Looking back over the year, one of the skills I think improved the most was developing a better gut understanding of probability and how likely events are to happen. One of my goals for next year is to learn more statistics to be able to mathematically analyze the world and my life.

I’m finally outgrowing my home server setup of Raspberry Pi’s I’ve accumulated over the years. If I want to do it right, how should I set up my home server network? Currently running a little website, some other website side projects and a Jellyfin media stack.

Wake up babe, the Gaetz ethics report just dropped.

NBC News

Read the Ethics Committee report on former Rep. Matt Gaetz

The House Ethics Committee investigated Gaetz, R-Fla., over several years.

Interesting article on UFO “flaps” and the recent New Jersey hysteria.

Computers Are Bad

something over New Jersey

> be matt gaetz > nominated for attorney general > drop out so ethics report isn’t released > they release it anyway Should have just been attorney general anyway. He picked the worst possible option: no attorney general and the media has a feeding frenzy on your pedo and porn habits. https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/18/politics/matt-gaetz-ethics-report-committee/index.html

Xitter DDOSing itself? I’m not touching the screen at all in the recording. This happens whenever I open a link.

After Google’s new quantum computer came out there seem to have been different two reactions from experts: 1. This doesn’t prove parallel universes 2. Of course this doesn’t prove anything new about parallel universes, we already proved them Now I’m more confused. Is the parallel multiverse theory to explain quantum mechanics the current accepted theory, or is it still in debate? I don’t have the physics chops yet to deeply understand everything myself so the differing views on whether or not this is even a debate are hard to rectify.

Woah new linear sort just dropped.

Just want to say my reasoning was rock solid and I was vindicated by posterity. Assuming of course that Luigi is actually the killer which seems overwhelmingly likely. View quoted note →

Side note: I know Nostr tends to lean towards “fuck the system” but can we all take a moment to be grateful for how good institutions in the U. S. are? For all of our gripes with mainstream media, none of them would ever write this level of QAnon conspiracy genitalia theft insanity. We have problems in America, but our institutions are at least mostly functional and truthful. View quoted note →

This is a modern crisis. Forget the drug cartels and fentanyl, we need to crack down on the huge penis stealing crimes rings. https://thenationonlineng.net/locals-allege-french-involvement-in-car-missing-genital-crisis/ View quoted note →

You’ve heard of elf on a shelf. Now get ready for a hex on your sex.

Book Review: The Geography Of Madness

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Interesting ideas here from Meta. Tokenization has a lot of problems with how we represent text. You can get weird glitches etc. Working with “dynamic patches” could allow more reasoning where necessary from the model and avoid tokenization glitches and oddities.

Byte Latent Transformer: Patches Scale Better Than Tokens | Research - AI at Meta

We introduce the Byte Latent Transformer (BLT), a new byte-level LLM architecture that, for the first time, matches tokenization-based LLM performa...

It’s not over til it’s over, the Onion may still be able to do the funniest thing possible.

NBC News

Bankruptcy judge rejects The Onion's bid to buy Alex Jones' Infowars

The ruling dashed, at least for now, the plans of The Onion’s parent company to take over Infowars and radically shift its content.

When I read this post Google asks straight up if I think better of Google after reading it. Refreshingly direct. I wonder how one programs a quantum computer. Is it a chip running normal CPU operations but quantum, or does it require a degree in Quantum Mechanics to understand how to run a simple program?

Google

Meet Willow, our state-of-the-art quantum chip

Our new quantum chip demonstrates error correction and performance that paves the way to a useful, large-scale quantum computer.

Since debanking is all the rage now, one of my favorite finance writers published an essay on it.

Bits about Money

Debanking (and Debunking?)

Crypto advocates kicked off a recent, somewhat politicized, discussion of debanking. Strap in for scintillating banking compliance trivia.

They might be pictures of different people. Perhaps the assassin was actually competent. This is a blow to my second reason. I’ll go with a 25% chance it was a professional.

Manifold

Are these two supposed pictures of the United Healthcare CEO assassin actually different people?

Resolved NO. People have pointed out their jackets, bags, and facial features might not line up. [image][image]Remember, kids: YES = DIFFERENT peo...

View quoted note →

Probability seems to be leaning further against the killer being a trained assassin. From first principles, if we simply look at the base rate of the number of people who probably feel wronged by UnitedHealthcare vs the number of powerful people who would call a hit on Thompson the probability would lean against trained assassin. Second, perhaps I overestimate assassins because of movies, but I find it hard to believe a professional killer would go to Starbucks with his mask down right before the killing. They obviously were reasonably trained with their pistol and planned the assassination better than the average killing, but it still seems like an average person tried their best instead of a professional. I think there’s a 20% chance it was a professional assassin. View quoted note →

Interesting market.

Manifold

What were the motives of the UnitedHealthcare CEO assassin?

Background On December 4th, 2024, UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was fatally shot outside a Manhattan hotel in what police have described as a...

Last night was a good night. Bitcoin hit 100k, the Advent of Code puzzle is still tickling my brain, and I compiled Portals for 64 bit macOS and played it.