Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

rnatr @rnatr.com · Jul 14

I wonder if they paid royalties for this image considering it is under copyright.

Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social · Jul 14

The official DHS account is now tweeting about “your homeland’s heritage”

Homeland Security DHS account on X: Remember your Homeland's Heritage.
New Life in a New Land - Morgan Weistling

Reposted by rnatr

NPR @npr.org · May 26

Science is an economic driver in Hamilton, Mont., thanks to Rocky Mountain Laboratories, a federal research lab. Now, layoffs and funding cuts are having an impact in this town far from Washington.

A small Montana town grapples with the fallouts from federal worker cuts

Science is an economic driver in Hamilton, Mont., thanks to Rocky Mountain Laboratories, a federal research lab. Now, layoffs and funding cuts are having an impact in this town far from Washington.

www.npr.org

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rnatr @rnatr.com · Mar 22

If they are going to build on a beach, clearly they should be using the Seabees. I joke but the situation is still awful.

rnatr @rnatr.com · Mar 3

This article about what is going on at NIH is insightful. It details why the fight over the indirect rates are existential and show how the administration is trying to seize power that is directly given to Congress by the constitution www.sensible-med.com/p/the-nih-is...

The NIH is Being Slashed and Burned, not “Reformed”

A strong and well-argued rebuttal to NIH criticism

www.sensible-med.com

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rnatr @rnatr.com · Feb 19

Just wanted to share this little bit of tech news. Once upon a time I worked alongside Brian. I was so happy to see how the last decade has evolved for him. From biology to comp sci and back again. 3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily...

The Poetry Fan Who Taught an LLM to Read and Write DNA - 3 Quarks Daily

Ingrid Wickelgren in Quanta:

3quarksdaily.com

Reposted by rnatr

Hank Green @hankgreen.bsky.social · Feb 18

This video kicks ass: youtu.be/o2jzKo1RqWU?...

How Trying Became Cool Again

YouTube video by Nathan Zed

youtu.be

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rnatr @rnatr.com · Feb 15

This is hands down the most impressive home hacked project I've ever seen. Using multiple microcontrollers for passive radio imaging with several Hz update frequency hackaday.com/2025/02/15/o...

Octet Of ESP32s Lets You See WiFi Like Never Before

Most of us see the world in a very narrow band of the EM spectrum. Sure, there are people with a genetic quirk that extends the range a bit into the UV, but it’s a ROYGBIV world for most of u…

hackaday.com

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rnatr @rnatr.com · Jan 4

I would love to hear strategies for dealing with this. I have been on the no one side before and sometimes it is like shouting into the void.

rnatr @rnatr.com · Jan 4

Researchers have uncovered the science behind achieving the perfect Cacio e Pepe. By studying the sauce's phase behavior, they identified starch concentration as critical for stability. Insufficient starch (<1%) results in clumping ("Mozzarella Phase"). #FoodScience #Cooking arxiv.org/abs/2501.00536

Phase behavior of Cacio and Pepe sauce

"Pasta alla Cacio e pepe" is a traditional Italian dish made with pasta, pecorino cheese, and pepper. Despite its simple ingredient list, achieving the perfect texture and creaminess of the sauce can ...

arxiv.org

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rnatr @rnatr.com · Dec 27

SHARE IT is a solid bill which has been years in the making. Finally a solid law which requires code made for the federal government must be stored in a repository and shared across government. fedscoop.com/agencies-mus...

Bill requiring US agencies to share custom source code with each other becomes law

President Joe Biden signed the bipartisan legislation into law Dec. 23.

fedscoop.com

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rnatr @rnatr.com · Dec 17

FCC holding the VOIP providers to account. Wow. www.federalregister.gov/documents/20...

In the Matter of 2,411 Robocall Mitigation Database Filers

On December 10, 2024, the Enforcement Bureau (Bureau) released an Order directing the 2,411 companies named in Appendix A to the Order (each, a Company; collectively, the Companies) to cure the defici...

www.federalregister.gov

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rnatr @rnatr.com · Dec 14

Having worked alongside them, I can guarantee there is a story and a name for this. I don't happen to know it though.

rnatr @rnatr.com · Dec 9

NGL, I'm shocked TCE was still used as a solvent in 2024. That stuff is bad news. www.nytimes.com/2024/12/09/c...

E.P.A. Bans Perc and T.C.E., Two Chemicals Used In Dry Cleaning

The two solvents, known as Perc and TCE, cause kidney cancer and other ailments, and have been the subject of years of controversy.

www.nytimes.com

rnatr @rnatr.com · Dec 8

But when looking at how my clock is performing vs the monitors worldwide, I get some interesting results. Practically everything is within +/- 5 ms. However, there are these spikes in offset every day only for 3 European monitors in NL and DE at 0100-0300 UTC. The others are fine.

Offset of my clock vs clocks around the world showing a temporary offset of 50 ms everyday around 0200 UTC

rnatr @rnatr.com · Dec 8

I built a stratum 1 NTP server last month and added it to pool.ntp.org. Its tracking the GPS atomic clock signals with less than a microsecond of offset from them and less than a millisecond vs NIST's atomic clocks. 1/2

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rnatr @rnatr.com · Dec 8

"it tastes like the biggest hug from your heavest grandmother, which by the way, she's beautiful." This looks so tasty. Love his cooking videos. youtube.com/shorts/MKjyq...

Soupy BOIS UNITE! Tom Kha Gai for your belly on a cold day. #thaifood #soup

YouTube video by Jose.elcook

youtube.com

Reposted by rnatr

Simon Willison @simonwillison.net · Dec 7

This is such an interesting angle, because the number of large organizations that have this level of discipline to evaluating new models is likely to be tiny

Running a bunch of test prompts specific to what your company does through a new model feels like it should be pretty low hanging fruit

Ethan Mollick @emollick.bsky.social · Dec 7

A test of how seriously your firm is taking AI: when o-1 (& the new Gemini model) came out this week, were there assigned folks who immediately ran the model through your internal, validated, firm-specific benchmarks to see how useful it as? Did you update any plans or goals as a result?

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rnatr @rnatr.com · Dec 7

I've absolutely done this, but I also measure a host of metrics in parallel with a set of prompts. Latency, cost, and reliability are also worth considering. For some applications multiple models are used based upon performance.

Reposted by rnatr

Simon Willison @simonwillison.net · Dec 6

This is a neat new variant on RAG - no vectors, not even full-text search, instead showing the model a header hierarchy and giving it a tool to read the relevant sections

My notes here: simonwillison.net/2024/Dec/6/r...

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rnatr @rnatr.com · Dec 4

The valiant health knights. I love reading stories like this about the benefits of science and technology. moreisdifferent.blog/p/a-pro-scie...

rnatr @rnatr.com · Dec 4

Fascinating read about going IPv6 only in the home and what breaks. I was expecting more chaos than this, but it looks like we've come a long way! blog.infected.systems/posts/2024-1...

No NAT November: My Month Without IPv4

Near the beginning of November, nixCraft posted this challenge on Mastodon, daring people to take the No NAT November challenge and disable IPv4 for the month, relying only on IPv6:

blog.infected.systems

rnatr @rnatr.com · Dec 4

If you want to do some rigorous evaluations over a set of inputs, MLFlow worked well for me with the different services over API. I wrote a bunch of metrics for latency and cost for the services and was able to argue which model was the best value for our use case with that data.

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rnatr @rnatr.com · Dec 3

I just completed "Mull It Over" - Day 3 - Advent of Code 2024 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2024/day/3

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rnatr @rnatr.com · Dec 2

Shower thoughts: if you survive an encounter you will upgrade your equipment :D Also, the gear is a threat to those who would challenge you. We are starting with fast fashion and ending up with the clothes which last (which might be the tacticool leather).

rnatr @rnatr.com · Dec 2

Does it count if you get the right answer, but in the jankiest way ever? Yes.
I just completed "Red-Nosed Reports" - Day 2 - Advent of Code 2024 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2024/day/2

Day 2 - Advent of Code 2024

adventofcode.com