zenkat / is on Nostr

SF native who loves software, science, music, nature, art, food ... and everything else this amazing corner of the planet has to offer.

Last Notes

2025-04-19 00:29:20

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@nprofile…fv4z It's a Nash Equilibrium. Whichever splits first loses to the other. You see echoes of this in some of the 3rd Party runs that have happened in recent decades, whichever incumbent party has the most affinity for the new one ends up losing.

2024-09-12 22:14:45

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@npub1g0t…tvm4
https://files.sfba.social/media_attachments/files/113/126/884/929/835/951/original/9bdde92c0be4aa51.jpg

2024-07-25 14:51:44

Damn ... Kamala #Harris is bringing it! Full-on banger of a first ad. Let's do this!
https://youtu.be/sHky_Xopyrw

2024-07-22 06:45:29

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@npub1knz…c73p Pretty sure there's a Trump joke hiding in here somewhere.

2024-06-28 04:58:00

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@npub1eys…6x02 So go and fucking vote. You know the stakes. Everyone does.

2024-06-21 19:25:47

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@npub17u8…uhnv Relevant: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/21/us/politics/house-republicans-trump.html

2024-05-02 13:46:49

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@npub1zdp…vqv8 The functional programming affordances in Python are awesome. Opened my eyes to a while new way of thinking about programming.

2024-02-28 12:59:19

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@npub1jfl…ru8c So because covid meant that Congress could not meet in person, they never had quorum for all of 2020, so all laws passed then are invalid.
All right then, glad we could clear that up.

2024-02-27 13:00:34

Targeted treatment of injured nestmates with antimicrobial compounds in an ant society.
"Here we show that M. analis can determine when wounds are infected and treat them accordingly. By applying a variety of antimicrobial compounds and proteins secreted from the metapleural gland to infected wounds, workers reduce the mortality of infected individuals by 90% ... Injured workers are carried back to the nest where other workers treat their wounds, by licking and grooming the wound during the first three hours after injury. When the wounds of injured workers are not treated by nestmates, 90% of the injured workers die within 24 h after injury, but the mechanisms behind these treatments are unknown ... We describe the use of the metapleural gland to treat infected wounds and quantify its content, identifying 112 chemical compounds and 41 proteins in the gland’s secretion, half of which have antimicrobial or wound healing properties."
@npub1zdp…vqv8
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-43885-w

2024-01-08 16:09:45

Interesting long-form take from a master coder on the potential for & limitations of #llm in programming.
tl;dr -- The tools are impressive but not omniscient. Fire boring boilerplate they are great (esp when dealing with an unfamiliar API), but for complex reasoning tasks not so much.
But 99% of programming is boring shit, so better be proficient with these tools.
http://antirez.com/news/140

2023-12-18 02:09:39

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@npub1hyk…3p33 "Dude, do you even interop?"

2023-12-17 19:05:27

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@npub1zdp…vqv8 @npub1jxc…qug0 Interesting -- as a Californian, I always associate Eucalyptus trees with boring invasive monocultures. The terpenes in their leaves pretty much kills off any competing plants in the understory.
But maybe that's only a local phenomena, and in Australia the other participants in the ecosystem have evolved to thrive in those conditions? Or maybe it's just the species that got imported to California that produces the terpenes?

2023-08-17 15:49:39

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@npub1zdp…vqv8 @npub10av…r788 No need to kill them when they can easily be destroyed in the media.
Trump succeeded in large part because he knew how to give the media what it wants, and he cut the deals he needed to get support (tacit or full-throated) from the handful of billionaires who own all our media channels.
A leftie would never get that support, and would be fed to the shredder long before they became a threat that needed to be neutralized by other means.
[Howard Dean's "scream" has entered the chat.]

2023-06-02 05:17:36

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@npub1ev6…nh08 @npub1a4u…lzxh Hmmm, reminds me of the start of a scifi movie franchise from the 80s ... Can't quite remember, didn't it have a big muscle head starring in it? I forget.

2023-05-04 21:38:03

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@npub1cjj…8rtc I'm an AI skeptic, but I'm just going to say that Cover Letters are a perfect use-case for ChatGPT.