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I appears that this academic is very good at public relations.

They mix interrupts and polling depending on the load. The interrupt service routine and user-kernel context-switch overhead is tiny computationally and hence in power usage.

Also, most network hardware in the last twenty years has had buffer coalescing, reducing interrupt rates.


Bird neurons are typically around 40% of the length, or 1/9 the volume of mammalian neurons. This means they have around 9x the number of neurons per unit volume.

A large parrot has around the same number of neurons as a beagle dog.

Combined with weight savings, this may allow their brains to work faster, which is useful for a flight computer.

Birds have other features which are superior to mammals. For example, their flow-through lungs allow for more efficient gas exchange.

However, having to fly means weight reduction has been a big driver of evolutionary compromises. A bird that can fly cannot carry large fat reserves around. They are not resilient when sick and often die quickly after the onset of visible symptoms.


Your comment made me think of cheetahs. An article once claimed that the biggest reason for cheetahs to perish in the wild was that at the speed they're running, even a minor mistake means they'll take a tendon-tearing or bone-breaking tumble, and their speed-optimized bodies are relatively fragile. Once they're injured, they are no longer fast, and thus lose their one and only predatory advantage.

Humans really are surprisingly strongly generalist, in ways many other animals are not.


Speaking of Cheetahs, pigeon fanciers like to compare their birds to Cheetahs.

A 200gram grain-fueled homing pigeon can maintain 60km/h for an hour. A cheetah can do that for maybe a minute.

I've always thought this is not really a fair comparison, as flying through the air probably requires way less energy than sprinting.


Cheetahs are sports cars.


Sounds like a tradeoff to me. Shorter neurons probably means fast operation and small size, but reduced regional and global connectivity. From the little I know about brains, this would imply things like reduced creativity.

My human neurons are inclined to wonder if the results hold true for other flying animals, particularly insects, and of course, bats.


I hope someone else also wonders how smart a human with bird-like neurons would be. I feel weird even thinking about it.


I've had a similar experience. Most of the people I've worked with are 4-6 out of 10. But I suppose that's a normal distribution.

I've encountered a few 1's and 2's but they generally don't last too long. I've also encountered a few brilliant ones, but their code was understandable only to themselves, and often didn't meet a spec.


Foreign countries like Japan and China own around $1.8T in US bonds. These are valued in dollars, like stocks.


Yes. That's what I said "Devaluing dollar does not reduce debt measured in dollar"

The US would still have to pay the debt in Dollars. Devaluation affects currency exchange rates. Debt would be less valuable in Yen and Renminbi but just as expensive for the US government.


Doesn't Europe and Japan have dollar swap lines with US? So ultimately it is US buying its own bonds through Japan to create an illusion that there exists enough external demand.


Use Betterbird. They upgrade Thunderbird and fix bugs.


The original somebody was likely the US Secret service, who are also responsible for US dollar currency forgery policing.

When color printers/copiers first appeared there was a concern about people photocopying money. The old joke was that your color photocopier "would pay for itself in no time".


I'm surprised there's not been a class action against printer manufacturers for all the extra yellow toner that's been used.


Not to mention failure to accurately print what you sent to the printer. There must be some use case where these "invisible" dots actually undermine the intended output.


One thing not on the list (yet) is the freezing of protesters' bank accounts that happened in Canada.

Or the de-banking that happens to politicians in the UK.

Or the jailing of whistleblower lawyers that happens in Australia.


I wonder what any of those have to do with a USA constitutional matter?


I agree, but I think these countries don’t actually have free speech. I don’t care if I disagree with these positions. I will protest to defend their right to say it, otherwise I will lose mine as well.


I think an even more bitter lesson is coming very soon: AI will run out of human-generated content to train on.

Already AI companies are probably training AI with AI generated slop.

Sure there will be tweaks etc, but can we make it more intelligent than its teachers?


> probably

that's how its been the last 2 years

synthetic datasets is one of the terms used

this is what the "fine tuning" space relies upon for infinite permutations of base models a moment after every release, and what larger organizations are also doing to create their base models


Yes, pig organs can be used for human transplants, the tissue types are similar.

Perhaps the pork prohibition also has some anti-cannibal echos in it. You're never sure if your pork stew is grandma?


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