I've seen so many 10" servers that look amazing from the front and very polished, but then having a rats nest of cables and a mess at the back.

After 62 iterations and many 3D prints, blood, sweat, profanity and tears. I my design and implementation is finally done.
I used Hexagons where possible, because as you know, Hexagons are the bestagons

This is Before:

And the After:

The ducky adds 200MHz

The front of my mini-rack is actually still somewhat of a mess, I thought I'd focus on the back first.

I've published it in excruciating detail on my GitHub Leave a Star if you like what you see.

I self host a bunch of stuff on here to get away from Big-Tech, and because I find it fun. For a lot more details see https://erasmus.works/

It always bothered me the the fronts of racs are modular, but not the backs, this solves that
If you have any questions feel free to ask, hopefully this helps other clear up their rats nests.

From Rocky Point Bird Observatory

Apparently lightning CAN strike twice!!! Our second Northern Pygmy-owl of the season was captured & banded at Rocky Point today. It isn't guaranteed to catch even one every year.

James Talarico, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Texas, accused his rival Ken Paxton of “ignoring” survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse, as Democrats seek to increase pressure on Republicans ahead of November’s midterm elections.

Speaking in Dallas, where Republicans are holding a midterm convention this week, Talarico appeared alongside one of Epstein’s victims at an exhibit that featured about 3.5m pages of Department of Justice’s files related to Epstein.

“When did pedophilia become a partisan issue? When did holding sexual abusers accountable become controversial?” Talarico said.

...

Now if you'll excuse me. I'm going to dig up Reagan's rotting carcass and hurl it in the ocean for his crimes against DEI and economic legislations

From Ryan Van Dyke

We found this Great Horned Owl perched on an old electrical pole just watching the world go by 👀🦉

Among the many recent controversies around AI, there is the claim that to solve a longstanding mathematical problem, OpenAI stole the work of the New York University mathematician Tristan Buckmaster and a colleague, Levent Alpöge, who also is a researcher for Anthropic. I have no ability to assess the validity of the claim, but as I understand it, the argument is that OpenAI had access to work done by Buckmaster and Alpöge. It then built on this work to quickly rush ahead and find a solution, which also had a $1 million prize attached to it.

Insofar as that accurately describes what OpenAI did, this seems like it would be equivalent to having a professor doing a seminar for colleagues and then having one of the attendees do a few additions and claim the work as their own. This would not be viewed as very collegial behavior in a normal academic department.

I’m not sure what claim a professor would have against a colleague under such circumstances. I suppose if their work was properly cited, there would not be a claim of plagiarism. (OpenAI’s work did not directly cite the work of Buckmaster and Alpöge, from my understanding.) I suppose there could be a basis for disputing rights to the million-dollar prize. But the problem seems much greater.

If AI can effectively steal the work of others, and claim it as its own, then it undermines the practice of openness in science that has allowed for enormous progress for centuries. This practice depended on norms, whereby scientists would properly credit the work of their peers.

In the seminar scenario I described, if one of the attendees listened to the presentation and realized the one or two additional steps needed to get over the goal line, they would be expected to raise the issue with the presenter. Assuming the additions were correct, the presenter would finish the paper, acknowledging the contribution or possibly adding the attendee as a co-author, if their contribution was sufficiently important.

But that relies on norms. If the owner of the AI doesn’t share those norms and can freely scrape scientific work wherever it finds it, and then take credit for the product, it will threaten the longstanding practice of openness in science. With the risk of having years of work stolen without getting any credit, researchers will likely keep their work closely held until they have a finished paper.1 They would only share it with a small group of trusted colleagues. Posting a working paper, or having an open seminar, would put control over their work at risk.

However, it is important to recognize the villain in this story. It is Sam Altman and his company, not the AI. Altman and the company are the ones responsible for what their AI does. If it did something they disapprove of, it is their responsibility to correct it. However adept AI may become, it is not the active player; it is the individual or company that set it in motion.

This issue applies more generally. There has been a social media mini firestorm over Texas Attorney General and Republican Senate candidate Ken Paxton using AI to have his opponent, James Talarico, making a series of outlandish statements that he never said. Much of the outrage seems to be over Paxton using AI, rather than the fact that he is lying about what Talarico said.

The issue here is that Paxton is defaming Talarico; the AI is secondary. The AI presumably makes the defamation more effective, but if Paxton were an exceptionally gifted mimic, he could likely also trick some people into believing that he was speaking in Talarico’s voice when making outlandish assertions. If that were the case, it would be every bit as bad as using AI to accomplish the job.

There were also the claims that the girls’ school in Iran, which was destroyed by the US military on the first day of the war, killing 120 children, was selected as a target by AI. That may be the case, but the important point was that the military did not have a system in place to properly review targets. It doesn’t matter whether or not an AI system identified the target. The problem was that there was no system that ensured the places designated were proper military targets.

It is important to keep our eyes on the ball. The bad actors are those who do bad things with AI, not the AI. This is like the husband who gets drunk and beats his wife and then says the whiskey did it. No one should ever accept that story. In the same vein, if a theft of mathematical work did occur, it was Sam Altman who did it and it was Ken Paxton who libeled his political opponent. The AI is beside the point.

The Trump administration is proposing a dramatic overhaul of the once-a-decade U.S. Census head count that could leave out millions of immigrants based on status and key racial and ethnic data, jeopardizing the allocation of resources and the country’s voting map.

The potential changes, announced Wednesday, would exclude undocumented immigrants, asylum seekers and anyone without permanent status. Certain demographic questions from the traditional questionnaire would also be eliminated.

It echoes Trump’s previous idea to add a citizenship question to the 2030 census.

The U.S. Census Bureau, in a post on the Federal Register website, argued “illegal aliens (among others) should not be included in the apportionment count, as they are not true inhabitants, members of the body politic, or persons with a ‘usual residence’ in the United States due to their lack of a sufficient tie and allegiance to the United States.”

The census also “should be colorblind and should not be distorted in any way by questions about immaterial personal characteristics, such as race,” the agency said. It also is considering nixing questions related to people who identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community.

These changes would harm the quality of the data, said Beth Jarosz, a data researcher and vice president of the Association of Public Data Users. She called the proposals “unprecedented.”

“Not counting all of the people who reside here is actually where the real threat is,” Jarosz said. “If you think about all of the ways that census data are used.”

From Bogdan Boev

Eurasian scops owl (Otus scops) Yyxaл EXIF:

Canon EOS 1Dx Mark I

Canon EF 400 f/2.8 USM IS II + Canon TC x1.4 III

1/200sec. f/4.5 ISO200

• A database built by Mongabay Latam, based on the analysis of scientific studies that gathered more than 7,000 samples from humans and 5,900 from fish, identified the areas most affected by mercury contamination in the Madeira River, one of the main tributaries of the Amazon.
• Mongabay Latam investigated the impact of mercury contamination on the health of the most affected communities: Lake Puruzinho in the state of Amazonas, and the riverside community of Calama and the Karipuna Indigenous Territory, in Rondônia state.
• Studies show that mercury concentrations among residents of Lake Puruzinho are among the highest recorded in the Madeira River Basin and well above what the World Health Organization considers safe, prompting residents to change their eating habits.
• High levels of mercury in Amazonian communities are related to fish consumption, their main source of protein; the accumulation of mercury in humans can cause serious health damage, such as motor and neurological problems, researchers say.

...

An analysis of 42 scientific studies published between 1997 and 2024 found evidence of mercury exposure among residents of at least 249 Indigenous and riverside communities over that 27-year period. Another 702 communities are at risk because they’re located near illegal mining hotspots, in addition to communities where residents have already tested positive for mercury. In Brazil, at least 286 Indigenous and riverside communities don’t know how much mercury is in their bodies, or the danger posed by continued exposure.

...

It takes two hours by regular boat, or 40 minutes by speedboat, to reach the Lake Puruzinho community from Humaitá. The river journey offers a quintessential Amazonian scene: the noise of the engine, the sound of the water, and the green of the forest reflected on the surface of a river teeming with life.

There’s no gold mining at Lake Puruzinho, and at first glance it appears to be a natural refuge. However, currents from the Madeira River carry fish into the lake that have been contaminated by mercury from mining sites in the region. The mercury accumulates in fish tissue and eventually ends up in people’s bodies, resulting in high concentrations in residents’ hair, blood, and feces, studies show.

“Fish is, unfortunately, the main route of entry for the ingestion of mercury,” De Almeida, the UNIR researcher, tells Mongabay Latam during a visit to his office at the campus in Porto Velho, the Rondônia state capital. Among the studies to which he contributed was a paper published in 2021 examining the relationship between high fish consumption and mercury levels in the blood of residents of communities in the Brazilian Amazon.

...

According to De Almeida, contamination by organic mercury in food, in the form of methylmercury, is much more serious than direct exposure to metallic mercury. “When someone uses metallic mercury — which is elemental mercury and is liquid — if you leave it here on the bench, it will evaporate. If you inhale this mercury, will it cause some damage to your health? Yes, it will, but your organism will eliminate it at a much higher rate than organic mercury,” he says. “Now organic mercury, methylmercury, when we ingest it through some type of food, it enters the organism and its elimination rate is very low. So it stays retained in the organism, it will accumulate over time, and it will cause serious damage to health: neurological problems, cardiological problems, orientation problems.”

...

Protection that doesn’t arrive

Brazil has been a party to the Minamata Convention since 2013; the agreement establishes regulations on the use, trade, and production of mercury. In 2018, the federal government formally incorporated the convention into Brazilian law.

However, Mongabay Latam found that Brazil has yet to implement restrictions on mercury use in the states of Amazonas and Rondônia, where it’s still used in illegal gold mining. The government also hasn’t set a date for implementing the restrictions, according to statements from the ministries involved in the Minamata Convention, obtained through access-to-information requests and from their press offices.

“Brazil does not have a [current] sectoral implementation plan for the Minamata Convention on mercury,” said the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change.

In 2023, Brazil presented its Minamata Initial Assessment (MIA), a study of the country’s use, emissions, and releases of mercury. According to the environment ministry, the assessment identified regulatory gaps and sources of mercury releases, and helped establish priorities for meeting the convention’s obligations. The ministry did not provide a timeline for implementing those measures.

...

Scientists say a dedicated system for detecting mercury-related disease is important because damage to the central nervous system causing motor, sensory, or cognitive problems can’t be cured. Early detection and appropriate intervention are therefore important to help maintain quality of life, the experts added.

Given the scale of the contamination, De Almeida says the priority should be to stop mercury emissions. “The [main] thing is to stop emitting, it is the first thing. We need to do that.”

In Lake Puruzinho, Raimundo dos Santos says his dream is to be able to enjoy the beauty of the lake and live from its riches — without mercury. “We love this nature that God left for us,” he says, looking at the water’s mirrored surface. “It is my dream to raise fish within the region itself.”

...

Web Archive link

The power redistribution of freedom dividends is something Canada needs to pivot to in order to survive nazi empire belligerence against its most loyal colony. It cannot hold hope of returning to favorite puppy status. Tremendous freedom and prosperity for Canadians must be chosen over gaslighting through the stages of grief until surrender to nazi empire. Threatening freedom and prosperity for Canadians is enough to make nazi empire more polite in restoring, and even enhancing, puppy status if that is Canadian establishment motive, though the bestest nazi puppy bed offer ever is needed to withdraw the dangled freedom.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/75317530

Among the many recent controversies around AI, there is the claim that to solve a longstanding mathematical problem, OpenAI stole the work of the New York University mathematician Tristan Buckmaster and a colleague, Levent Alpöge, who also is a researcher for Anthropic. I have no ability to assess the validity of the claim, but as I understand it, the argument is that OpenAI had access to work done by Buckmaster and Alpöge. It then built on this work to quickly rush ahead and find a solution, which also had a $1 million prize attached to it.

Insofar as that accurately describes what OpenAI did, this seems like it would be equivalent to having a professor doing a seminar for colleagues and then having one of the attendees do a few additions and claim the work as their own. This would not be viewed as very collegial behavior in a normal academic department.

I’m not sure what claim a professor would have against a colleague under such circumstances. I suppose if their work was properly cited, there would not be a claim of plagiarism. (OpenAI’s work did not directly cite the work of Buckmaster and Alpöge, from my understanding.) I suppose there could be a basis for disputing rights to the million-dollar prize. But the problem seems much greater.

If AI can effectively steal the work of others, and claim it as its own, then it undermines the practice of openness in science that has allowed for enormous progress for centuries. This practice depended on norms, whereby scientists would properly credit the work of their peers.

In the seminar scenario I described, if one of the attendees listened to the presentation and realized the one or two additional steps needed to get over the goal line, they would be expected to raise the issue with the presenter. Assuming the additions were correct, the presenter would finish the paper, acknowledging the contribution or possibly adding the attendee as a co-author, if their contribution was sufficiently important.

But that relies on norms. If the owner of the AI doesn’t share those norms and can freely scrape scientific work wherever it finds it, and then take credit for the product, it will threaten the longstanding practice of openness in science. With the risk of having years of work stolen without getting any credit, researchers will likely keep their work closely held until they have a finished paper.1 They would only share it with a small group of trusted colleagues. Posting a working paper, or having an open seminar, would put control over their work at risk.

However, it is important to recognize the villain in this story. It is Sam Altman and his company, not the AI. Altman and the company are the ones responsible for what their AI does. If it did something they disapprove of, it is their responsibility to correct it. However adept AI may become, it is not the active player; it is the individual or company that set it in motion.

This issue applies more generally. There has been a social media mini firestorm over Texas Attorney General and Republican Senate candidate Ken Paxton using AI to have his opponent, James Talarico, making a series of outlandish statements that he never said. Much of the outrage seems to be over Paxton using AI, rather than the fact that he is lying about what Talarico said.

The issue here is that Paxton is defaming Talarico; the AI is secondary. The AI presumably makes the defamation more effective, but if Paxton were an exceptionally gifted mimic, he could likely also trick some people into believing that he was speaking in Talarico’s voice when making outlandish assertions. If that were the case, it would be every bit as bad as using AI to accomplish the job.

There were also the claims that the girls’ school in Iran, which was destroyed by the US military on the first day of the war, killing 120 children, was selected as a target by AI. That may be the case, but the important point was that the military did not have a system in place to properly review targets. It doesn’t matter whether or not an AI system identified the target. The problem was that there was no system that ensured the places designated were proper military targets.

It is important to keep our eyes on the ball. The bad actors are those who do bad things with AI, not the AI. This is like the husband who gets drunk and beats his wife and then says the whiskey did it. No one should ever accept that story. In the same vein, if a theft of mathematical work did occur, it was Sam Altman who did it and it was Ken Paxton who libeled his political opponent. The AI is beside the point.

cross-posted from: https://pixelfed.ca/p/reef/1003955750309063798

I like to watch the boats in the evening along Vancouver's waters

@vancouver@lemmy.ca

#vancouver #cityscape #citylife #evening #eveninglight #eveningsky #night #boat #mountains #ocean #peaceful #blue

https://quack.social/notes/ao0fm61pz498014q