The pace of Russia’s advance in Ukraine has accelerated. Ukrainian troops are falling back across the eastern front line.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/10/31/world/europe/russia-gains-ukraine-maps.html
After almost two years of costly attacks, Russia has captured the Ukrainian town of Vuhledar. This is bad news for Ukraine’s eastern defensive line.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russian-troops-reach-centre-ukraines-vuhledar-east-ukrainian-governor-says-2024-10-01/
North Korea has sent somewhere between 3,000 and 10,000 of its troops to fight for Russia in Ukraine. North Korea is getting money, battlefield experience, and military technology from Russia for this.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/23/politics/lloyd-austin-north-korea-troops-russia/index.html
Manpower shortages probably also convinced the Russians to pay the North Koreans to fight.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/russia-cant-sustain-attack-ukraine-121503562.html
Russia might be re-importing 1940s howitzers that it sold to North Korea long ago.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/russia-rolled-soviet-howitzer-1940s-060646676.html
Russian second-line forces have been stripping obsolete 73mm cannons from obsolete BMP-1 armored vehicles and mounting them on little wagons they can tow to the front lines and fire at Ukrainians. I might understand mounting these old guns on the beds of pickup trucks, but if you’re so broke that you only have wagons for them…
https://armourersbench.com/2024/10/13/dismounted-2a28s-as-improvised-support-guns/
Russia has moved a captured German Leopard 2 tank to one of its tank factories for analysis.
https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2024/10/16/captured-leopard-2-resurfaces-at-russias-main-tank-factory/
Croatia will give some of its Soviet-era tanks to Ukraine if Germany gives tanks to Croatia.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/croatia-offers-ukraine-tanks-military-092743231.html
“Darwin’s War” profiles on of Ukraine’s best suicide drone pilots. It’s amazing how easily he shrugs off missions that end with probable kills of Russian troops and resets for the next one.
https://youtu.be/WipqeFgzdTc?si=owAUkjjdU-8pzZHa
Hezbollah has a larger and more advanced fighting force than Lebanon’s national army. Hezbollah is an Islamist terrorist group whereas Lebanon’s army is multireligious and recognized as the country’s legitimate military.
https://apnews.com/article/lebanese-army-laf-israel-hezbollah-78f6ad2da82d64d1ae266aa5394e6d4e
Iran launched a second mass missile attack on Israel in response to the latter’s invasion of Lebanon. The missile attach was more successful than the first, but still failed to do significant damage.
https://www.twz.com/air/clearer-picture-of-damage-to-israeli-airbase-from-iranian-ballistic-missiles-emerges
The only fatality from Iran’s missile attack against Israel was, ironically, a Palestinian man.
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/gazan-buried-only-known-victim-iranian-barrage-against-israel-2024-10-02/
Did Iran actually pull its punch in the missile attack because it didn’t want to escalate the conflict?
https://thehill.com/opinion/4942123-iran-retaliation-israel/
An Iranian missile embedded in the ground somewhere in Israel, like something out of the Looney Tunes.
Israel hit back with airstrikes across Iran against its missiles and their support infrastructure. The attack appeared calibrated to avoid escalation but to also leave Iran vulnerable to future air strikes.
https://www.twz.com/news-features/israels-reprisal-strike-carefully-calculated-unclear-if-jets-ever-flew-over-iran
https://apnews.com/article/iran-israel-attack-shahroud-guard-base-satellite-photos-b9cdb18b252d6dd9014dc4dcb3dd4b2f
U.S. stealth bombers blew up several underground missile storage bases in Yemen as punishment for that country’s continued missile attacks on ships in the Red Sea. The attack was also meant to show Iran that America can also destroy the former’s underground nuclear and missile facilities.
https://www.twz.com/air/b-2-spirits-just-sent-a-very-ominous-message-to-iran-that-only-they-can
‘One year ago, Saudi Arabia and Israel were supposedly on the brink of a deal to normalize relations.
That deal has seemingly evaporated as Iran’s foreign minister visits the kingdom on Tuesday to discuss efforts to halt Israel’s incursions into Gaza and Lebanon.
“Our dialogue continues regarding the developments in the region to prevent the shameless crimes of the Zionist regime in Lebanon, in continuation of the crimes in Gaza,” Iran Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said in a video broadcast on state media. ‘
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/iran-foreign-minister-saudi-arabia-deal-israel
The destruction of Gaza and its population is comparable to what some countries suffered in WWII.
https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-hamas-war-anniversary-statistics-e61765035c725b3c8d4840e2bab565cd
Israel wants to build fortified roads across Gaza to separate it from Egypt and to separate it internally, allowing Israeli troops to control the population more easily and to respond to problems faster.
https://youtu.be/qZhD4G7ENSY?si=qHrDVn7aBTzYk47V
Israeli forces have killed the head of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar. In his final moments, he was trapped inside a wrecked house, injured and exhausted. An Israeli hover drone flew in through a broken window and filmed him from a few feet away. He impotently threw a stick at it and missed. An Israeli tank parked outside then shot the building, followed by a volley of gunfire, killing him.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/hamas-leader-sinwar-made-critical-100313977.html
An Israeli airstrike killed the new leader of Hezbollah, Hashem Safieddine, just a few weeks after it killed their old leader, Hassan Nasrallah.
https://apnews.com/article/hashem-safieddine-killed-obituary-hezbollah-leader-lebanon-8b74c45dc6b6028bc18c61a06db4233d
A Hezbollah kamikaze drone attacked Benjamin Netanyahu’s beach house in an apparent assassination attempt. He wasn’t there at the time.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/netanyahu-bedroom-window-hit-hezbollah-160653866.html
61% of Taiwanese think China is unlikely to invade in the next five years.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/most-taiwanese-believe-china-unlikely-040444122.html
People think Skynet will only replace soldiers with robots. Replacing the wasteful military bureaucrats working in offices will be just as important.
‘Cost overruns for cargo plane commodes have captured headlines in the past. In 2018, Defense One reported that the Air Force had spent $10,000 for a toilet seat cover on its C-5 cargo plane. Tuesday’s report redacted the price of individual soap dispensers.
One reason the Air Force overpaid for soap dispensers and other parts was that contracting officials failed to “review invoices to determine fair and reasonable prices before payment.”’
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/10/29/air-force-soap-dispenser-boondoggle/75914801007/
This prediction about the U.S. Vice Presidential debate was totally wrong.
This was totally wrong.
‘The takeaway: Expect a slugfest. Like his running mate Donald Trump, Vance prefers to go on offense, turning his opponents’ barbs against them and blurring the line between personal and political attacks. Walz, meanwhile, can get fiery when he attacks his opponents, but he tends to lean into his folksy demeanor to defuse tough questions about his record. Both men struggle at times to hide their tempers, and with plenty of bad blood between the two of them — stemming in large part from Vance’s attacks on Walz’s military record and Walz’s crusade to label Vance as “weird” — don’t be surprised if things turn personal.’
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/10/01/walzs-vance-previous-debate-slugfest-00181737
Nobel Prizes have been awarded to three scientists who did seminal work in AI:
- Geoffrey E. Hinton: Physics
- David Baker: Chemistry
- Demis Hassabis: Chemistry
- John Jumper: Chemistry
https://apnews.com/article/nobel-chemistry-prize-56f4d9e90591dfe7d9d840a8c8c9d553
Further testing reveals how powerful and intelligent OpenAI’s new “01” LLM is.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.18486
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-03169-9
Anthropic demonstrates the Claude LLM’s impressive ability to code websites.
https://youtu.be/vH2f7cjXjKI?si=1W8dnU7JA-IVnUel
Apple has released a study that calls into question whether LLMs are actually “reasoning” in the same way humans are. By adding irrelevant text to question prompts, the team was able to decrease the accuracy of every LLM’s response. Notably, the performance hit and the newness of the model were inversely correlated.
https://arstechnica.com/ai/2024/10/llms-cant-perform-genuine-logical-reasoning-apple-researchers-suggest/
18 months ago, this guy (“David Shapiro”) predicted AGI would be created within 18 months.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXQ6OKSvzfc
He doubled down on it 12 months ago.
https://youtu.be/M5eQwl4YmGU?si=bcRO93a3wreDFfOJ
A recent experiment measured whether GPT-4 could help doctors make better medical diagnoses. The results:
- Doctors using GPT-4 made the right diagnosis 76.3% of the time
- Doctors NOT using GPT-4 made the right diagnosis 73.7% of the time.
Does that mean GPT-4 is barely helpful? Not once you consider that GPT-4 WORKING BY ITSELF made the right diagnosis 89% of the time.
The doctors who were given GPT-4 as an assistant were ignoring its correct diagnoses some of the time in favor of their own. Things like this challenge the conventional wisdom that “Humans+AI” will be the best combination in the future, so there will always be some role for us. Machines might surpass us at everything.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.03.12.24303785v1.full.pdf
OpenAI has a financial incentive to declare that it has built an AGI. For a while, I’ve suspected that “the creation of the first AGI” will be a historical moment mired in controversy from the start, as it will fail to pass some tests of intelligence and will make mistakes uncharacteristic of an intelligent mind. The claim will nonetheless be defensible given our lack of an agreed-upon definition of what “intelligence” is.
‘Oddly, that could be the key to getting out from under its contract with Microsoft. The contract contains a clause that says that if OpenAI builds artificial general intelligence, or A.G.I. — roughly speaking, a machine that matches the power of the human brain — Microsoft loses access to OpenAI’s technologies.
The clause was meant to ensure that a company like Microsoft did not misuse this machine of the future, but today, OpenAI executives see it as a path to a better contract, according to a person familiar with the company’s negotiations. Under the terms of the contract, the OpenAI board could decide when A.G.I. has arrived.’
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/17/technology/microsoft-openai-partnership-deal.html
AI will accelerate scientific discovery and scientific fraud.
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/helpful-robot-assistants-will-fake-it-you
There have been recent advances in robotics.
- A four-legged robot that can climb ladders.
https://youtu.be/_N2mmcxINmo?si=aIAwNV68sh2GaM7J - Boston Dynamics’ Atlas robot is capable of impressive new levels of autonomy.
https://youtu.be/F_7IPm7f1vI?si=mrfG-x7dNwA2nL4z
‘AI helps uncover hundreds of unknown ancient symbols hidden in Peru’s Nazca Desert’
When will all archeological sites be discovered and excavated?
https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/27/science/ai-nazca-geoglyphs-peru/index.html
An airborne scan of southern Mexico uncovered an unknown Mayan city hidden in the jungle.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crmznzkly3go
A Chinese company has unveiled the biggest and most powerful wind turbine ever made:
‘Dongfang on Saturday rolled out a 26-megawatt turbine off the production line, the company said in a statement. That’s 31% bigger than the previous record of 18 megawatts…It said the blades were 310 meters (1,017 feet) in diameter.’
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chinese-firm-announces-huge-leap-043855364.html
Google says it will buy small nuclear reactors from “Kairos Power” by 2035 to power its planned data centers.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c748gn94k95o
Other big tech companies are also considering nuclear.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/16/business/energy-environment/amazon-google-microsoft-nuclear-energy.html
Samsung’s stock has sharply dropped because it has fallen behind in making AI chips.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/samsung-sudden-122-billion-wipeout-220000518.html
Bill Gates writes about the positive impact “digital public infrastructure” will soon have, particularly in poor countries.
https://www.gatesnotes.com/Digital-public-infrastructure
We’ll never run out of sand, but it will get more expensive.
https://youtu.be/SB0qDQFTyE8?si=LPBOhpUfqSXDWgyD
Computer modeling shows that, if you’re trying to optimize a beer glass so it keeps its contents cold for as long as possible, the best shape is to have a narrow base and a wider, flared-out opening at the top. Depending on the volume of the cup (e.g. – Imperial Pint, American Pint), the proportions change slightly.
Some of the shapes that minimize heat transfer look so top-heavy that they would be prone to easily tipping over, so optimizing for one quality comes at the expense of optimizing for another one (stability). It’s an interesting and simple lesson in engineering tradeoffs.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2410.12043
In a spectacular display of technological prowess, SpaceX landed a giant Starship booster back on the landing pad, where two giant arms attached to the launch tower clasped around it. This ability will lower costs and shorten the time between missions of the reusable rocket.
https://spacenews.com/spacex-launches-fifth-starship-catches-super-heavy-booster/
Tattoos and piercings are more common among people who suffered child abuse (sexual, emotional, physical), and the more tattoos and piercings a person has, the more likely it is they are a victim.
https://bmcpsychology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40359-022-00811-x
Male facial features predict future leadership potential.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11292-023-09554-0
https://www.economist.com/business/2014/09/27/the-look-of-a-leader
Update on something I posted before: ‘An 81-year-old Montana man was sentenced Monday to six months in federal prison for illegally using tissue and testicles from large sheep hunted in Central Asia and the U.S. to create hybrid sheep for captive trophy hunting in Texas and Minnesota.’
https://www.usnews.com/news/news/articles/2024-09-30/montana-man-to-be-sentenced-for-cloning-giant-sheep-to-breed-large-sheep-for-captive-trophy-hunts
Scientists have mapped the locations of every neuron in a fly brain.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07686-5
AI-powered drug discovery has disappointed so far.
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/ai-does-not-make-it-easy
For the first time in history, the American obesity rate has declined, almost certainly because of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic. I predicted this. The people of the future will be thinner, healthier, stronger, and more beautiful than we are.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/obesity-rate-us-adults-cdc-data-map/
Here’s a list of ways human intelligence could be enhanced.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jTiSWHKAtnyA723LE/overview-of-strong-human-intelligence-amplification-methods
‘[Heliospect Genomics] is offering to help wealthy couples screen their embryos for IQ using controversial technology that raises questions about the ethics of genetic enhancement.’
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/oct/18/us-startup-charging-couples-to-screen-embryos-for-iq
DNA tests have confirmed the skeleton interred in Cathedral of Seville in Spain belongs to Christopher Columbus, as most suspected. It also indicates he was Jewish and likelier to have been Spanish than Italian.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/columbus-was-sephardic-jew-western-europe-study-finds-rcna175188
“But surely human interactions with nature are increasing, and the chances of picking up viruses is therefore growing because of things like deforestation? No. Southern China is reforesting rapidly, not deforesting, as rural peasants migrate to the cities to work in factories and eat food bought from supermarkets, not hunted in the jungle.
The same is true throughout much of the world. Intimate contact with wild animals is on the decline, thanks to economic development and urbanisation. Rural populations are now shrinking for the first time. The more that Africans can afford to buy frozen chicken rather than hunt ‘bushmeat’ the better. And peak human exposure to bat droppings probably occurred thousands of years ago when many of our ancestors were, literally, ‘cavemen’.”
https://www.mattridley.co.uk/blog/is-another-pandemic-really-inevitable/