Some interesting time-work by artist Xavi Bou, produced by merging images of insects in flight. It is as if the images reveal something of their inner character, otherwise unseen

the Guardian

On a wing and a prayer: the hidden beauty of insect’s flight – in pictures

Artist Xavi Bou has created an eye-popping series celebrating fascinating creatures that are too often seen only as a nuisance

To take this as good news is to evidence a worrying lack of techno-political criticality. Recent history gives us no indication quantum computing will not be rampantly abused, to the same ends of capturing and consolidating even more power in the hands of tech oligarchy and political elite. Any hope that it will be employed under strict regulatory controls to the betterment of people and planet is, at the present time, completely baseless.

the Guardian

Google unveils ‘mindboggling’ quantum computing chip

Chip takes minutes to complete tasks that would otherwise take 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years

Just Stop Oil activist 77 yr old Gaie Delap was jailed for her part in a nonviolent protest, later let out to serve the rest of her punishment under home detention. But now she has been recalled to prison because her ankles & wrists are too small for the monitoring device strap. "Gaie is sitting at home terrified with her suitcase packed waiting for a knock on the door from police. She has been unable to eat or sleep because of this" The cruelty and absurdity of it all

the Guardian

Just Stop Oil activist, 77, faces jail recall as wrists too small for electronic tag

Gaie Delap was sent to prison in August for her part in disruptive protests on M25 in November

"Claude Shannon's 1950 paper Programming a Computer for Playing Chess was a seminal work in the field of Artificial Intelligence [...] In this paper, Shannon employs the Minimax Algorithm, which takes as its premise that your opponent will always choose the move that is best for them, and worst for you." The Unimax Algorithm is a cooperation-centric alternative to this foundational yet adversarial paradigm in #computation.

unimax.run

#ai #ml

This article on the uptake of beans in the West needs a correction. It seems to imply that while the "green revolution" trends as overall good for the planet, it comes with the cost of nitrogen-based fertilisers poisoning our atmosphere, oceans and rivers.

the Guardian

‘It’s like a secret’: why do the leguminati want to change the way we eat?

Fans of legumes say a worldwide shift towards eating beans rather than meat would hugely benefit human health and the environment

It's not so cut and dried.. (1/2)

Appropriate responses to the sinister 'Treaty Principles Bill' in the Beehive today. Also good to see 40 King's Counsel lawyers chime in from the correct side of the fence. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/533721/live-parliament-sits-to-debate-treaty-principles-bill See you lot at the Hikoi in a few. #hikoimotetiriti

What is meant by 'AI' now includes: - Anything procedurally generated - Some automation built from input - Devices that take voice commands - Text to speech (esp. if female voice with English accent) - Speech to text (any accent) - Autocomplete - An NPC in a videogame - Half of all apps for Android - Your bank's next website - Any serverside or closed source software you can hide some amount of complexity in - Surprising photography - Clippy Update your taxonomies. #ai #ml

What happened when the boss of COP29 (host Azerbaijan) was approached by an activist pretending to be a rep from a fictitious energy investment firm? Caught on camera, he talks up potential deals with state fossil fuel giant Socar (whose board he's on), Azerbaijan's plans to increase gas production, & otherwise excitedly betrays the entire COP charter.

COP29 chief secretly filmed promoting fossil fuel deals

Undercover filming shows COP29 chief exec discussing new oil and gas projects ahead of climate summit.

#climate

A dark day indeed. Never forget Big Tech's hand in this, enabling and inciting a storm of hatred, fear and disinformation. They had the means to intervene, yet made profit their choice. No one is going to build the world we want but us.

Excited to have received some 3.7V correctly terminated LiPo's for the #meshtastic G2 Nano, making it a highly portable LoRa package with 4-5 days runtime on a ~3hr charge. The local mesh is thriving here in Aotearoa NZ, so will be fun to test out in the valleys and coasts. #radio #lora