturing its land near Kursk.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/ukraine-hoped-force-russia-pick-111953225.html

North Korean artillery pieces are making their way to Ukraine.
https://www.twz.com/land/north-korean-long-range-self-propelled-artillery-appears-in-russia

Russia is giving North Korea more advanced antiaircraft missiles in exchange for its help in Ukraine.
https://www.twz.com/land/north-korea-getting-new-air-defenses-in-return-for-supporting-russia-in-ukraine-official

Many Russians are enlisting in the Army solely for money. The pay is excellent. Problematically, the Russian government is paying for these salaries as well as most other war-related expenses by printing huge amounts of money and handing it out, which is causing very high inflation.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/economics-death-why-russians-poor-161637106.html
https://www.yahoo.com/news/putin-signs-law-allowing-russian-171726947.html

After Biden authorized Ukraine to fire advanced, U.S.-made missiles deep into Russia, Putin announced Russia might use nuclear weapons against Ukraine.
https://apnews.com/article/russia-nuclear-doctrine-putin-91f20e0c9b0f9e5eaa3ed97c35789898

Russia also fired an intermediate-range ballistic missile into Ukraine in revenge. This is the first time such a weapon has ever been used in anger.
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-intercontinental-missile-war-putin-d50183ccfc28b10c71e93f3e68159a61

‘Ukraine’s drone units are inflicting 80% of the frontline casualties on Russia, report says’
https://www.yahoo.com/news/ukraines-drone-units-inflicting-80-121327010.html

Israel’s most recent airstrikes on Iran destroyed most of the latter’s missile fuel production facilities, which will effectively limit missile production for years. The jets also destroyed many of Iran’s S-300 antiaircraft missile sites, showing how inferior the Russian-made systems are to American technology. Most of China’s antiaircraft missiles have the same level of technology as the S-300, meaning a U.S.-China air war would probably be more one-sided than people think. The U.S. is unique in that its military pretends to be weaker than it is.
https://youtu.be/oQtRdL36FVs?si=lN40_YCEHMAHJ5i2

2% of Gaza’s population has been killed in the last 13 months.
https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-hamas-war-lebanon-hezbollah-iran-news-11-20-2024-5da3ce43df8662fe9eeab4ad804bdc0f

A U.N. analysis found that most of the people killed by Israeli attacks on Gaza have been women and children.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/partial-un-probe-gaza-war-094427985.html

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince accused Israel of genocide in Gaza.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp8x5570514o

The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and two top leaders in the Israeli and Hamas armed forces for war crimes.
https://apnews.com/article/icc-israel-hamas-warrants-netanyahu-palestinian-arrest-73c854d072e0a1a41b19b2cb2cdd07fa

This video shows how the Israeli Air Force practically destroyed Syria’s Air Force in 1982.
https://youtu.be/F33h9-oUfDU?si=c3yQos_YepVP9ald

The F-20 was the greatest fighter plane that never was.
https://youtu.be/5ypSn108HuY?si=J-cp60LpkDuyjPhd

Here’s an interesting and simple video about how artillery is aimed at targets. The “Fire Direction Center” (7:20) will be made obsolete by intelligent machines.
https://youtu.be/PrullIWGqX8?si=acW-XgN2SQ8a2Z_7

We know of ways to design better shotgun shells, but no one has tried to commercialize them due to path dependence. In other words, there are so many shotguns that use the old shells that we are locked in to continuing their use.
https://youtu.be/3iLSCNtogc8?si=0s8Uqt9nCXQD3YA-

In November of 1950, U.N. forces captured Pyongyang from North Korea’s battered army. At that point, there were two options: 1) Build a strong defensive line north of Pyongyang clear across the peninsula or 2) pursue the fleeing enemy and take over all of North Korea to the Chinese border. In retrospect, we should have chosen the first option because even if the Communists had retained control over the northern mountain region, they wouldn’t have had enough land, resources or people to make a viable country, and there’s no way it would have been able to build nuclear weapons 50 years later.

Halting our troops north of Pyongyang would have also left us much abler to repulse any Chinese counteroffensive, which some in the U.S. military high command correctly believed was coming. In any case, not advancing to the border would have signaled to the Chinese that our goal wasn’t to eventually invade them, and that we were willing to leave rump North Korea as a buffer zone. General MacArthur really blew it.
https://youtu.be/VWlZ6Xf4Bp8?si=5f1gtV8rRLvhzHAA&t=524

In a shocking turn of events, rebels captured the second-largest city in Syria, Aleppo, after just a day of fighting.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly27r5p0yno

From this February: “There’s this very powerful and seductive narrative around a soft landing, and we’re just not seeing it in the data,” Citi’s chief US economist, Andrew Hollenhorst, said in a CNBC interview.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/no-soft-landing-us-economy-022146984.html

Does Joe Biden believe in the Singularity?
https://x.com/i/status/1838721620808208884

“Search engine optimization” worsens political polarization by providing people with political articles that support their existing biases.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20241031-how-google-tells-you-what-you-want-to-hear

Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris in the 2024 election. The vast majority of polls showed a tied result up to the day of the vote, and were badly wrong: Trump won the popular vote and the electoral vote count by healthy margins. Here’s a roundup of right and wrong predictions.

The saga of veteran Democratic strategist James Carville:

Elon Musk’s 2023 prediction right after it was announced Trump would be charged with a felony in New York and forced to have his mugshot taken:

In September 2023, Tucker Carlson predicted Trump would be assassinated. In 2024, there were two attempts on his life, one of which nearly succeeded. “They indicted him three times, and every single time his popularity rose. If you begin with criticism, then you go to protest, then you go to impeachment, then you go to indictment, and none of them work, what’s next? Graph it out, man! We’re speeding toward assassination, obviously. No-one will say that, but I don’t know how you can’t reach that conclusion.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12470861/Tucker-Carlson-breathlessly-says-speeding-Trump-assassination-liberal-establishment-running-options-stop-president-Russian-propagandist-says-ex-Fox-News-host-dead-man-walking.html

A robotic guard dog is patrolling Trump’s Florida estate.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c30p16gn3pvo

Trump has vowed to negotiate and end to the Ukraine War, even if it means forfeiting conquered territory. A cease-fire would allow Russia to rebuild its forces faster than Ukraine, and then attack again in a year with a large advantage. Trump should not substantially lower U.S. aid to Ukraine for the first year of his coming term to ensure that Russia burns through the remainder of its Soviet-era weapons stockpiles, making rapid rearmament after any cease-fire impossible.
https://youtu.be/cZoJKFfZ7nw?si=dzoVreJXTfp2EAlt

NVIDIA’s market cap is now over $3 trillion, making it the most valuable company in the world.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/nvidia-rides-ai-wave-pass-211002574.html

In his final book, Henry Kissinger warned of a future where technologically enhanced humans and machines rule the world. ‘In a section titled “Coevolution: Artificial Humans,” the three authors encourage people to think now about “trying to navigate our role when we will no longer be the only or even the principal actors on our planet.”’
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2024/nov/19/henry-kissinger-final-warning-prepare-superhuman-p/

‘A painting by an AI robot of the eminent World War Two codebreaker Alan Turing has sold for $1,084,800 (£836,667) at auction.’
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpqdvz4w45wo

An online variant of the Turing Test showed humans can barely tell human-made art from AI-made art anymore.
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/how-did-you-do-on-the-ai-art-turing

‘AI-generated poetry is indistinguishable from human-written poetry and is rated more favorably’
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-76900-1

AI-generated music is now as good as what most human musicians can make. The two are also indistinguishable in most cases.
https://youtu.be/qj1Sp8He6e4?si=JLpjUDh91kKkV4mY
https://youtu.be/u2pYNRNdcNc?si=ChwlfJj7bgk3jmYD

This high-res simulation of Rome is almost indistinguishable from reality.
https://youtu.be/Qhucdyzkeis?si=xJrIQElA53R7ru_K

Machines can recognize emotions from the facial expressions of goats. Someday, they will be able to empathize and communicate with animals better than humans.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/11/241107193106.htm

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei predicts machines will probably surpass humans in all areas of thinking by 2030. Roadblocks to that milestone are unlikely to appear.
https://youtu.be/GrloGdp5wdc?si=aGM_PDGv0vXNQqvr

The anonymous tech analyst “Gwern” predicts AGI could be invented as early as 2028.
https://youtu.be/a42key59cZQ?si=opLEiYab3pZmkAJr

Even the eternal pessimist Yann LeCun predicts AGI could be invented in as little as five years.
https://youtu.be/JAgHUDhaTU0?si=hpMZqC30F22U_EVM&t=4410

Greg Brockman has returned to OpenAI.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/11/12/openai-co-founder-greg-brockman-returns-after-three-months-of-leave.html

There are rumors GPT-5 is not as good as was hoped, leading to questions about whether AI progress is slowing down.
https://techcrunch.com/2024/11/09/openai-reportedly-developing-new-strategies-to-deal-with-ai-improvement-slowdown/

“[Today’s investments in AIs and data centers are] the biggest gamble in business history”
https://www.economist.com/the-world-ahead/2024/11/18/will-the-bubble-burst-for-ai-in-2025-or-will-it-start-to-deliver

‘US government commission pushes Manhattan Project-style AI initiative’
https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/us-government-commission-pushes-manhattan-project-style-ai-initiative-2024-11-19/

Despite all the jokes about it, the Tesla Cybertruck has rapidly become the #1 bestselling electric truck in America.
https://autos.yahoo.com/data-shows-tesla-cybertruck-dominating-110031477.html

The “Jellyfish UFO” was probably a bundle of party balloons.
https://youtu.be/ojotsKjshHc?si=80VvDR50SsQ4xIBq

The U.S. military says the “GoFast” UFO was probably a balloon and only seemed to be moving fast because the jet that filmed it was moving fast.
https://www.foxnews.com/video/6364948499112

‘Researchers can use this framework to answer complex questions, find gaps in current knowledge, suggest new designs for materials, and predict how materials might behave, and link concepts that had never been connected before.

The AI model found unexpected similarities between biological materials and “Symphony No. 9,” suggesting that both follow patterns of complexity. “Similar to how cells in biological materials interact in complex but organized ways to perform a function, Beethoven’s 9th symphony arranges musical notes and themes to create a complex but coherent musical experience,” says Buehler.’
https://news.mit.edu/2024/graph-based-ai-model-maps-future-innovation-1112

‘We took the standard human model (75kg), and made smaller and smaller models down to 100 grams. We also made the models bigger, up to 2,000kg, and challenged them to run as fast as they could.

Several fascinating things happened when we did this.

First, the 2,000kg model couldn’t move. Nor could the 1,000kg model. In fact, the largest model that could move was 900kg, suggesting an upper limit to the human form. Beyond this size we need to change shape in order to move.

We also found that the fastest model was not the biggest nor smallest. Instead, it was around 47kg, a similar weight to an average cheetah.

…Interestingly, many of our fastest long distance runners such as Eliud Kipchoge weigh around 50kg.’
https://theconversation.com/not-too-big-not-too-small-why-modern-humans-are-the-ideal-size-for-speed-241668

China has now produced more greenhouse gas emissions than Europe has since the start of the Industrial Revolution.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/11/19/climate/china-emissions-fossil-fuels-climate.html

The FDA is finally prohibiting the sale of the decongestant “phenylephrine” because it doesn’t work. There were indications of its inefficacy as early as 2007. It took them this long to do anything.
https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-proposes-ending-use-oral-phenylephrine-otc-monograph-nasal-decongestant-active-ingredient-after

Lead poisoning is pervasive among Afghans.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41370-022-00431-y

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