Anybody remember Dubbya going on and on about gasoline made from switchgrass?

Somehow growing succulents in fragile desert ecologies and irrigating them seems like a dead end.

Maybe they got a government grant.

As someone alluded to above the forest litter causing all these fires may be a good source of cellulose. Betcha robots could make it economical.

> We need new laws to make life safer in the US and CATCHING Criminals.

Violent crime is at historical lows.

Most of our criminal laws are not enforced. If the police have extra time there is a whole Epstein Client List that needs arresting.

> tying the hands of LEO"S

Yes, that is the point of rights. Liberty is not safety. Europe is available for those who prefer safety over Liberty. Europeans who prefer Liberty should be welcome to come here. Cops who distain the rights of citizens should self-deport too.

Anyway, SCOTUS has extensively covered Mosaic Theory if you want the case law. Imagine being an LEO and ignoring the highest court in the land. That's just gang behavior.

> Government asserts that it will be able to identify all potential suspects

They went too far and failed.

They may be able to identify all suspects but even a clever six year old would ask, "and if they're not carrying an active phone"?

Geofence warrants were already struck down by SCOTUS and the government's position is arguing about the difference between beige, tan, and taupe.

Anyway it's a general warrant.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
      "(45:21) Interviewer: But theoretically, couldn't AI and biotechnology help you come up with a counter measure?
        Schmidt: Um, I had thought so, and that was the argument I made until I... I do a lot of national security work. And there's a term called offense dominant. And an offense dominant is a is a situation in a military context where the attack cannot be countered at the same level as the attack. In other words, the damage is done. And most people, most biologists who've worked in this believe that while the model can be trained to counter this, the damage from the offense part is far greater than the ability to defend it, which is why we're so worried about it."

And Mo Gawdat on ways to help prevent that:
"Ex-Google Officer: You Only Have 3 Years Left Before It Hits! - Mo Gawdat"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
        "AI Expert Mo Gawdat returns to The Diary Of A CEO to reveal why AGI has already arrived, why 30% of jobs will disappear by 2027, and why the most dangerous thing about AI isn't the technology - it's the people in charge of it.
        Mo Gawdat is the former Chief Business Officer at Google X, founder of One Billion Happy, and co-founder of Emma.Love. He is a 4x international bestselling author, and his upcoming book 'Alive: A Human's Guide to Living in the World of AI', will be released in October 2026.
        He explains:
* How AI can give you a 400-point IQ boost, and why most people are wasting it
* Why Mo actually wants a machine smarter than all of humanity to take control
* Why Sam Altman said AI will "likely end humanity", and what he chose to do next
* Why capitalism breaks when AI replaces the workers who buy the things we make
* Why AI unemployment could trigger civil unrest before governments are ready for it"

Which all relates to my sig: "The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity."

And also this essay I wrote: https://pdfernhout.net/recogni...
      "There is a fundamental mismatch between 21st century reality and 20th century security thinking. Those "security" agencies are using those tools of abundance, cooperation, and sharing mainly from a mindset of scarcity, competition, and secrecy. Given the power of 21st century technology as an amplifier (including as weapons of mass destruction), a scarcity-based approach to using such technology ultimately is just making us all insecure. Such powerful technologies of abundance, designed, organized, and used from a mindset of scarcity could well ironically doom us all whether through military robots, nukes, plagues, propaganda, or whatever else... Or alternatively, as Bucky Fuller and others have suggested, we could use such technologies to build a world that is abundant and secure for all."

Having lived through the 80-90s myself, there were indeed a lot of great things about them -- but don't forget living in the shadow of nuclear war and "The Day After" and also "Peak Oil" and "Club of Rome" fears of running out of resources. Advanced of technology like PV and EV and 3D-Printing have made a lot of new things possible (both for good and bad) -- and as Mo Gawdat says we need to upgrade our social perspective and political discourse to use them wisely.

Personally, I feel it is plausible that the direction we come out of any AI singularity may have a lot to do with our social direction going into it. So it is absolutely imperative to get our social house in order before developing AI -- and that means building a more compassionate, wiser, sustainable, and just world *first*.

> I wonder how many problems they tried before they solved one successfully.

Was gonna mod Insightful, but the replies aren't getting it.

"Solving this problem cost $2000."

That may be true.

"We tried to solve 50 problems at $2000 each and one was successfully solved."

This can also be true which means:

"We spent $100K and we solved one open problem."

which is fiscally, but not akshually, the same as:

"We spent $100K to solve one problem."

If Astra is "all that", OpenAI should have a pricing tier, "no charge unless the problem is solved."

Now *that* would be an impressive vote of confidence and everybody should be excited about it.

I see some of these CVE's are fixed in trixie but not bookworm 6.1.177-1 (yet).

Still other CVE's are fixed in bookworm but not yet in trixie. Seems like a few reboots are in the offing.

First time I've seen several fixes in oldstable before stable. It must be a wild week over there. n.b. fixed, not 'not vulnerable'.

Glad the oldstable crew is hard at work!

Is anybody aware of open source hardware/software to do the page turning and photograph/OCR the pages?

Google's rig used a puff of air, IIRC.

I asked somebody in the field and they said, "oh, you want a professional rig - those cost $10K and up.

I was like, "no, I have several rare books I'd like to index and this setup is far less complicated than my $249 3D printer." (I already have a good camera.)

I thought I'd find a hackaday or something but my cursory search wasn't fruitful.

But how long would it take to implement in every supported OS version and then get all the developers to declare a manifest and update their app?

A policy change can be enforced tomorrow (for better or for worse).

The AI bros might even get Samsung to change their mind. Apparently their 'subcontractors' use this technique to scrape all the content they use for training.

Would threatening to cancel a year's RAM order from the chip subsidiary cause a decision to change in the TV subsidiary? I have no idea how dispersed and decentralized Samsung is.

I'd bet it will stick, though, which is likely for the best. Odds are people aren't running Tor exits on their TV's. Maybe there are legitimate apps I'm not aware of.

People keep saying it's hard to get a non-blurry picture of them.

Some have suspected somebody has gravity bubble tech which would bend the light.

This thing just spins but isn't itself a disc, though on average it's s disc while in motion.

Post WWII-Germany/Paperclip there were more visible saucers seen over Washington and such but the Germans were developing solid discs. The blurry ones are more over the past few decades as drone tech has become common.

Curious.

> I don't know why anyone would send one in any other format.

I'm told by attorneys that Office is nonnegotiable in Law.

Microsoft could probably raise the price to $500/mo and they'd get it.

Should a citizen be required to pay a creepy Redmond company to interact with the Courts?

It"s at least Unconstitutional in New Hampshire, likely other states as well.

Not that Courts themselves care about Unconstitutionality very often. Nor do they personally pay anything for Office. Empathy tends to be low.

But if one wants to make a decent argument that is a good one.

Agree, but finals are over and many teens and college kids are the ones running linux.

"Windows is for Boomers" they say.

It's at least plausible that usage dipped as the end-of-year school workload spiked.

Indeed. Although it's much easier to eat healthier in, say, Japan than the USA because of a different food culture and different food infrastructure (as mentioned in two videos I linked to in another comment).

BlueZones has supported initiatives to make healthier eating -- and exercise and other good things -- easier to do by default in the USA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://albertlea.bluezonespro...
        "Blue Zones Project(r) is a community-wide well-being initiative that helps make healthy choices easier for everyone in Albert Lea and Freeborn County. When our entire community participates, small changes contribute huge benefits for all of us: Lowered healthcare costs, improved productivity, and a higher quality of life.
        While many traditional health initiatives focus on diet and exercise programs, we focus on changing our community's culture and environment so that individuals are nudged into making healthy choices. We take a systematic approach to improving well-being through policy, building design, social networks and built environment across all sectors of our community. By optimizing the places that we live, work and play, we can make the healthy choices the easy choices so we naturally adopt healthy behaviors and have the opportunity to LIVE LONGER, BETTER(r)."

The Suppers clubs described in "Logical Miracles" are another approach to make healthier eating more the default in the USA:
"Logical Miracles: 100 Stories of Hope and Healing" by Dor Mullen
https://www.amazon.com/Logical...
        "Why is it so hard to eat right? What does it take to turn around the habits that make us sick and fat? Logical Miracles is a collection of stories by people in The Suppers Programs who found their personal solutions by experimenting with whole food. In an environment of nonjudgment, we cook, taste, and feel our way to health, and we forge new friendships based on healthy living. For five years, pilot Suppers groups have been helping people with a range of food-related challenges find their path, especially people with depression, anxiety, learning issues, obesity, diabetes, and problems with alcohol. No special diets. No fees. No commercial messages. The only requirement for membership is the desire to lead a healthier life. Now we'd like to share our logical miracles, our road maps, our recipes, and especially our hard-earned wisdom related as stories of hope and healing. Welcome to Suppers."

Also tangentially related:
""Stop Moralizing Air Conditioning" -- How Institutions Shift Responsibility Onto Individuals: On Civilization, Responsibility, and the Ethics of Preventable Suffering"
https://jdjayne.substack.com/p...
        "In my first essay on responsibility, I argued that affirming existence means accepting responsibility for a world we did not create. We emerge into the world shaped by the generations before us, and bear the burden of responsibility for ourselves and future generations ahead. Civilization, then, is the organization of that responsibility at scales greater than any individual could achieve alone.
        As civilizations grow and gain more capacity to prevent suffering, preventing that suffering increasingly becomes a collective responsibility rather than an individual burden. My claim is that modern institutions often fail this responsibility by concentrating authority while displacing responsibility back onto individuals through moralizing, bureaucracy, and institutional incentives.
        By institutions, I mean the durable organizations through which societies coordinate responsibilities that no individual can bear alone; governments, markets, corporations, and other structures of collective action.
        By moralizing, I mean the habit of transforming practical and institutional problems into questions of individual virtue. Rather than asking how we should collectively organize to reduce suffering, we ask whether those who suffer deserve relief in the first place.
        The result is a culture that blames individuals for suffering that civilization has already acquired the capability, and thus the responsibility, to prevent. ..."

In this case, institutions collectively managing trillions of dollars a year in the USA between industry and regulatory-captured government agencies have successfully shirked any responsibility to help people be healthy -- and instead such institutions have displaced that responsibility onto individuals by essentially blaming individuals for lack of willpower to resist all the carefully engineered traps the organization have created for individuals including children (like via ultra-processed foods, constant food-related advertising, artificially low prices via government subsidies for animal products, "health" insurance that covers getting sick but not staying healthy, and so on).

An example of such institutional power in action and how ludicrous pushback is often made to seem (Coca Cola's response was to tell them to individually just stop drinking their product if they had concerns):
https://organicconsumers.org/w...
        "William Lamar, the senior pastor at D.C.'s historic Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church, is tired of presiding over funerals for parishioners who died of heart disease, diabetes and stroke.
        So on Thursday, he and another prominent African American pastor filed suit against Coca-Cola and the American Beverage Association, claiming soda manufacturers knowingly deceived customers about the health risks of sugar-sweetened beverages -- at enormous cost to their communities. ...
        Obesity, hypertension, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and lower-extremity amputations are all far higher among people of color than among whites. These communities also drink more soda -- and are exposed to more soda advertising.
        "It's become really clear to me that we're losing more people to the sweets than to the streets," said Coates, who said he has seen members of his congregation give their infants bottles filled with sugary drinks. "There's a great deal of misinformation in our communities, and I think that's largely a function of these deceptive marketing campaigns." ...."

And the spin on how silly such concern about institutional failure is made to seem:
https://taphaps.com/delman-coa...
        "According to the pastors, it is because Coke's commercials often feature misleading images of young, slender people gulping the fizzy beverage, smiling and sharing good times. "It breaks my heart and I'm saddened by the way in which we're losing so many people. I'm losing more people to the sweets than to the streets," Delman Coates added, according to The Blaze. However, the pastors' claims aren't supported by available evidence. In fact, most surveys show people believe sugar to be harmful, but choose to consume it anyway, another article on The Blaze reported.
          This hasn't deterred the pastors from blaming the company, though. "Marketing for Coca-Cola is focused around health and fun and showing very sexy bodies in their advertising. You never see an obese person. If the people are consuming Coca-Cola at this rate, there is no way those bodies would look like that," William Lamar claimed. "It's almost as if they are selling joy. They are equating this product with the things that people are hoping for - joy, smiles, family. But, this product will not deliver that. It delivers the exact opposite. Silence around this issue is violence." ....
        "Our hope is that Coca-Cola will discontinue marketing these drinks as something that is healthful and healthy," William Lamar said, but instead, Coca-Cola dismissed the pastors' allegations, calling them "legally and factually meritless," adding that they "will vigorously defend against them."
        "America's beverage companies know we have an important role to play in addressing our nation's health challenges. That's why we're engaging with health groups and community organizations to drive a reduction in the sugar and calories Americans get from beverages," the American Beverage Association said in a statement defending the industry's conduct. "Unfounded accusations like these won't do anything to address health concerns, but the actions we're taking, particularly in areas where obesity rates are among the highest, can make a difference." ...."

(Obesity may actually be driven more by animal products than sugar, but they certainly overlap as problem areas, and they likely make the problems caused by each other worse.)

by Jeff Nelson, Veg Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
        "For years we've been told that if one study proves the Mediterranean diet is the healthiest way to eat, it's PREDIMED.
        Doctors cite it. Dietitians cite it. Influencers have built careers on it.
        The headline: Mediterranean diet cuts heart disease by 30%.
        So I sat down and opened the actual paper. Not the press release -- the supplementary tables, where almost nobody looks.
        In today's video I walk through the trial's own tables -- what that 30% actually means, where it came from, and why I think anyone with blocked arteries should be asking a different question entirely."

Spoiler: a low-animal-fat low-seed-oil-fat diet like Ornish, McDougall, Fuhrman and so on suggest actually reverses heart disease rather than maybe just slow it a bit like the Mediterranean diet.

One can then argue about whether fats from nuts, seeds, and avocado are a net benefit (and I am leaning more that way) or whether all fats are problematical (like, say, McDougall suggested). Related by Dr. Fuhrman:
https://www.drfuhrman.com/arti...
        "It is important to stand up to individuals who can hurt others with dangerous nutritional advice. We usually see such arguments coming from the meat-promoting nutritional gurus, attempting to find some flaw in a study that demonstrates the dangers of too much animal products in the diet. The number of studies corroborating that more animal products in the diet contribute to the development of chronic disease and premature death is deafening and indisputable at this time.
        However, a similar development is occurring in the denial of the harm that results from omitting nuts and seeds from the diet - and the attempt to bolster support for an extremely low-fat vegan diet, which is clearly dangerous. It has been brought to my attention that a series of videos has been posted and promoted on YouTube attempting to discredit the studies documenting the lifespan-extending properties of including nuts and seeds in one's diet. The individuals represented here want to try to protect their legacy of promoting an extremely low-fat vegan diets (nut and seed exclusion); unfortunately, according to a preponderance of evidence, this outmoded and disproven stance does lead to premature death. Unable to shut down the avalanche of evidence, they attempt to discredit the studies. The facts are: extreme low-fat vegan dieters are at higher risk of depression and dementia, as well as premature mortality, from all causes, and the evidence increases every year. ..."

Here are some arguments against Fuhrman's position on supplementing DHA/EPA though (Jeff is also in the very-low-fat camp overall it seems to me):
"The DHA Dementia Promise Just Took a Hit" by Jeff Nelson -- VegSource
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
        "Are Vegans Being Sold a Story on DHA? It seems so. For years now, vegans have increasingly been told that if they don't take DHA supplements, they may be putting themselves at risk for dementia or Alzheimer's disease. I've always been skeptical of how certain those claims sound, because the actual evidence has never seemed nearly that clear-cut to me. ..."

A big underlying concern is that arteries can leak (hemorrhagic stroke) and so they need to be repaired from the inside, which if it goes too far (too much animal fats, especially in the context of sugar also causing arterial inflammation) then you can get deadly blockage (an ischemic stroke or heart attack).

So that's why I think Fuhrman may be more right on that than, say, McDougall -- where nuts and seeds might help reduce the risk of hemorrhagic stroke among other benefits for vegans by helping with the repair process without it going to far to clogs -- and so might be preventing dementia resulting from many small hemorrhagic strokes? (My speculation.) And it is also maybe why vegans not eating nuts and seeds (or maybe avocados) might potentially benefit from a little animal fat to reduce hemorrhagic stroke risk? Although there might be other issues in play like some fat in the diet helping with neural growth or brain maintenance given the brain is mostly fat.

But Jeff Nelson raises good points on whether supplements for DHA/EPA are essential or create new risks in that and other videos. I'm still a bit on the fence about such supplements even though I currently take an algae-based one.

One reason nutritional information is so confusing -- beyond the complexity of the human body itself -- is because there is so much money on the line (literally trillions of dollars a year in the USA between animal agriculture and the medical system). So there are huge incentives to sow confusion (similar to some other big issues like smoking or climate change). A great movie on that is "What the Health" (mentioned in a previous post by me). There are also not many incentives to research simple unpatentable health-related things like eating better.

As is pointed out in that movie, the animal products industries learned from the cigarette industry that you don't have to win an argument with scientific proof to win in the marketplace; you just have to cause enough confusion by spreading conflicting-seeming information that people give up trying to make sense of things and just keep on with their bad habits (to their own long-term suffering and to someone else's profit).

Interesting. Thanks for the suggestion! Here is a nutritional comparison on the lettuce with frozen spinach and yes the spinach has a lot more of various things (although they don't mention oxalates in that comparison which spinach also has more of):
https://comparator.food-nutrie...

I was trying a McDougall-ish approach then which is why the fat is so low on purpose. In general I otherwise have some nuts and seeds (and occasionally avocados too) which also add micronutrients (and protein for the nuts and seeds). Here is the spinach & lettuce comparison against pumpkin seeds, almonds, and avocado, and also beans:
https://comparator.food-nutrie...

I was glad to find that specific nutrition site as otherwise some nutrition sites require a sign up (although those may also have other great features like scanning barcodes). I thought to look for one from a comment someone made that it is good to sanity check what you are eating to look for specific nutrient deficiencies. That's how I learned I am eating a lot less calcium then when I was eating Mozarella string cheese in lettuce wraps.
https://meal.food-nutrients-ca...

I still need to work on the calcium issue (whereas protein is not an issue for me). Maybe more sesame, chia, or flax seeds? I have a container of chia seeds just sitting in the cupboard, so maybe this will help motivate me to work them into something I eat. Spinach might also improve the calcium situation (except for the oxalates, which is an argument for cooking it). More beans might help with the calcium too.
https://vegfaqs.com/seeds-high...
https://health.clevelandclinic...

Yes, that statement should come with an asterisk proviso. If people get all their calories from table sugar, then yes, they won't be getting any protein (as you say). But if people get all their calories from a variety of whole plant foods, then they will essentially get enough protein. So yes, there is an assumption there that people are not eating some monodiet of, say, all fruit (which is low in protein).

But all fruit and sugar are the rare exceptions of being low protein. For example, eating just potatoes essentially gets you to the RDA of protein (but eating a variety of foods including beans is healthier).
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=prot...
https://www.eatthismuch.com/ca...
https://www.eatthis.com/potato...

Wild horses eat mostly grass and must get enough protein to be so big and strong. But, admittedly, they eat a lot of grass all day. Likewise gorillas eat lots of vegetation all day.

Related funny video on protein:
""Where do you get your protein?" The Ultimate Response 2025"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
"Where do vegans get their protein? Let's answer this with the newest data from recent trials, the logic, personal experience, and my friend TRENton."

As Mic the Vegan mentions there, "Fiber is the new protein". The more important question most US Americans should be asking is "Where am I getting my fiber?"

While this is not completely accurate (sodium is lower in the specific products I actually ate, and portions may not be exact, does not include supplements like for vitamin D or algae-based DHA/EPA, etc), here is an approximation of a day of plant-only food I ate a while back showing enough protein (even not eating any beans that day):
https://meal.food-nutrients-ca...