skybrian's recent activity

  1. Comment on Historic voter turnout powered US Democrats’ blue wave in ~society

    skybrian
    Link
    From the article: Based on the chart in the article, turnout for midterm elections is always lower than for presidential elections, but turnout was high for a midterm.

    From the article:

    Across the United States, 49 percent of eligible Americans voted, the second-highest turnout [for a midterm] since 1914, when neither women nor African Americans could vote in many states, according to preliminary data from the University of Florida Election Lab.

    Three states with the highest turnout — Maine (65.7 percent), Minnesota (65.2 percent) and Michigan (63.2 percent) — held competitive Senate races where Democrats prevailed. All three also elected Democratic governors.

    National turnout increased by three percentage points compared with 2022’s midterm elections. It was only slightly lower than in 2018, during the first Trump presidency, when 50 percent of eligible voters turned out.

    Despite setting high marks for a midterm, turnout was lower than the 2024 presidential election by 15.2 percent. But the gap was smaller in the most competitive races, including in Maine, where Democratic Senate nominee Troy Jackson ousted Sen. Susan Collins (R), and Texas, where state Rep. James Talarico defeated Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, in the race for U.S. Senate.

    Based on the chart in the article, turnout for midterm elections is always lower than for presidential elections, but turnout was high for a midterm.

    1 vote

  3. Comment on Bronze age Akrotiri is Greece’s Pompeii in ~humanities.history

    skybrian
    Link
    From the article: [...] [...] [...] [...] [...]

    From the article:

    When Thera erupted again, the explosion was so powerful that it destroyed Akrotiri, burying the settlement (and the island that shared the volcano’s name) in some 200 feet of ash and pumice stone. The timing of the disaster is the subject of intense debate, but scholars generally date it to between 1620 and 1530 B.C.E. The event was one of the largest volcanic eruptions in recorded history: Thera released about four times more volcanic material than the infamous Krakatau eruption, which killed upwards of 36,000 people in what is now Indonesia in 1883.

    [...]

    The ash cloud formed by the Thera eruption completely transformed the island’s lush, humid environment into an arid one. Ash from the volcano was so widespread that it rained down as far as modern-day Egypt and Israel. Layers of sand and pebbles found between archaeological deposits suggest that multiple tsunamis also contributed to the destruction.

    But the biggest fallout of this cataclysmic event happened when a portion of the volcanic caldera collapsed into the sea a few days after the eruption, forever changing the landscape of Santorini. This plummet into the depths of the Aegean Sea has become the stuff of legends. Some claim that Akrotiri is the lost city of Atlantis, which the Greek philosopher Plato described centuries later, around 360 B.C.E. Most modern scholars, however, agree that Plato created the tale of the sunken island as an allegorical device.

    [...]

    Much like the Roman city of Pompeii, which was destroyed when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 C.E., Akrotiri was preserved beneath the ash. “Everything was absolutely annihilated and completely encapsulated on the island,” says Lefteris Zorzos, an archaeologist whose research focuses on the prehistoric landscape of Santorini. This created a rare time capsule that provides an unprecedented look into the daily life of this Middle Bronze Age Cycladic civilization, so called after the Aegean islands where the culture flourished between about 3000 and 1000 B.C.E.

    [...]

    Under the leadership of Marinatos and his successor, Christos Doumas, archaeologists have excavated sites across Akrotiri down to the bedrock, allowing scientists to study the island’s stratigraphy as far back as 6,500 years ago. Zorzos estimates that the ongoing excavations have uncovered only about 10 percent of the settlement. The rest is still preserved beneath layers of ash and sediment.

    Surprisingly, researchers have yet to recover the remains of any Akrotiri residents killed by the eruption, suggesting that the majority, if not all, of the settlement’s inhabitants made it out alive after receiving warning of the impending disaster. (Excavations in Turkey have, however, revealed the skeletons of a teenager and a dog believed to be victims of a post-eruption tsunami, testifying to the event’s far reach.) Comparatively, archaeologists excavating the ruins of Pompeii continue to find victims’ skeletons (or the cavities left behind by bodies trapped in volcanic ash) nearly 2,000 years after Vesuvius’ eruption.

    [...]

    In total, archaeologists have identified and researched 35 buildings across Akrotiri. The settlement’s ancient residents “didn’t have access to forests or concrete, and still they are building three- and four-story-high buildings using limited wood, volcanic stones, mud and vegetation,” Zorzos says. “It’s phenomenal to think of how much they were able to achieve without access to modern tools.”

    [...]

    Frescoes in excellent condition adorn the walls of many homes and public buildings in Akrotiri. “Every house had a fresco with a distinct ritual characteristic, and many of them are female-centered,” Nikolaidou says.

  5. Comment on Paraguay president impeached minutes after resigning following bank collapse in ~society

    skybrian
    Link
    From the article: [...] [...] [...] [...]

    From the article:

    Paraguayan President Santiago Peña announced his resignation Thursday after the collapse of a major digital bank tied to his government triggered widespread protests, froze millions of people's savings and cost him the support of his own party.

    The crisis at Ueno Bank turned Peña's long-ruling Colorado Party against him, a stunning reversal for the former International Monetary Fund economist who had enjoyed the backing of the country's most powerful politicians and was welcomed in Washington just weeks ago as a key ally of the Trump administration.

    Minutes after Peña's announcement, the lower house voted 78-0 to impeach him, sending the charges to the Senate. Congressional leaders were expected to accept his resignation later Thursday, clearing the way for Vice President Pedro Alliana to be sworn in without waiting for a Senate trial.

    Opposition senators were still demanding a trial, arguing that allowing Peña to resign would preserve his eligibility to become a senator for life, with legal protections that could prevent his prosecution.

    [...]

    As lawmakers debated his impeachment, Peña said in a video posted to X that he was stepping down in the interest of "the stability of our country, social peace and the need to preserve our democratic institutions."

    [...]

    Ueno Bank, which exploded from an obscure finance company to a household name in less than five years, claimed more than 60% of Paraguay's adults as customers. Many Paraguayans are left asking how a bank linked to the president could grow so rapidly in size and importance despite repeated warnings about its lending practices.

    [...]

    Even as retirees' savings and other public money piled up at Ueno, worries were escalating inside the central bank. In June, its inspectors found a pattern of risky lending to insiders, reported ABC Color, a leading Paraguayan newspaper. Ueno had extended large sums to companies tied to its owners, beyond what the law allows and without enough collateral to cover the debts if they went bad.

    [...]

    But on Monday, it all came crashing down. Regulators investigating Ueno's loans to companies linked to its owners found poorly documented lending, the central bank said, as well as expenses the bank had wrongly counted as assets.

    Once the books were corrected, Ueno's capital, the cushion banks must keep to absorb losses, fell to less than half the legal minimum. The central bank announced the lender's seizure Tuesday, beginning a process to transfer deposits and recoverable assets to other banks before liquidating what remained.

    Ueno's app, cards and transfers went dark and its branches locked their doors, leaving desperate depositors lined up outside. On Wednesday, a rush to open new accounts elsewhere crashed other banks' mobile apps, fueling public panic.

  7. Comment on Why parents love a school with bogus numbers in ~life

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    I think there are kids who would benefit from what Alpha is doing - bright kids who find a lot of schoolwork too easy and boring. But they're not the ones who need the most help.

    I think there are kids who would benefit from what Alpha is doing - bright kids who find a lot of schoolwork too easy and boring. But they're not the ones who need the most help.

    1 vote

  8. Comment on AI buildout hits snag as Google and Microsoft hold capex forecasts in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    A stock market crash doesn’t necessarily imply that OpenAI and Anthropic won’t survive. They have real revenue and could cut back on expenses.

    A stock market crash doesn’t necessarily imply that OpenAI and Anthropic won’t survive. They have real revenue and could cut back on expenses.

    3 votes

  9. Comment on AI buildout hits snag as Google and Microsoft hold capex forecasts in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link
    From the article: [...] [...] Another article: Satellite images reveal trouble brewing at Microsoft's AI data center partners

    From the article:

    The numbers suggest a slowdown is nowhere in sight, but they do represent another potential point of concern for the AI buildout. Shares of neoclouds CoreWeave, Nebius and IREN all dropped after the reports, as did Oracle, which is one of the biggest spenders on AI infrastructure.

    Microsoft CFO Amy Hood said on the software company’s earnings call that third-party providers of graphics processing units had delays that will push out some available capacity until the first half of 2027. She didn’t provide names, but Microsoft relies on CoreWeave, IREN and Nebius, among others.

    Anat Ashkenazi, Alphabet’s finance chief, told analysts that outside computing power “came online only at the very end of Q3.” Alphabet shares tumbled about 10% in extended trading as the company missed on earnings and revenue and reported negative free cash flow of more than $9 billion.

    [...]

    Delays from emerging neocloud partners have occurred before at Microsoft, but they’re more critical now as Anthropic gets set to go public. Anthropic counts on infrastructure from Amazon, Google and Microsoft for much of its computing needs, alongside capacity from SpaceX, Lambda and Nscale, which filed to go public in September but hasn’t updated its prospectus in weeks.

    [...]

    One big challenge for the market is that the neoclouds require billions of dollars in outside capital to fuel their buildouts but don’t have investment-grade credit ratings. With interest rates rising and concerns about their debt loads mounting, lenders are pulling out of the market.

    Last week, analysts at Gartner shared with CNBC the firm’s prediction that, by 2030, 80% of neocloud companies will either be absorbed or completely cease operations. Nvidia-backed neocloud Firmus, based in Australia, withdrew plans to go public earlier this month, despite boasting large usage commitments from Meta and OpenAI.

    Another article:

    Satellite images reveal trouble brewing at Microsoft's AI data center partners

    Although Microsoft didn't name names, two data center projects from neoclouds Iren and Nebius could be responsible, according to satellite analysis from research firm Aterio.

    In Texas, IREN is building four data centers under a $9.7 billion deal with Microsoft. An October 21 satellite flyover found that one of the buildings, Horizon 4, was still missing backup power generators and cooling equipment — and risked missing its scheduled delivery by the end of the year, Aterio said.

    IREN previously said that equipment shortages had delayed the first building, Horizon 1, which Microsoft accepted in August.

    Data center operator DataOne is developing the second project in New Jersey for Nebius under a $17.4 billion deal with Microsoft. Aterio said roughly 140 megawatts of that project's planned capacity could slip into 2027.

    It struggled to get permits for its original power generators, then faced more approval delays after switching to fuel cells, said Aterio data analyst Daud Shiraz. Regulators fined DataOne $1 million in September for operating generators without the required permits.

    The potential delays point to broader struggles. In October, Microsoft axed a deal with another neocloud, Nscale, due to power-supply delays.

    6 votes

  11. Comment on Google dismantles botnet secretly running on 1.3 million Android TV boxes in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link
    From the article: [...] [...]

    From the article:

    In a detailed blog post, the Threat Intelligence Group explains how the x.cpe botnet evolved quickly from a single-stage dropper into a modular three-stage malware platform that sold access to third parties. Manufacturers must have their devices certified if they want access to Google apps and branding, a process that is supposed to catch threats like this. However, Videostrong’s compromised boxes, mostly sold under the MECOOL brand, evaded detection by using a backdoor to remotely install the malware after the devices were set up and online.

    [...]

    Google found most of the boxes were running residential proxies for routing large volumes of nefarious traffic or modules that engaged in ad fraud schemes. Selling access to this botnet was probably a big business. Videostrong also had full access to the devices, allowing operators to run terminal commands, capture the screen, and probe other devices on the local network. Google reportedly observed Videostrong doing this in real time.

    [...]

    Synthient has published a list of 182 device model names known to be included in the botnet. Anyone who has purchased a MECOOL or white label Android TV box of unknown origin should check it. Trend Micro counted a total of 1,472,554 infected devices, somewhat higher than Google’s estimate. The overwhelming majority were in Brazil, Malaysia, Iraq, Mexico, and Taiwan, but tens of thousands were also online in the US, Germany, the UK, Australia, and Canada.

    Google determined the operation was not the work of a rogue actor, so it has ended its relationship with Videostrong. The company, as well as any subsidiaries, will not be permitted to use Google’s Android apps and services.

    Google also notes that it is updating its certification process to close the loophole that allowed Videostrong to operate its botnet on certified devices. Android is open source, though, and there are countless uncertified Android-based TV boxes out there. Videostrong could continue to sell malicious hardware under other brands without Google apps. But it would still have to rebuild its malware operation from scratch.

    7 votes

  13. Comment on US Democrats win enough seats nationwide to (potentially) end Electoral College via the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact in ~society

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    To be fair, I suspect that hardly anyone cares all that much about state versus federal control. To the extent they do care, any other principles they might have will override that consideration....

    To be fair, I suspect that hardly anyone cares all that much about state versus federal control. To the extent they do care, any other principles they might have will override that consideration. For example, someone who is pro-immigrant will advocate for immigrant rights at both the state and federal level.

    We can be thankful that elections are largely controlled by the states, though.

    5 votes

  14. Comment on The web is more than enough in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    It sounds like you're making an assumption that we're using websites controlled by people hostile to our interests. And yes, we often have little choice but to use websites we don't like. For...

    It sounds like you're making an assumption that we're using websites controlled by people hostile to our interests. And yes, we often have little choice but to use websites we don't like. For example, they might provide access to services like banking that aren't easily replicated.

    But that's not always the case. This article is about the empowerment you get from building your own website, which is easier than ever. I'm doing quite a bit of that nowdays. It means I get to control the UI; nothing appears in the window unless I ask for it. I can control whether there's any advertising, and it's not going to track anything unless I allow it. No new features will be added to the UI unless I specifically ask for them to be implemented. Having complete control like that is pretty nice! And I don't need to worry about what any app stores will approve.

    (On the other hand, it only applies to my own websites, and if I decide to embed a YouTube video, Google is going to track that, and similarly for other embedded widgets.)

    4 votes

  15. Comment on The web is more than enough in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    A software industry where there's more people making software for each other would seem to imply they're buying a lot of tokens? But maybe the token API pricing is a lot cheaper, or people switch...

    A software industry where there's more people making software for each other would seem to imply they're buying a lot of tokens? But maybe the token API pricing is a lot cheaper, or people switch to local inference.

    It would be sort of like how Sun was really big during the dot-com boom, but afterwards, people figured out that they didn't actually need Sun computers to build websites. Only much later did cloud computing take off.

    I don't think things will go back to "normal" either, but I have no idea what the new tech industry's economics will look like. I wouldn't have predicted that Google could earn so much from ad revenue for so long.

    1 vote

  16. Comment on The web is more than enough in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link
    From the article:

    From the article:

    All the various cool browser technologies have been around for years. But they are each extremely vast. If you get good at Web Audio, you probably don’t have time to get good at Web Crypto and Web Assembly and WebGL.

    The reason they were so complex is, basically, because they were built for teams like those at Google, not for individuals. In the past, the web was for people to build web pages—and, yes, in the present, you can still do that, but for more than a decade, the web has been designed for giant companies so they can deliver software securely to billions of people who buy things with credit cards. These huge mega-libraries were dropped into the web browser to enable large teams to build big things, and the little guy was a bit of an afterthought. But now you can make a game in 3D with sound, and it can work just fine on a plane.

    This is one of the places where “are we in an AI bubble” gets fuzzy for me, because it’s totally clear all these giant AI companies are huffing AGI paint fumes, but at the same time, if we actually unlocked the economic transformation of, say, 100 times as many people making software for each other, that would blow an enormous crater into the current tech economy. Don’t like the way your giant industrial looms make carpet? Hack your own firmware and make each carpet totally personalized! Turn any Instagram post into a huge floor covering! Suddenly all the carpet companies have to hack their own firmware to compete. What’s that going to be like?

    This also destabilizes the app store economy. The high tax of building for app stores seems less worth paying when you can just test an idea in the world from a web server for $0 after a couple weeks. Perhaps Mozilla should take another swing at launching a mobile phone! (Forget I mentioned that.) In any case, what used to be a large industrial process is now a personal one, if you so desire. Web browsers enable incredibly rich app development—and that’s radically easier than it used to be.

    It’s a mixed blessing. I’ve been a writer for years, and software development feels more and more like writing to me every passing week. The awkward part of the comparison is, in general, people do not want to pay writers any money at all. As a writer, you get used to it. But for software people, being perpetually devalued is pretty novel. Then again, if you need software to do something—like our clients!—say, to fix a process, organize a database, get more value out of a big piece of industrial equipment, it’s a pretty amazing time, because you can do just about anything. I’m pretty confident we’ll all meet in the middle, but it’ll take a while, and it will be different on the other side.

    11 votes

  18. Comment on Why parents love a school with bogus numbers in ~life

    skybrian
    Link
    From the article: [...] [...] [...] [...] [...]

    From the article:

    Alpha says that its students show “2x growth” if they meet certain criteria on an adaptive standardized test called MAP Growth. Alpha projects each student’s expected growth in the next testing period — for example, a third grader who is a 50th-percentile reader might be expected to grow 7 points from fall to winter. That number is a median; of all the third graders who are 50th percentile readers, half will grow more than 7 points, and half will grow less. If a student grows 14 points, Alpha calls this 2x growth.

    The school offers students huge prizes, payouts, and incentives to perform well on those tests. That the resulting scores are higher than at other schools isn’t shocking and doesn’t say much.

    But this can produce extremely odd results, particularly in high school, where term-to-term academic growth, as measured by the MAP tests, is far slower than in the early years; the expected gains for high schoolers on the MAP growth tests are close to nil as a result. For example, a ninth-grade student who is a 90th-percentile reader is expected to gain only 0.23 points on the reading MAP test from fall to spring. But this means that a ninth grader gaining two points, which is within normal random variation, would count as 9x growth!

    [...]

    One other obstacle to evaluating Alpha’s claims is the difficulty of disentangling them from selection effects: In general, the overwhelming majority of the differences between schools in student performance are driven by the self-selection of involved parents and motivated students. It stands to reason that a school serving the children of people who can afford to pay $75,000 a year is going to have better outcomes than any school that doesn’t, even if instructional quality is no better or worse.

    Because Arizona’s Unbound Academy is a free public charter school based around the Alpha online platform, that particular school’s performance promises a window into the method’s effectiveness that is less distorted by selection bias.

    The first year of results from Unbound, which came out earlier this month, are not encouraging on that front. Alpha had told the state of Arizona that it hoped to get 65% of the school’s students proficient in English language arts and 60% proficient in math. (The statewide averages are 42% and 34%, respectively.)

    Instead, after one year, just 28% were proficient in English language arts and 10% in math.

    Now, that doesn’t mean that Unbound failed to teach its students anything. The student body seems to have arrived at Alpha performing well below average to begin with. If you run Alpha’s usual MAP Growth analysis, the school can report 1.8x growth.

    I don’t really find it plausible that these students in any meaningful sense “learned at 1.8x” in their year at Unbound. If Alpha really had taken a bunch of incredibly low-performing students and were helping them improve, then this would be a success story — but it seems far more likely that it took a bunch of weak students who almost entirely remained weak students. They improved their standardized MAP test scores a bit more than expected because Alpha teaches to the MAP test so directly. Overall this is obviously a failure on Alpha’s own terms.

    [...]

    Alpha, insofar as it has gotten results, has done so by hosting kids in an environment where they actually reliably use the edtech. That is the true magic.

    [...]

    It makes more sense to think of Alpha schools as the incentive system and environment that gets the kids to use the Timeback package properly — meaning, if there is an effective intervention, it is not Timeback itself. Just by getting kids to actually do the practice that the apps offer, Alpha seems to have made some real achievements, if not the miraculous numbers they claim.

    [...]

    But one of the most interesting things to me, as I’ve reported on Alpha School, is the program’s enduring appeal among parents who are well aware that the headline numbers are kind of meaningless.

    “I love the school,” Naimoli wrote in a review that I would otherwise be inclined to call a scathing debunking of Alpha. “Alpha kids are increasing their MAP scores faster than kids at traditional schools, but the number is not 2.6 times faster. 2.6 is an erroneously computed and meaningless number.”

    [...]

    Toward that end, one of my favorite Alpha critiques is from the education writer Michael Pershan, who wrote: “I just watched like three dozen promotional videos from Alpha School. I saw young kids fencing, knitting, rock climbing, biking, jogging, petting a horse, talking to Dr. Phil, golfing, painting, training with Navy SEALs, playing piano, playing guitar, doing pullups, squatting, giving TED talks, kayaking, lighting stuff on fire, baking, running in a parking lot, and recording a podcast. But I struggled to find footage of a student reading a book.”

    Alpha, he pointed out, has a very specific viewpoint on the purpose of education: They are trying to minimize time spent on core instruction while maximizing performance. This is simply not something that most schools — especially not most fancy private schools that serve the kinds of kids who can afford Alpha — are trying to do. Most schools will tell you that they are trying to build holistic thinkers and citizens or foster a love of learning. Alpha is trying to get school out of the way as fast as possible.

    4 votes

  20. Comment on YouTube mobile app has deeply hidden the subscription feed in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link
    Whatever UI change happened on iPhones doesn't seem to have reached my iPad yet. Subscriptions are still there in a button in the bottom toolbar.

    Whatever UI change happened on iPhones doesn't seem to have reached my iPad yet. Subscriptions are still there in a button in the bottom toolbar.