We don’t know what causes cancer. It’s the oncogenic paradox.

Hmm, this is not really true though…

We know that cancer is caused by genetic mutations during cell replication, resulting in malformed cells which behave abnormally. If these cells then replicate successfully they can produce tumors. We know that this can happen with basically any cell type, though some animals have very low cancer rates.

Mechanically, we know that a lot of different sources can provoke genetic mutations in cells. We have identified many, many such influences (radiation, various chemicals, viruses, etc). Asbestos fibers can interfere with chromosomes mechanically during mitosis:

There is experimental evidence that very slim fibers (<60 nm, <0.06 μm in breadth) tangle destructively with chromosomes (being of comparable size). This is likely to cause the sort of mitosis disruption expected in cancer.

We know many causes of cancer. We don’t know every possible thing that might provoke cell mutations. We know that it’s not any one specific thing.

We also know that cellular mutation is part of the evolutionary process. It might not be possible to “cure cancer” in the sense of preventing cellular mutations, as this may be a built-in function of what we are as a species. Preventing mutation might also not be a good long-term strategy for the survival of the species.

Bacon fat can be used as a replacement for cooking oil in a pan or anywhere you would use grease while cooking. One of my favorite things to do with it is grease a cast iron skillet and bake cornbread in it (you get smoky bacon flavor crust). It also works great as a butter replacement for frying eggs or hash browns. You can also use it as a fat base to make gravy.

If you run the bacon fat through a coffee filter while it’s still hot & liquid (into a glass jar) it will be shelf stable at room temperature. Cone coffee filters are convenient for this.

If you don’t filter it you must store it in the refrigerator, or else the leftover bits of meat in the fat will go rancid and start to rot.

Is that… is that… Meowron?

Being Peace, by Thich Nhat Hanh

Getting to Where You Are, by Steven Harrison

There is a lot of value in the pursuit of self-knowledge, though I think most people hearing it described find it dull (you just… sit? for hours?). I recommend reading these in the order presented here. They will guide you in meditation without any of the mystical or religious nonsense. Learn to breathe, learn to focus, learn to be.

No, we’re talking about companies scraping hundreds of millions if not billions of labor hours of output to train their models for the sake of developing software products which they then sell for profit.

Every model that was trained on legally acquired free public data and open source code should be freely publicly available and open source.

Every model that was trained on not legally acquired public data (e.g. Meta’s models) should be taken out of production until all of the lawsuits are concluded, and hopefully the parties responsible are put out of business.

I’m not talking about future, potential labor that AI might replace. I’m talking about the labor which was stolen to produce these models in the first place.

But, please use AI.

Also time resets every time I boot up the PC.

If the PC has been offline and unplugged for years, the CMOS battery on the motherboard is probably dead. This battery maintains the time & date information, as well as the BIOS/UEFI configuration settings (which includes the boot device order).

Replace the battery (usually CR2025 or CR2032) and then review all of your BIOS settings, especially the boot devices, and also verify that the available RAM is what you expect.

Also, this is a Windows XP machine? You should check the motherboard and power supply for signs of the capacitor plague:

Also, a final educational video

Please identify the issues with the LLM generated code.

Why would the issues be obvious and easy to point out? Most issues with code aren’t. If they were, we wouldn’t have Patch Tuesday, a direct code review would prevent issues from shipping in the first place.

Throwing this out as if it means LLM code is acceptable and ends the argument is ridiculous. Do you have any grasp of how software vulnerabilities are discovered at all?

There are serious and skilled people out there who use LLMs responsibly.

There is no “responsible use” for a platform built on the largest form of labor theft ever devised.

You must accept the mountain of garbage, because the mountain has grown so very high, and we can’t figure out how to shut down the garbage generator. We’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas. Just learn to live in garbage.

Only American?

Seems like any foreign interest in a nation’s media sources would be an issue.

Telnet is basically the predecessor to SSH for terminal-over-network communications:

It is a protocol for bidirectional 8-bit communications. Its main goal was to connect terminal devices and terminal-oriented processes.

At this point, it is archaic network technology:

Telnet was originally developed for ARPANET in 1969.

It was developed in a time when only very specific organizations with lots of funding had access to computer networking. The Mother of All Demos had happened only the year prior. The first version of the Internet Protocol used today would not come until 1973.

There was no concern that unauthorized parties might eavesdrop on the communications between networked computers. Also, at this time there were no functional computer networks that extended beyond local sites. The first ARPANET nodes would not start communicating with each other until 1970:

The first four nodes were designated as a testbed for developing and debugging the 1822 protocol, which was a major undertaking. While they were connected electronically in 1969, network applications were not possible until the Network Control Program was implemented in 1970 enabling the first two host-host protocols, remote login (Telnet) and file transfer (FTP) which were specified and implemented between 1969 and 1973.

There weren’t interstate or international network connections, or public routing architecture or DNS or anything like that.

So basically, everyone who could possibly access your computer network would have to be on site, and probably in the room with the (very classified) government research computers. At this point you could count the number of people who really understood computer networking technology (globally) on your fingers and toes. If you happened to be working in this field, you could probably name offhand all of the people who understood enough about the technology that could possibly pull off a vulnerability exploit against Telnet, and you very likely knew them personally. Cybersecurity wasn’t a thing that anyone was worrying about yet.

All of the security features that have been added to Telnet are afterthoughts, bolted on to the original system. It was never designed for the public Internet that we have today. And yet… there is still legacy technology out there that uses Telnet for remote access and administration, some of it in critical infrastructure like power grids and water systems.

Ultimately, my point is that it’s very very difficult to eliminate communications technologies once any kind of industrial, commercial or government activity starts to use them for regular business. It’s one of Microsoft’s biggest problems with the products that they have been selling to various enterprises since the 90s (Windows Desktop, Windows Server, Active Directory, Word, Excel, etc) - they’re forced to maintain compatibility with legacy stuff even when they know without a doubt that it creates major security problems, because there are too many organizations dependent on that software. The Internet is like this now, and the people who were part of its foundation are dying off.

Jeffrey Combs: “So which role do you want me to reprise this time?”

Casting Director: “Yes.”

bus factor

Android TV … ?

I see a red rose and I want to paint it black…

You don’t know the weight that another person is carrying.

To judge other people’s behavior broadly from the way their life appears to you, from the outside, only demonstrates that you are lacking in empathy and sympathy.

What you say might be true, in certain cases with specific people, but that does not mean it is a valid general conclusion.

I did the freakin’ math and got it right the first time.

That is awesome.

Nice try, Hollywood.

Harry hates everybody…