So birds can get their wings broken by sudden gusts while aloft. Without accounting for size (reynolds number) and reaction speed - a fly would suffer a similar fate.

But I’ve seen videos of insects and/or flies hit with directed blasts of air. They react very, very quickly by adjusting orientation and shape. If a fly tucks fast enough it might survive the aerodynamic forces due to its reaction speed, and be left to the fate of where it’s path goes while it slows to a flyable speed.

And size matters. What seems to us a thin and uniform body of air gas for them is thicker and rippling with waves of density and speed. The wrong placement might kill them with pure shear or high pressure, but I suspect they have the ability to surf those waves as well, and maybe even use them to steer through extreme conditions.

Nazis you say? “After the shock of the 2002 Tarnak Farm incident, the Pentagon reassessed its ‘go pill’ policy. Maybe feeding a daily diet of meth to pilots flying $50 million fighter-bombers was a bad idea after all, they reasoned. Use of amphetamines was phased out in the early 2000s in favor of a new synthetic drug called Modafinil.” https://fherehab.com/learning/amphetamine-history

Thanks for sharing, interesting read and questions. Surely you’ll be down voted here for anything with AI… But c’est la vie.

Ive been doing coding projects in VS code which uses GPT, Claude and Gemini. Woe are the days when my credits are used and only GPT 4.1 is available. Claudes ability to research and architect multi step software solutions is very, very good and it rarely makes messes or spins tires compared to older models from just a few months ago. This is precisely what converted me to ‘whoa - ai’ which is adjacent to ‘pro ai’.

Lately I’ve been experimenting with customizing Gemini via instructions which include a link to a drive folder of md files with specific instructions for different agent tasks, such as performing specific market analysis, doing a news roundup with a specific list of topics and omitting prior reviewed items, etc. The files allow for both complex instructions or lists, as well as some chance to construct memory via logging. Results are a mixed bag, lots of additional function created, lots of mixed results.

Have you considered any tests of more complexity? Something like ‘write a program that…’ I think what will differentiate these models going forward is some have architect capabilities, strategy, insight, decision making, where others are agents - they do specific tasks well but have limits. With that model, the ai architect and it’s ai agents need to work as a team to complete a multi step task.

Got my wife one recently. She like the yoga bits, in guess. But, it’s in the closet.

Wii is still set up…what games are you digging?

I have been paid for and paid for CAD and other impacted engineering products including software. AI is unfair… How?

I can see some issues with copyright, and I acknowledge it will upset economies. But being able to ‘automate’ photo to 3d, and so many other tools that enable me so much to do things that wouldn’t have happened before, it’s unimaginable to many around me. Change is scary, strap in.

Vegeta and Piccolo as ancient Egyptians, boos choice.

I tried Meshy and Trellis and Hitem. Next I’ll try printmon.

Hitem has the best free option and portrait mode. Made some great busts.

Meshy looked great if cartoony with its model 6, but only let me download from model 4, which was a surprise and made monsters.

Trellis was in between and I ran out of huggingface tokens quickly.

I’d use hitem all day but not interested in paid subscriptions for my passing hobby. Hoping Bambu is handy with printmon again, though I expect it may be proprietary.

Also, all needed some cleanup, Bambu could fix slice and print but not adjust details and cuts. Started with Blender but the interface is hard for a CAD person. Switched to using Meshmixer, which works great, and just using Bambu to do a final fix of the stl before slice. Make solid is a helpful tool in Meshmixer if you get a good looking but imperfect stl, but you have to be careful to avoid losing detail.

Thanks, I’ll try printmon next. Any hidden limits or fees?

See also, ‘Purdue decay rate anomaly’ Why do researchers see correlation between nuclear particle decay and solar activity? Or don’t they?

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100825093253.htm?hl=en-US#%3A~%3Atext=His+advice+to+Purdue%3A+Look%2Crecurring+pattern+of+33+days.

Statistics, anyone?

If we’re a simple ‘normal’ population, your wife’s idea holds; there should be 1 in 1000 athlete in every 1000 people. to get a 1 in 1000 athletic performance with a 50% confidence you need only take 693 samples. So if many thousands have played, you’d expect to have seen peak performance.

But we aren’t distributed like that. Z score analysis of a measurable sport indicates a known top athlete like Usain Bolt is in the order of 5 standard deviations from the norm (depending what we consider the norm data set). That’s more like 1 in a million to one in 10 million to get a Bolt. Which implies millions need to try (and train) to get a Bolt level performance (3 humans in that tier so far, implies between 3 & 30 million have tried). So a Bolt seems to be reaching human limits, reinforcing the wife position position for that sport - we are approaching the human limit.

But wait - that is a popular sport, with a single simple measure. If there were multiple relevant independent measures (say hitting and pitching, or running and throwing), even just 2, the odds become astronomical of finding the best. A dual 1 in 1000 is a 1 in a million. A dual z=5 athlete is 1 in 12 trillion.

So the implication is that for more complex sports where multiple attributes apply, it is much more likely we have not yet seen peak human capabilities. It’s also much harder to measure and recognize when we do - so props to the legendary players, and keep searching for them. We won’t know how good they really were until we sample (play) the sport for hundreds or thousands of years. Finding peak is incredibly lucky/unlikely for our most popular complex sports.

I have been to the science fair, and the county science fair, and the state science fair.

No, I didn’t touch my daughters project.

At county, there was an obvious element of parent projects, but judges interviewed kids and weeded out those who didn’t know much about the project. Some winners there still had obvious assists, but at least they could interview.

State was wild (CA). No parents in the hall during the day. Kids reported massive judging variations, little standardization and obvious tech bias. Her cognitive science category gave out all 3 awards for AI related projects.

Check in was insane. Allowed material were the board and a few feet of space on the table. People were pulling in with trailers. Massive arguments, tears.

Day of, kids were wearing fitted suits. Coordinated family outfits with ostentatious wealth on show. What a bizarre view of America.

This is another really good reason to be upset with the 10 yr warranty. It implies a longevity well beyond what this product can do.

And the waste. My god the waste. Piles upon piles of unrecyclable petroleum derived foam. Ok, in relative terms to our modern lifestyle it fits right in, but that’s not good.

And if it lasts half as long as they say, and they won’t touch it at the end of its life, what does that say?!

Fair point. It lasted 4-5 years solid. 6-8 clearly rapid failure.

Quickly is relative to the 10 year warranty.

I paid (usd 5k plus - king size) with a warranty in mind. Was told ‘our material is different, worth it’ - Full sales job. I’m technical, but details matter and they’re proprietary. I trusted the warranty + brand, which was a bad, expensive move.

Realistic expectations - memory foam lasts 4-5 years, more or less depending on pressure and humidity, and should be priced accordingly. YSK!

Thanks. Turns out I’m also mattress shopping! Appreciate the alternative option.

Turns out this is also the answer to the Fermi paradox. We’re quarantined.

Funny similar to mine.

We’re all assholes, just have to figure out what kind of asshole you want to be.

You should know the origin, and surprise - it’s Latin!

Per wikipedia: "The actual origin is unknown, but one of the first appearances of the word was in a second-century work by Roman physician Serenus Sammonicus… who in chapter 52 prescribed that malaria sufferers wear an amulet containing Abracadabra written in the form of a triangle.[12][13]

The power of the amulet, he claimed, makes lethal diseases go away."

The hero we need.

Too bad we do.

You are on a tough path and I hope you succeed. Im glad to count you as a fellow citizen here and I hope it gets better for everyone here.

So I imagine myself at the future factory in karma heaven trying to decide what I get to be and when.

Humans are interesting, they experience much over a short time, and deeply. Early humans have a visceral and satisfying life, hunting gathering and reproducing. Late humans, which is most of them, have safe stable lives with infinite opportunities around infinite stars.

Middle humans struggle. They multiply and have disease. They reach resource limits and have war. They are a brutal combination of technology and animal tendency which wipes out other humans and predators.

And their triumphs are glorious. From steam to electricity to transistors to space flight in a few generations. They take poetry and teach machines to sing. They make their universe larger by finding how much space is between atoms. They smash the atoms and fuse them together again on the way to their future.

I make my choice. Right there. Right at the middle of the change point. That’s when, that’s where.

Hello friends. Im here for the positive change. Im struggling, its what we do. Enjoy