In trying to figure out how to upload to youtube one of my own book promotional videos (I know, I’m slow to the partry, give me a break), I came upon this little vid. Check out the first book. OK, in case it goes by too fast, it’s Acts of the Apostles, by me. I was pretty surprised to see that, I must say.
Year: 2009
Democrats killing Net Neutrality?
When the Money Gods fall silent, what will become of their priests?
Over on Reality Sandwich, Charles Eisentein has an essay called Money and the Turning of the Age. Its premise is that money is based on a consensus story and only has value so long as the people believe the story. The story of money, he argues, is based on:
— infinite expansion of stuff produced;
— theft and monetization of cultural wealth, and
— arbitrary and ever-growing differences in power between the haves and have-nots.
“Money is merely a social agreement,” Eisentein says. “A story that assigns meaning and roles.”
But what happens when people stop believing the story? What happens when they refuse to play their assigned roles?
Should progressives trust Obama and his administration?
Chris Bowers says no. I agree.
Break up the banks
If a corporation is “too big to fail” it’s too big to exist. Go to a rally tomorrow.
Hey, when I named this blog “Wetmachine” I was joking, OK?
Last fall Nicholas Carr blogged about whole brain emulation, in which one does a software simulation of every neuron & structure of a brain just like yours. Kinda like in “The Matrix” with Keanu, or one of those stupid brain in a vat science fiction novellas.
So now Science Daily tells me that “Brain Mapping Time Reduced From Years To A Few Months With New Technology”:
Mapping the billions of connections in the brain is a grand challenge in neuroscience. The current method for mapping interconnected brain cells involves the use of room-size microscopes known as transmission electron microscopes (TEMs). Until now the process of mapping even small areas of the brain using these massive machines would have required several decades.
Research teams at the University of Utah John A. Moran Eye Center and the University of Colorado at Boulder report technical advances that have reduced the time it takes to process high-speed “color” ultrastructure mapping of brain regions down to a few months.
These advances did not require the invention of new electron microscopes. The technical leap comes mostly from new powerful software that “takes over” the building, connecting and viewing of terabyte scale pictures produced by TEMs. Perhaps just as important is the fact that these researchers are now making these technologies available world-wide to scientists in multiple fields of research. ‘Our goals were to unleash a global network of electron microscopes and provide web-accessible imagery for battalions of brain network analysts,’ said Robert Marc, Ph.D. . .“
I like the parts about ”unleashing a global network“ and ”battalions“ of brain network analysts. This guy reminds me of the way-over-the-top villain Monty Meekman who keeps showing up in nanoscopically famous novels that I can’t seem to make myself stop writing.
”Wetmachine”–a water-based machine inside the cranium. An ironic conceit that becomes less ironic every day. Pretty soon this place will be completely literal, and what a drag that will be.
More on robbing the poor & the working class to pay the rich
Dean Baker lays it out.
Thoughts on the impending demise of Sun Microsystems: part one: the Death Coffee Brick
News Item: IBM withdraws offer to buy Sun Microsystems; Sun’s fate unknown.
When I joined the “East Coast Division” of Sun Microsystems in January, 1986, Sun was a swaggering three-year-old enfant terrible based in Mountain View (Silicon Valley) California, and the East Coast Division, located in Lexington, Massachusetts had about fifteen people in it. Within two years Sun was a worldwide powerhouse with a new subsidiary company opening once a week (or so it seemed), and the East Coast division had about 250 people, 30 of whom reported to me. We moved to a larger facility in Billerica, MA, were we designed and manufactured a whole new line of Sun computers. We were like a mini-startup within Sun itself, with a classic start-up feel–hardcore geek shit.
Starting about 1988 or so, we had a coffee club in Billerica. Sun provided free coffee, which sucked, but some coffee lovers got together and provided alternative good stuff at $.25/cup or so.
Mostly this was Peets coffee, which Martin Hardee, a guy in my group, brought back from the west coast on his occasional forays. This was back in the old days, when finding anything better than Dunkin Donuts coffee on the east coast was a real challenge.
One day some poor fellow who was not a caffeine junky drank the Peets when he thought he was drinking the Sun-provided crap and got palpitations.
So, Martin got a brick, a regular old red brick, and got out his acrylic paint set and decorated it with the words
WARNING!
DEATH COFFEE
So How's That Time Warner Bandwidth Cap Working Out?
Reposting a recent blog entry of mine from the Public Knowledge blog. As Time Warner expands out its usage cap pilot from Beaumont, TX to somewhat more populated and user-intensive communities, users are starting to notice and complain. Hopefully, with the FCC getting the ball rolling on the National Broadband Plan mandated by the broadband stimulus package, we will start to probe into the whole bandwidth cap issue a little more deeply.
More below . . . .
Why NTIA Should Tell NARUC “Thanks, But We Can Manage the Stimulus Spending Just Fine.”
OK, I get that when you are a trade association you push for your members. But this is silly.
The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) has sent a letter to the National Telecommunications Information Administration (NTIA) and the USDA Rural Utility Service (RUS) explaining how the only, possible conceivable way for them to spend the $7.2 Billion they must spend under the Broadband Stimulus package is to send all the applications to NARUC’s members to evaluate. This way, the poor little overworked NTIA and RUS won’t have to worry their pretty little heads about anything. You can read NARUC’s press release here.
The appeal to administrative convenience is a convention one. And, like most conventional wisdom on the stimulus package — utterly wrong. For a start, Congress actually realized this would take resources. So NTIA can use up to 3% of the money for Administrative costs associated with running the program. The idea that poor little NTIA, forced to focus on the DTV transition and coupon program (which happens in June) can’t possibly manage to process all these applications is rather ridiculous in light of the fact that NTIA can spend Over $150 million on administrative costs. I think you can hire a bunch of real sharp, real experienced grant evaluators for that. Bluntly, such folks will do a heck of a lot better job of evaluating grant proposals than NARUC, as I explain below . . . .
-
But while the uproar has swayed much of the public to Johansson's defense at a time when #genAI is increasingly under scrutiny, this may not quite be an open-and-shut case should she decide to sue . Read the breakdown from @M_F_Rose in her latest article:
The release of @OpenAI's new digital assistant "Sky" stirred controversy after actress Scarlett Johansson alleged that the company had infringed on her rights by using a soundalike voice of hers after she'd declined to voice it herself.
Just saw @MargotSusca fantastic interview with @adamconover about the death of local news at the hands of hedge funds. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N21YfWy0-bA A theme I have written about *a lot*. Like this blog post from 2018: https://wetmachine.com/tales-of-the-sausage-factory/we-need-to-fix-the-news-media-not-just-social-media-part-i/ This has been a long time in the making.
I wrote yesterday on the terrifying escalation of antisemitism in Canada, citing events just over past week. Now there is more: last night a firebomb attempt at a Vancouver synagogue. Daily antisemitic incidents is who we are now.
https://www.jewishvancouver.com/important-community-updates-may-20-2024
https://x.com/mgeist/status/1796233336203194446
Load More
Democrats killing Net Neutrality?
When the Money Gods fall silent, what will become of their priests?
Over on Reality Sandwich, Charles Eisentein has an essay called Money and the Turning of the Age. Its premise is that money is based on a consensus story and only has value so long as the people believe the story. The story of money, he argues, is based on:
— infinite expansion of stuff produced;
— theft and monetization of cultural wealth, and
— arbitrary and ever-growing differences in power between the haves and have-nots.
“Money is merely a social agreement,” Eisentein says. “A story that assigns meaning and roles.”
But what happens when people stop believing the story? What happens when they refuse to play their assigned roles?
Should progressives trust Obama and his administration?
Chris Bowers says no. I agree.
Break up the banks
If a corporation is “too big to fail” it’s too big to exist. Go to a rally tomorrow.
Hey, when I named this blog “Wetmachine” I was joking, OK?
Last fall Nicholas Carr blogged about whole brain emulation, in which one does a software simulation of every neuron & structure of a brain just like yours. Kinda like in “The Matrix” with Keanu, or one of those stupid brain in a vat science fiction novellas.
So now Science Daily tells me that “Brain Mapping Time Reduced From Years To A Few Months With New Technology”:
Mapping the billions of connections in the brain is a grand challenge in neuroscience. The current method for mapping interconnected brain cells involves the use of room-size microscopes known as transmission electron microscopes (TEMs). Until now the process of mapping even small areas of the brain using these massive machines would have required several decades.
Research teams at the University of Utah John A. Moran Eye Center and the University of Colorado at Boulder report technical advances that have reduced the time it takes to process high-speed “color” ultrastructure mapping of brain regions down to a few months.
These advances did not require the invention of new electron microscopes. The technical leap comes mostly from new powerful software that “takes over” the building, connecting and viewing of terabyte scale pictures produced by TEMs. Perhaps just as important is the fact that these researchers are now making these technologies available world-wide to scientists in multiple fields of research. ‘Our goals were to unleash a global network of electron microscopes and provide web-accessible imagery for battalions of brain network analysts,’ said Robert Marc, Ph.D. . .“
I like the parts about ”unleashing a global network“ and ”battalions“ of brain network analysts. This guy reminds me of the way-over-the-top villain Monty Meekman who keeps showing up in nanoscopically famous novels that I can’t seem to make myself stop writing.
”Wetmachine”–a water-based machine inside the cranium. An ironic conceit that becomes less ironic every day. Pretty soon this place will be completely literal, and what a drag that will be.
More on robbing the poor & the working class to pay the rich
Dean Baker lays it out.
Thoughts on the impending demise of Sun Microsystems: part one: the Death Coffee Brick
News Item: IBM withdraws offer to buy Sun Microsystems; Sun’s fate unknown.
When I joined the “East Coast Division” of Sun Microsystems in January, 1986, Sun was a swaggering three-year-old enfant terrible based in Mountain View (Silicon Valley) California, and the East Coast Division, located in Lexington, Massachusetts had about fifteen people in it. Within two years Sun was a worldwide powerhouse with a new subsidiary company opening once a week (or so it seemed), and the East Coast division had about 250 people, 30 of whom reported to me. We moved to a larger facility in Billerica, MA, were we designed and manufactured a whole new line of Sun computers. We were like a mini-startup within Sun itself, with a classic start-up feel–hardcore geek shit.
Starting about 1988 or so, we had a coffee club in Billerica. Sun provided free coffee, which sucked, but some coffee lovers got together and provided alternative good stuff at $.25/cup or so.
Mostly this was Peets coffee, which Martin Hardee, a guy in my group, brought back from the west coast on his occasional forays. This was back in the old days, when finding anything better than Dunkin Donuts coffee on the east coast was a real challenge.
One day some poor fellow who was not a caffeine junky drank the Peets when he thought he was drinking the Sun-provided crap and got palpitations.
So, Martin got a brick, a regular old red brick, and got out his acrylic paint set and decorated it with the words
WARNING!
DEATH COFFEE
So How's That Time Warner Bandwidth Cap Working Out?
Reposting a recent blog entry of mine from the Public Knowledge blog. As Time Warner expands out its usage cap pilot from Beaumont, TX to somewhat more populated and user-intensive communities, users are starting to notice and complain. Hopefully, with the FCC getting the ball rolling on the National Broadband Plan mandated by the broadband stimulus package, we will start to probe into the whole bandwidth cap issue a little more deeply.
More below . . . .
Why NTIA Should Tell NARUC “Thanks, But We Can Manage the Stimulus Spending Just Fine.”
OK, I get that when you are a trade association you push for your members. But this is silly.
The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) has sent a letter to the National Telecommunications Information Administration (NTIA) and the USDA Rural Utility Service (RUS) explaining how the only, possible conceivable way for them to spend the $7.2 Billion they must spend under the Broadband Stimulus package is to send all the applications to NARUC’s members to evaluate. This way, the poor little overworked NTIA and RUS won’t have to worry their pretty little heads about anything. You can read NARUC’s press release here.
The appeal to administrative convenience is a convention one. And, like most conventional wisdom on the stimulus package — utterly wrong. For a start, Congress actually realized this would take resources. So NTIA can use up to 3% of the money for Administrative costs associated with running the program. The idea that poor little NTIA, forced to focus on the DTV transition and coupon program (which happens in June) can’t possibly manage to process all these applications is rather ridiculous in light of the fact that NTIA can spend Over $150 million on administrative costs. I think you can hire a bunch of real sharp, real experienced grant evaluators for that. Bluntly, such folks will do a heck of a lot better job of evaluating grant proposals than NARUC, as I explain below . . . .
-
- Load More
But while the uproar has swayed much of the public to Johansson's defense at a time when #genAI is increasingly under scrutiny, this may not quite be an open-and-shut case should she decide to sue . Read the breakdown from @M_F_Rose in her latest article:
The release of @OpenAI's new digital assistant "Sky" stirred controversy after actress Scarlett Johansson alleged that the company had infringed on her rights by using a soundalike voice of hers after she'd declined to voice it herself.
Just saw @MargotSusca fantastic interview with @adamconover about the death of local news at the hands of hedge funds. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N21YfWy0-bA A theme I have written about *a lot*. Like this blog post from 2018: https://wetmachine.com/tales-of-the-sausage-factory/we-need-to-fix-the-news-media-not-just-social-media-part-i/ This has been a long time in the making.
I wrote yesterday on the terrifying escalation of antisemitism in Canada, citing events just over past week. Now there is more: last night a firebomb attempt at a Vancouver synagogue. Daily antisemitic incidents is who we are now.
https://www.jewishvancouver.com/important-community-updates-may-20-2024
https://x.com/mgeist/status/1796233336203194446
