Mary Branscombe
@marypcbuk.bsky.social
Omnivorous technology journalist. girl with the USB earring; author of the Cassidy At Large technomysteries. Like my writing? Buy me a ☕ https://ko-fi.com/marybranscombe. she/her. Warning: contains opinions. signal marypcbuk.44
you think my celium on religious allegory should be higher?
November 29, 2025 at 6:45 PM
you think my celium on religious allegory should be higher?
one year of all of one hyperscaler's data centre water use is one day of a paper mill's water use, so we could do it in terms of hamburger wrappers
November 29, 2025 at 6:41 PM
one year of all of one hyperscaler's data centre water use is one day of a paper mill's water use, so we could do it in terms of hamburger wrappers
you don't think the use of transformers is the defining characteristic of genAI?
November 29, 2025 at 6:39 PM
you don't think the use of transformers is the defining characteristic of genAI?
Reposted by Mary Branscombe
Another fun case:
The algorithms we used to find the Higgs are the same we use to find fraudulent financial transactions.
The algorithms we used to find the Higgs are the same we use to find fraudulent financial transactions.
November 29, 2025 at 5:39 PM
Another fun case:
The algorithms we used to find the Higgs are the same we use to find fraudulent financial transactions.
The algorithms we used to find the Higgs are the same we use to find fraudulent financial transactions.
Reposted by Mary Branscombe
A collaborator and mentor of mine used anomaly detection (homegrown models ofc) with x-rays to find manufacturing defects in munitions to prevent things like factories from exploding. Used similar tech for detecting infections in histopathology slides, bringing path to communities w/o access
November 29, 2025 at 5:40 PM
A collaborator and mentor of mine used anomaly detection (homegrown models ofc) with x-rays to find manufacturing defects in munitions to prevent things like factories from exploding. Used similar tech for detecting infections in histopathology slides, bringing path to communities w/o access
we all want to forget about it, the breadth of the impact on cognition has been underrepresented in popular coverage, we're not longer smart enough as a species to spot how much harm we've done to ourselves... pick your favourite answer!
November 29, 2025 at 6:25 PM
we all want to forget about it, the breadth of the impact on cognition has been underrepresented in popular coverage, we're not longer smart enough as a species to spot how much harm we've done to ourselves... pick your favourite answer!
is that Their Party or Someone Else's Party?
November 29, 2025 at 6:24 PM
is that Their Party or Someone Else's Party?
SpaceX uses hardened AMD Vercel kit with Linux plus a separate real-time OS underneath and I just imagined if Tesla ever made flying cars and my heart just about stopped at how many corners there are to cut there...
November 29, 2025 at 6:22 PM
SpaceX uses hardened AMD Vercel kit with Linux plus a separate real-time OS underneath and I just imagined if Tesla ever made flying cars and my heart just about stopped at how many corners there are to cut there...
so there's a lot of interest in how to get newer, faster, cheaper COTS stuff into space, which also makes it easier for developers to use because familiar/easier to buy two for local testing etc...
November 29, 2025 at 6:22 PM
so there's a lot of interest in how to get newer, faster, cheaper COTS stuff into space, which also makes it easier for developers to use because familiar/easier to buy two for local testing etc...
it's bigger and slower because it's previous generation because hardening takes time and uses more area for redundancy, bigger to reduce the chance of damage a critical bit, and modern 3D stacking makes it more vulnerable. 3D stacked flash memory doubles as a particle detector for radiation!
November 29, 2025 at 6:22 PM
it's bigger and slower because it's previous generation because hardening takes time and uses more area for redundancy, bigger to reduce the chance of damage a critical bit, and modern 3D stacking makes it more vulnerable. 3D stacked flash memory doubles as a particle detector for radiation!
the mission critical stuff is often FPGAs that can be reprogrammed if damaged by radiation or hardened PowerPC with physical redundancy or voting systems that run everything on 3 devices and compare or a mix of all three (there are other 'mitigations' used as well; but the radhard stuff falls behind
November 29, 2025 at 6:22 PM
the mission critical stuff is often FPGAs that can be reprogrammed if damaged by radiation or hardened PowerPC with physical redundancy or voting systems that run everything on 3 devices and compare or a mix of all three (there are other 'mitigations' used as well; but the radhard stuff falls behind
I just spent a month digging into compute in space and there's going to be a whole chapter in the State of the Edge report, but 1 the compute that runs the spacecraft/satellite and 2 the compute that runs the workload/experiments are separate and often use totally different hardware
November 29, 2025 at 6:22 PM
I just spent a month digging into compute in space and there's going to be a whole chapter in the State of the Edge report, but 1 the compute that runs the spacecraft/satellite and 2 the compute that runs the workload/experiments are separate and often use totally different hardware
not enough high profile trials of cult members
November 29, 2025 at 6:11 PM
not enough high profile trials of cult members
not enough people read John Brunner...
November 29, 2025 at 6:03 PM
not enough people read John Brunner...
15 series (in Italian with subtitles): they might be on Acorn, they're certainly on Amazon Prime. and when you run out you could try Magdelan Nabb's Marshall Guarnaccia books set in Florence or Donna Leon's Commissario Brunetti books set in Venice (which also have food in)
Watch Detective Montalbano | Prime Video
Murder, betrayal, office politics, temptation... it's all in a day's work for Detective Salvo Montalbano. The series stars Luca Zingaretti and is based on the best-selling mystery novels by Andrea Camilleri. Filmed in the historic Sicilian province of Ragusa, these nostalgic stories of life, love and loss come from Camilleri's memories of his childhood hometown.
www.amazon.com
November 29, 2025 at 6:01 PM
15 series (in Italian with subtitles): they might be on Acorn, they're certainly on Amazon Prime. and when you run out you could try Magdelan Nabb's Marshall Guarnaccia books set in Florence or Donna Leon's Commissario Brunetti books set in Venice (which also have food in)