[#]LintonBesser is doing a great job on #MediaWatch #auspol #ABCAustralia
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https://www.reuters.com/world/us/musk-aides-lock-government-workers-out-computer-systems-us-agency-sources-say-2025-01-31/
[#]musk #uspol #reuters
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Some folks at work have been playing with using Gemini to take notes in meetings. I noticed that the speech-to-text engine is heavily biased towards English as a first language speakers, and does not handle accents very well.
But this does not reflect reality. A quick search shows us that only about one quarter (25%) of the English speaking world has English as a first language. The translation engine definitely needs to do better with the majority of English speakers.
[#]Gemini #SpeechToText #Google #EnglishAsASecondLanguage
https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/how-many-people-speak-english-and-where-is-it-spoken#:~:text=How%20Many%20People%20In%20The,English%20as%20their%20first%20language.
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“The data confirms what we know – unreliable coal is having a negative impact on energy prices, more renewables in the system bring wholesale prices down, and new transmission infrastructure is critical to keeping prices lower,” climate change and energy minister Chris Bowen said.
[#]GreenEnergy #Auspol #TheGuardian
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/jan/30/renewables-break-record-for-share-of-australias-main-energy-supply-in-december-quarter-data-reveals
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A succinct summary of the significant challenges to nuclear fusion as a power source.
When I studied plasma physics as a graduate student 35 years ago, plasma confinement and instabilities were the main challenges being investigated. At that time research was nowhere near close to addressing the materials challenges for a working fusion reactor.
My physics mentor Prof Bruce Liley said at that time, stability would likely just be a matter of scaling the reactor to be large enough. That might turn out to be true. In the meantime the significant materials challenges remain. When a plasma is hot enough to smash nuclei together, and fuse them, any solid structures even several metres away with be subject to intense ablation. The “wall” of such reactor will constantly be eroded and have to be replaced frequently. This replacement will have to be done by robots, because of the radioactivity emitted from any remaining material due to intense neutron bombardment. Every component near the reactor will have to somehow keep working as it’s being attacked by energetic neutrons. We can’t confine neutrons with a magnetic field because they have no charge.
That’s not to say that it can’t be done, but it remains a very significant challenge. It also means it’s not going to be anywhere near as cheap an energy source as we have by capturing Solar photons from the big fusion reactor in the sky that nature has already created for us.
[#]PlasmaPhysics #fusion #TheGuardian
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/jan/22/nuclear-fusion-its-time-for-a-reality-check
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The emperor has new clothes.
“The larger question has suddenly become whether the hundreds of billions of dollar investment in AI needs re-evaluation.”
You think?
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/jan/27/tech-shares-asia-europe-fall-china-ai-deepseek
[#]nvidia #openai #deepseek #nasdaq
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[#]QRcode #LaserPrinter #Labels #code
A question has arisen at work. I’m working on a bespoke app (react) that generates QR codes for conference attendee name labels. The QR encodes conference programme URL and attendees ID (as a parameter) in a single URL. We print the labels on Avery label sheets using a laser printer. In a test run most of the labels scan okay, but some don’t. I’m thinking our URL is to too long, so I’m looking at a URL short link for the conference programme to reduce the size of the overall URL, and some other tweaks.
Anyone have experience printing QR labels onto Avery-type label sheets? In particular how many characters can you encode into a given size QR, before the fidelity/error correction on an off-the-shelf laser printer label isn’t good enough?
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boss: I would feel guilty about calling you for work while you are on leave.
me: I would feel guilty about not answering my phone when you called.
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The Saturday Paper Quiz No. 533
I got 8/10!
https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/quiz/2025/01/18?rival=1111110101
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If earths atmosphere keeps heating at the rate it has in the last 7 years, we will hit 2 degrees heating (above preindustrial levels) sometime in the next 10-12 years. The 2025 LA wildfires are the worst they have ever seen, but that will surely pale by comparison to what awaits us.
[#]TheGuardian #GlobalHeating
https://www.theguardian.com/business/grogonomics/2025/jan/16/australians-should-be-angry-about-another-year-of-climate-inaction-but-dont-let-your-anger-turn-into-despair
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I have just finished reading an article that my daughter was first author on. “Old Threats, New Name? Generative AI and Visual Journalism
Phoebe Matich, T. J. Thomson & Ryan J. Thomas”
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17512786.2025.2451677
It got me wondering, do #photojournalists use public key cryptography to sign their work? Similarly to how some people use cryptography to sign their emails.
It would provide a way for consumers to distinguish between computer generated images and actual photojournalists work if they were able to digitally sign their images, in a way that #news organisations would honour in their publications. That is, published images or videos would include a digital signature created using public key cryptography. The photojournalist has the private key, and the public key is available online in some photojournalist public key service. So anyone who views the image in a news story can verify that it was produced by the photojournalist using the public key, but of course they can’t sign images with the public key. They can only verify the existing signature. If the photojournalist is the only one that has the private key, they are the only one that can sign the image. Then we would have a way to know which images are real and which are computer generated. Computer generated images won’t have a photojournalist signature unless they wanted them to.
Perhaps this is being done already?
@phoebematich
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RIP #ChrisThompson #NZMusic legend. When I was in the Muffins we would have played #Hamilton dozens of times. Though Im not sure Chris ever saw any royalties. Another song of his I know well, and have performed publicly, quite separately from the Muffins is ‘Where is my Wild Rose’. It was my late Aunts favourite tune, and I sang it with my cousins in her memory several times over the years.
His songs certainly mean something to me.
Ramble you in Connemara
Across that misty moor
And does your heart beat loudly
By Killarney's stony shore
https://www.waikatotimes.co.nz/nz-news/360503755/hamilton-musician-chris-thompson-dies-73
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Well what do you know.
“An unprecendented number of submissions have been made to Parliament's website on Monday, as the deadline to submit on the Treaty Principles Bill draws close.”
Keeping in mind ACT party, that proposed the bill only garnered 9% of the vote, I am fairly confident that at least 91% of the submissions will not favour the bill.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/538358/unprecedented-number-of-submissions-on-treaty-principles-bill
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Submissions for the #PrinciplesOfTheTreatyOfWaitangiBill closes at 11:59PM (NZ time) today #nzpol
Make sure you send those egregiously anti-democratic libertarian fuckwits an unambiguous message:
https://www.parliament.nz/en/pb/sc/make-a-submission/document/54SCJUST_SCF_227E6D0B-E632-42EB-CFFE-08DCFEB826C6/principles-of-the-treaty-of-waitangi-bill
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[#]MerryChristmas from #Woodfordia
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The Saturday Paper Quiz No. 531
I got 28/40!
https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/quiz/2024/12/21?rival=1110110111001101101011111101101101110101
Merry Christmas
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This is rotten. A public servant is being paid to do nothing. Presumably this person being paid to actually do something would be worse than them leaving and doing no more. How do you put a price on that?
[#]Auspol #CateSaunders
“Cate Saunders, who was Stefanic’s deputy secretary from 2020 until she was seconded to Services Australia in April 2023, accepted a $315,126 incentive payment for her retirement from the public service on 1 October 2023.”
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/dec/18/rob-stefanic-finishes-up-as-head-of-parliamentary-services-cate-saunders-retirement-ntwnfb
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As Christmas approaches I’m finding that some of the advertising on #TheGuardian has been way too persistent. If a person was getting in my face so often while I was trying to read something, I would surely tell them to fuck off and threaten legal action for harassment.
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Some very amazing #astrophotography #TheGuardian
https://www.theguardian.com/science/gallery/2024/dec/15/southern-sky-astrophotography-exhibition-2024-pictures-david-malin-awards
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The Saturday Paper Quiz No. 530
I got 9/10!
https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/quiz/2024/12/14?rival=1110111111
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text/gemini