https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/sep/04/super-rich-prepper-bunkers-apocalypse-survival-richest-rushkoff

QuoteThey started out innocuously and predictably enough. Bitcoin or ethereum? Virtual reality or augmented reality? Who will get quantum computing first, China or Google? Eventually, they edged into their real topic of concern: New Zealand or Alaska? Which region would be less affected by the coming climate crisis? It only got worse from there. Which was the greater threat: global warming or biological warfare? How long should one plan to be able to survive with no outside help? Should a shelter have its own air supply? What was the likelihood of groundwater contamination? Finally, the CEO of a brokerage house explained that he had nearly completed building his own underground bunker system, and asked: "How do I maintain authority over my security force after the event?" The event. That was their euphemism for the environmental collapse, social unrest, nuclear explosion, solar storm, unstoppable virus, or malicious computer hack that takes everything down.

Its supposed to be getting a little hotter at the start of next week.  So far (in London) at worst its uncomfortable, but TBH I think the vast majority are finding it rather pleasant.

Pretty clear though that with a few more °C on the thermometer in years to come, there's going to be a significant impact.

Quote from: rcjordan on April 21, 2022, 01:09:57 AM
>could be wiped out by AI if the AI storytelling skills get halfway decent

Screenplays. A great number of the human-generated ones already suck.

This jogged a memory.  I saw the author of the following article (published: 2014) give a talk a few months before this piece went out.  In 2013, they were already training neural networks on movie scripts and box office revenues to predict success or otherwise of new scripts in the works before production.

https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/i-want-book-amazon-latest-launch-day/1229250

QuoteThe pilot project will see five single-deck SAE Level 4 autonomous Dennis Enviro200 buses rolling over the Firth of Forth via the 1.5-mile-long (2.5-km) Forth Road Bridge to carry passengers between Ferrytool Park & Ride in Fife and the Edinburgh Train and Tram interchange.

Interesting choice.

its the correlation / causation issue.

ML can highlight the patterns.  Humans may still need to validate them, though I do wonder whether it may be a case of iterative training the model to control for variables (e.g. age, position in this example).

Fire 8 looks ideal. Thanks RC.

I've got some family travelling coming up and am thinking we need a get out of jail card by way of personal screen time for my 6 and 3 year old.

Thinking of getting 2 tablets we can load up with cartoons that we can bring out when all else fails... hopefully not within the first 5 minutes.

Anything recommendations?

I figure we don't have any complex needs...

Something that can run Amazon Video / Netflix / iPlayer apps, and also have some local storage for a few hours worth of Netflix downloads or similar.

Quote from: buckworks on September 18, 2021, 08:35:41 PM
What kind of parent would name their child Young Boozer ?

The kind who has worn the name themselves.  Must have liked it.  Maybe its a "Boy named Sue" thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Boozer#cite_note-1
https://web.archive.org/web/20170202035710/http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/news/20030205/tuscaloosa-graduate-named-to-stanford-board

QuoteTUSCALOOSA | A Tuscaloosa High School graduate has been named a Stanford University trustee.

Young Boozer III, a 1967 Tuscaloosa High School graduate, will serve as a Stanford trustee for five years.</p><p>He graduated from Stanford with an economics degree in 1971.

Boozer, 54, is executive vice president of Colonial BancGroup in Montgomery.

His father, Young Jacob Boozer, was a long-time Tuscaloosa businessman and community leader before his death in June 2000.

BBC News - Why even giant ships can't solve the shipping crisis
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58479148

https://www.xayn.com/press/xayn-raises-10-million-euro-for-its-private-search-and-discovery-browser

Web Position Gold 2021 edition.

Core Web Vitals feels like a very well intentioned initiative from Google that has been executed rather poorly.

The diagnostic tools that are available to the vast majority are not good enough to pinpoint many issues.  The Field and Lab data often tell conflicting stories.  Only those with access to decent RUM data can really get into the details.

I would hope that Google recognise this and find a way to open up more granular RUM data from the CrUX dataset via Search Console or similar.

I'm not surprised in the least that the rollout was pushed back a month.

>>Geocities ....  In many ways, the free sites were a collective Wikipedia before Wikipedia was ever thought of.  They were established long before Google, the best were listed in Dmoz which Google leaned on heavily and the Geocities type sites were well linked together as a legacy of surfing the web before competent search engines.  This made the best of the free sites rock solid for the original PageRank.

So true.

My first web pages were on geocities back when I was in college and working out how to code.  They were awful pages, which made the myspace pages that emerged ~5-10 years later seem not overwhelmingly ugly.

My second batch of web-pages were also on geocities once I started making some money from the web.  I had a few that picked up natural(ish) Dmoz listings, and (whilst not looking) built up some decent PageRank (6 or 7 or so) as a consequence.  Wonderful discovery for cross linking to whatever my money sites of the day were.

Come to think of it - perhaps this zero-barrier to entry became a problem for G - with a significant pool of others milking Geocities opportunistically as I did - or (quite likely) more systematically

>Right now the spread seems to be blamed on noncompliance
>London is by its nature non compliant though. Just so busy.

London's non compliance I suspect is relatively constant, whereas the hockey stick growth since the new variant has entered the fray is pretty significant.

My corner of South East London (about 5 miles south of the centre) has been quieter than ever in recent weeks.  Over the weeks around Christmas when London was moved to the highest regional tier of restrictions it felt as though huge numbers had left the city.  Now, with the increased national lockdown its even quieter.

That said, of course, it is a populated city and wherever you go, you're likely to see other folk.

Not that I'm spending much time outside the house.  With remote working and looking after the kids, there's barely a moment to get out.

Quote from: Torben on November 27, 2020, 03:02:40 PM
It's really good. I binged it

Me too.  One of the only compulsive Netflix binges I've had this year, but really enjoyed it.  Its dark enough to be interesting, but not OTT.

Will say no more for fear of unwanted spoilers.