I don't know if you're a russian bot or some deluded idiot, but it amuses me to do a breakdown of your post.

NATO turned what was originally intended to be a mostly peaceful show of force like the temporary invasion of Georgia into a war of attrition.

First of all the "peaceful show of force" "temporary" invasion of Georgia involved a few hundred dead in the first two days, and another 5000+ civilians killed in the ethnic cleansing after that, all for a land-grab to seize control of territory covering half of Georgia's coastline that Putin wanted.

Secondly, the "peaceful show of force" "temporary" invasion of Ukraine involved hundreds dead, ballistic and cruise missile attacks on all of Ukraine's largest cities, and Putin publicly admitting the goal of overthrowing the Ukrainian government... and that's just within the first 36 hours. Within two and a half months Russian officials began admitting the intent to permanently annex parts of Ukraine, proceeding with a constitutional amendment a few months later claiming to annex vast territories that Russian had not remotely taken control of, and which Russia is not remotely capable of capturing. Donetsk alone has a population of over a million, two million if you include the metro-area. Russia spent months and many thousand of lives to capture, and later lose, villages in the range of low tens of thousands.

Remember WWI when the lines were pretty much static for years and then suddenly it was all over?

Yes, I remember. As I recall it wasn't exactly "sudden". As I recall... Russian casualties were around five million killed, wounded, or captured, the Russian economy was collapsing, Russia was running out of food, and Russian literally lost it's own capital to civilian rebellion. A few months later the Russian government collapsed and surrendered vast territories including Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, parts of Poland and Ukraine to Germany and its allies (known as the Central Powers). Right about that point the U.S. joined the war reinvigorating the Allied Powers. Germany&friends knew they couldn't win a protracted war. They attempted a quick win, and, in short, they failed. The Allied powers steadily beat them down, with the allies eventually breaking through the lines and progressively liberating territory. With the Allies steadily advancing and the war obviously lost, German forces began rebelling and Germany surrendered.

That's what's happening here. Russia has most of Donbas plus a buffer zone in some other regions that directly border Russia. Ukraine is throwing men at the front lines for Russia to kill but is running out. Territory held is largely irrelevant compared to the number of men killed and weapons destroyed.

So much to unpack there, but it's amusing how you cite "territory held is largely irrelevant" given that the tide has turned and Ukrainians are now the ones breaking through lines and liberating territory from Russian occupation. It's not much yet, but all the map trackers show the reversal. Russia is now officially loosing more territory than they gain. Russia WAS slowly gaining small bits of land, largely through sending meat waves of untrained ill equipped soldiers at Ukrainian lines until the Ukrainians ran out of ammo and had to fall back. However now 7 out of 10 Russians killed are killed by drones. The "no man's land" between the two sides is now many kilometers wide. Any Russian trying to advance gets hit by a drone. Russia has also losing on average 1 air defense system every day, and rapidly depleting. Russian supply lines are getting pummeled by drones. Russian refineries are getting pummeled by drones, with progressively worsening fuel shortages for both the military and for the increasingly rebellious population. Cheap advanced Ukrainian drones are taking out expensive crappy Russian drones, including Russian's new jet-drones. Practically every country on earth is asking Ukraine for their military drone tech, the Russians can't remotely match it. Russian's economy is also fucked, but that topic pretty needs a separate book to cover.

Interesting side notes on weapons destroyed. Russia is destroying it's aircraft almost as fast as Ukraine is, between incompetence and maintenance failures and friendly fire shooting down their own aircraft. Also the nation that is the biggest donor of tanks to Ukraine is... Russia. Ukraine captured countless Russian tanks intact because the Russian military is so abysmal incompetent and corrupt. And as I mentioned, Russian air defense units are depleting. The war is now approaching 5 years, longer than the entirety of WW1. Ukraine is a small fraction of Russia's size, and Russian is literally losing and headed towards another soviet-union-style collapse. The biggest shock to the world of this entire war is just how worthless Putin has made Russian military, through systemic corruption and systemic incompetence.

Polls show the Ukrainian population isn't interested in surrendering. They are defending their homes. It's simple, the war will end when all the soldiers go home. When Russian soldiers go back to their homes in Russia, and when Ukrainian soldiers go back to their homes in the currently occupied parts of Ukraine. Although that's not likely to happen until Putin either expires or is overthrown. Not only is he fanatical enough to drive his country to collapse in the attempt, he knows if he did end the war in failure he'd get killed or overthrown for it.

Anyway, pointless reply to a bot or a useful idiot. But maybe some random passer-by will find some bits interesting. I don't know about the rest of the world, but mainstream US news rarely mentions the Ukraine war anymore, and certainly not in any detail.

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Every time people hear what it actually involves is outrage and opposition, at least all the way back to when Intel first announced that they wanted to hardcode identity numbers inside CPUs in 1999. But the corporations involved have been relentless, and have sunk countless billions of dollars steadily forcing it forwards, and building front organizations to obfuscate and whitewash it.

With Windows 11, Microsoft was finally able to FORCE Trusted computing hardware into every new computer. Not just every new Windows computer, but every computer.

Every new Intel PC CPU has built in Trusted Computing enforcement hardware. Every new AMD PC CPU has built in Trusted Computing enforcement hardware. Every new ARM PC CPU has built in Trusted Computing enforcement hardware. The only processor lines that DON'T have it are the microcontrollers.

There are some unlocked smartphones available, but as far as I can determine it's literally impossible to buy a smartphone that doesn't have hardware trusted computing built in.

I specified that enforcing Trusted Computing at the internet access level is still a long term goal, they couldn't get away with it today. However they are well on the way to success. Virtually all new hardware supporting trusted computing, all the front groups rolling out standards and systems, and as it gets incorporated into things everyone is going to increasingly running into situations where they get locked out of stuff if they're not Trusted Computing compliant. Streaming already restricts you to the worst quality if you're not compliant, and it's only going to get worse as pre-Win11 computers fade out and as more things require it.

I'd hardly call exact date of birth "low information content".

And yes this does reveal exact date of birth, regardless of the bullshit obfuscation that it supposedly only reports age range. The server simply tracks the reported result every time the user connects, and on some specific day the result CHANGES to announce their date of birth.

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This is based on SLSA (Supply-chain Levels for Software Artifacts), brought to you by the same fuckers making Trusted Computing and the TMP (Trusted Platform Module). It's part of the same shitstack to prohibit you from altering your software and to lock you out of your own files, and to send spy reports out over the internet so you can be cut off if you "fail" the Trusted Computing check.

The software can use a TPM's (Trusted Platform Module) Sealing function to encrypt your data such that it's impossible to access your own data if the software is modified. It can then pass control over that data only to software updates that carry a signed security certificate from Broadcom (or any other company using this system).

It is no longer open source, your system no longer works as you can no longer access your Sealed data if you change so much as a single letter of the code. Even recompile unaltered code won't work, unless you magically manage to get your build environment absolutely identical to the company's build environment and get byte-for-byte output. Even that may be impossible with the newer levels of non-deterministic compiler optimizations.

Also, with TMP's Remote Attestation feature can be used to transmit your machine's software configuration over the internet, so that you can be cut off if your system doesn't match Broadcom (or other company's) cryptographically signed certificate.

And then of course there's Network Access Control (NAC) / Trusted Network Connect (TNC). In the long term, the goal is for ISPs to use NAC/TNC to interrogate your computer for Trusted Computing compliance, and deny you any internet access whatsoever if your machine isn't compliant. Software with this sort of "security" certificate would pass inspection, while any attempt to alter the code would be detected as "tampering". You then get "quarantined". What "quarantine" means is that you are denied internet access - with the exception that you do get very restricted access which can only be used to download the approved software to "fix" your computer into Trusted Computing compliance.

Global burned area lay at a historic high: more than 150 million hectares between January and April, 20% above the previous record and roughly 50% above the 2012-2025 average. https://www2.purpleair.com/blo...

In the US, nearly double the ten-year average area had burned by 11 May 2026 compared with the same period. https://morningoverview.com/wi...

In Canada, burned area stood at 61% of the ten-year average by early July, though with local outliers such as Newfoundland and Labrador at roughly 460% of normal. https://www.nifc.gov/nicc-file...

We're off to the Netherlands on Thursday.

You are not the only one. I have seen an uptick of Canadians lately in NL, Amsterdam. Or actually: I have _heard_ an uptick in Canadians lately.

Every time I hear someone in Amsterdam speak English with a North-American accent, but with civilised manners, they always turn out to come from Canada. They do not shout, they do not interrupt you and are generally calm and seem genuinely friendly.

And they all smile I ask them if they are from Canada, in light of the above. As if they are happy to not be mistaken for US-ians.

If Trump states there are aliens from another planet, then be prepared for discussions on whether or not they have souls and if so, whether or not Yaweh/Jehova had his son (/ himself) Jesus brutally tortured and killed to save these alien souls as well.

True. I think the false notion of 'LLM's know facts like humans' stems from the observation that there are lots of humans that are less coherent in their communication than LLM's.

There are loads of humans who cannot handle facts properly. LLM's also cannot handle facts, but they are in lots of cases outperforming lots of humans.

So humans know facts and LMM's don't know facts, but what lots of humans produce with those facts can be worse than what LLM's produce without knowing facts.

Indeed. Plus, he would have used that water anyway. We humans have our needs, whether we code or not.

Obvious link. How To Get Rid Of Citizens United: https://robertreich.substack.c...

I know little of US law, but what this former secretary of labour writes seems logical.

The title is more aimed at being clickbait than attempting to be informative.
The only thing in the underlying article is that specific neural networks are good and efficient at producing approximate solutions to large sparse systems of linear equations. Nothing else.

Such big systems of equations result when you try to solve partial differential equations on a finite-element mesh by substituting a lot of base functions.

There are broadly 2 ways of solving such systems: direct (e.g. using the sweep method) or iteratieve. The neural networks are just a way of implementing the iterative method. The only thing interesting is that the specific neural networks proposed to do this can be calculated efficiently (also energy-efficiently) on specific hardware optimised specifically for that flacour of neural network.

The OP post tries to link 'math' and 'AI' here because, well, partial diffferential equations count as 'math', and neural networks are a form of 'AI', right? And that's how the OP 'justifies' its title.

Sorry folks, but his is a highly technical development which in no way merits the hoo-hah the OP throws at it.

Personally I find this explanation (the first link of the OP) quite clear and accessible (non-technical): https://www.sciencealert.com/f...
In summary: you can sustain denser plasma's if you can precisely control the way your plasma is started. That's useful because it helps your reactor reach a break-even point between energy cost (to make, maintain, and contain the plasma) and the amount of energy the plasma emits during its existence.

No they aren't. By your logic, any resistors in an electronic circuit would also be a 'bad idea' (which they aren't).
Tariffs add costs to imports. That cost increase is merely an instrument which can be used stupidly, indiscriminately, and inappropriately (like the Trump tariffs) or appropriately. As with any cost-structure adjustment, for it to have any impact at all, there must be positive effects for some and negative effects for others. Depending on your objectives the benefit can absolutely outweigh the cost.
Take the EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism for example: it penalises any (steel) imports with excessive carbon emissions (e.g. from older coal-based production plants) compared to steel produced through more modern and less polluting processes.
What that does is to internalise external costs in order to clean up certain production processes.
Now why would that be a bad idea? (oh, and don't bother to reply if you only argument is that 'da gubbamint' shouldn't intervene in markets at all or if you feel that CO2-footprint reduction is either unnecessary or should only be done at zero marginal cost.)

I just hope that Mr. Trump and his advisors realise that this enactment of the Monroe doctrine implies that
(a) Asia is now China's backyard and Europe is Russia's (A deal is a deal, right?)
(b) national sovereignty has now become a lot more conditional (by common agreement).

By consequence, anyone who wants an uninterrupted supply of chips from TSMC had better be prepared to be extremely polite to China within a few years.

Apparently Europe is working to correct its mistakes and take back control of its strategic production lines. Just like the US.
Problem is: Europe's got a lot of ground to cover, they don't have a single government, and they're less prone to use import tariffs as a blunt instrument in every trade dispute.
Perhaps because they have more to lose and can inflict less pain on their trade partners than the US can.