Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) [1], a technique that involves combining many images taken with different light sources, researchers have deciphered 79 additional inscriptions. “This project highlights urban communication, especially from sections of the population that do not usually appear in literature or official inscriptions,”
The researchers identified the DMTF1 protein as a key regulator that declines with age, and they successfully restored neural stem cell renewal by reactivating its specific genetic pathways in both human-derived cells and mouse models. However, it remains unclear if this approach is safe from cancer risks or if it can be effectively delivered as a drug to improve memory in living human brains.
I think that may be an insight to something quite profound. We used to measure the "doubling of knowledge" against number of peer-reviewed papers of scientific research etc. Now not so much. "Knowledge" has become more proprietary, and condensed into the AI models replacing the libraries of training data. We now measure "doubling of knowledge" as the next version or iteration of a model. In some kind of real sense, the prompt IS more powerful than the output.
Most people here in the US that I talk to understand that the additional tariffs imposed by the Trump administration are an attempt to get domestic US industries to produce the items that are now being imported subject to the tariff. In some cases that has been successful. In many cases not. Many industries are virtually impossible to de-globalize.
Step 1: put tariffs on coffee and bananas.
Step 2: pump out CO2 until climate is appropriate for growing coffee and bananas.
…
Step n: Load profits onto your scavenged freight boat and try to find Dryland.
The end result is still higher prices for the end-consumer... If the local businesses were unable to compete with a foreign supplier w/o the tariff, they'll be unable to do it with the tariff. So the consumer will end up paying less than (foreign + tariff) but higher than (foreign).
Yes, and the gamble is that the positives from boosting domestic industry will outweigh the negatives from higher prices. The only people confused about this are NPR-constructed strawmen.
There is no domestic industry, it all moved overseas, and the existential risk to cessation of fiscally enabling tariffs within 4 years (assuming set and forget; note, business's ideal outcome), means most of the money will just find something else to chase for modest returns for 4 more years. Nevermind everything else going on poisoning goodwill toward the U.S. currently. The absolute, unmitigated stupidity on display currently is nothing less than I expected from a population without a Great Depression under their belt. We truly, truly, are too dumb as a society to have learned and internalized a goddamn thing.
Except Trump himself repeatedly claimed that the exporting country is paying the tariffs and that the US is earning billions of dollars. And many of his followers seem to believe this.
I agree the administration tariffs "wouldn't be levied on manufacturing inputs" if they really wanted to help domestic industries. I'm not saying they're doing the right thing, I'm just saying that most Americans I talk to understand the INTENTION is ancient protectionist logic, but the Fed report is evidence that this logic is currently failing to produce the administration's intended "manufacturing miracle". It is so inconsistent, being successful in very specific niches (like some domestic textile or furniture segments), but the Fed notes that nearly half of all businesses reported a decrease in their bottom lines due to the policy.
Manufacturing miracles aren't instant: it takes a lot less effort to import something than to invest into manufacturing. The inconsistencies mirror this perfectly: the industries where startup costs are lowest see the boost.
...get domestic US industries to produce the items that are now being imported...
But, that's (corporate) socialism, and that group of people (mostly) claim to hate socialism.
There's a time and place for tariffs. Protecting "all" domestic industries via global trade war is (IMO) not it. Nor is wielding tariffs as a punishment simply because a foreign leader wasn't docile and subservient enough for Trump.
Why is knowledge doubling no longer used as a metric to converge on the limit of the singularity? If we go back to Buckminster Fuller identifying the the "Knowledge Doubling Curve", by observing that until 1900, human knowledge doubled approximately every century. By the end of World War II, it was doubling every 25 years. In his 1981 book "Critical Path", he used a conceptual metric he called the "Knowledge Unit." To make his calculations work, he set a baseline:
- He designated the total sum of all human knowledge accumulated from the beginning of recorded history up to the year 1 CE as one "unit."
- He then tracked how long it took for the world to reach two units (which he estimated took about 1,500 years, until the Renaissance).
Ray Kurzweil took Fuller’s doubling concept and applied it to computer processing power via "The Law of Accelerating Returns". The definition of the singularity in this approach is the limit in time where human knowledge doubles instantly.
Why do present day ideas of the singularity not take this approach and instead say "the singularity is a hypothetical event in which technological growth accelerates beyond human control, producing unpredictable changes in human civilization." - Wikipedia
While Walmart has historically denied using "individualized" pricing (charging two people different prices for the exact same item based on their income), they do use behavioral targeting [1]
Members of Walmart+ often see different "final" prices due to exclusive discounts, rewards (Walmart Rewards), or waived shipping/delivery fees that aren't available to guest users. Walmart uses AI to offer personalized promotions. You might see a "Rollback" or a "Just for You" offer on an item you’ve viewed multiple times or purchased previously, effectively changing the price for you specifically via a targeted discount. Like many e-commerce giants, Walmart may also offer "first-time app user" discounts or "win-back" coupons to specific customer segments.
This makes a lot of sense. The commercial launch business is not large enough to support all possible Falcon launches, so Starlink was created to take advantage of the low launch cost and vertical integration and is now a major profit center for SpaceX.
Starship launches are only going to make sense every 779.94 days (the approx 2 year Mars-Earth proximity). The rest of the time, the launches could similarly be used to deploy orbiting data centers for XAi/Grok etc. Brilliant move.
Elon Musk’s AI startup, xAI (x.ai = grok), officially acquired X Corp. (the parent company of the social media platform X or x.com, formerly Twitter/x.com) in an all-stock deal. Both now operate under a unified holding entity, frequently referred to in corporate filings as X.AI Holdings Corp. (or simply xAI). Now SpaceX has moved to acquire or merge with xAI. This effectively brings the social media data from x.com, the AI development of x.ai, and the satellite infrastructure of Starlink/SpaceX under one "super-conglomerate" roof.
It is often argued that the US will grow its economy such that the debt is less significant. There is much confusion between the US debt being cited as a ratio of GDP (common among economists) vs net tangible assets (common among businesses and people). For example, after WWII, the U.S. faced its previous record debt-to-GDP ratio—roughly 106% in 1946. By 1974, that ratio had plummeted to just 23% largely through:
a) massive GDP growth with real consumption rising 22% between 1944 and 1947.
b) fiscal discipline where the U.S. actually ran primary budget surpluses in the late 1940s
c) financial repression with the Federal Reserve capping interest rates at around 2.5% while inflation averaged 6.5%. This meant the government was paying back debt with "cheaper" dollars, effectively "inflating away" the debt at the expense of bondholders.
Fast forward to today, there is an often stated belief that the US will grow the economy again, this time with a dramatic expansion into a space economy including orbiting data centers, solar power plants, asteroid mining, space manufacture - all leveraged with robotics and AI. Let's be generous and assume this actual happens and that it happens soon - what mandate is there that this massive space economy will be denominated in US dollars or even be part of the US economy? SpaceX has already launched numerous satellites for foreign countries. What is to stop them launching a space economy that will be owned under a "Flag of Convenience" from an offshore tax-free zone, perhaps even denominated in crypto? Will we then confront this massive off-planet economy with "space-tariffs" in order to import the value-added component back into the US? The U.S. debt can only be "grown away" if the value-added activities (mining, manufacturing, computing) remain registered in the U.S..
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynomial_texture_mapping
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