Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

PJ @pjarvis.bsky.social · 18h

I guess that's why there's a sudden rash of "If you don't understand bonds, you don't understand money" videos on YouTube ... Someone is paying financial influencers to "prime" the public for buying debt.

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Ed Newton-Rex @ednewtonrex.bsky.social · 1d

There’s a good chance the British Prime Minister’s main adviser on AI is an OpenAI shareholder - but the government refuses to say whether she is.

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t0ussaint @t0ussaint.bsky.social · Aug 30

"Add it all up, and time is not on the data center's side. The finance guru estimates that the 'AI datacenters to be built in 2025 will suffer $40 billion of annual depreciation, while generating somewhere between $15 and $20 billion of revenue.'" #econsky futurism.com/data-centers...

There's a Stunning Financial Problem With AI Data Centers

Given the rate at which tech companies are spending on data centers, current revenues would have to increase ten-fold just to break even.

futurism.com

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Tom Gauld @tomgauld.bsky.social · 1d

My latest @newscientist.com cartoon.

p.s. my new book of science cartoons 'Physics for Cats' is out now! Order from your local bookshop or online: www.tomgauld.com

Panel 1. Two scientists walking along. The first one says: I have opened a portal into an alternate universe that is an exact reflection of our own!

Panel 2. The second scientist looks into a technical portal and says WOW

Panel 3. A reflection of panel two. The reflected scientist's speech bubble still reads: WOW

Panel 4. A reflection of panel one. The text is all back to front.

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Alec Luhn @alecluhn.bsky.social · 2d

Drax received logs from cutblocks in BC containing 90% old growth forest, a Canadian investigation found.
So it’s receiving £2m a day in UK green energy subsidies to burn old growth forest 🤔 www.theguardian.com/business/202...

Drax still burning 250-year-old trees sourced from forests in Canada, experts say

Exclusive: report by Stand.earth says subsidiary of power plant received truckloads of whole logs at biomass pellet sites

www.theguardian.com

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John C. Baez @johncarlosbaez.bsky.social · 4d

When you repeatedly measure the positions of over a billion stars so accurately that you can see a star moving by an amount equal to the size of a pinhead on the Moon, as seen from Earth... you find amazing things!

It's great.

mathstodon.xyz/@johncarlosb...

John Carlos Baez (@[email protected])

Holy crap! The Gaia space telescope is expected to find 120,000 ± 22,000 planets orbiting other stars! Most will be super-Jupiters, because those are the easiest to find. But we'll know much more ...

mathstodon.xyz

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Simon Pegg @simonpegg.bsky.social · 5d

This story.
Bloody hell.

www.sheffieldtribune.co.uk/a-london-law...

A London lawyer bought hundreds of Sheffield freeholds. Then the ‘very aggressive’ letters arrived

Exclusive: The Tribune can reveal that Andrew Milne has threatened leaseholders with high court action. It ‘broke my heart’ one woman says

www.sheffieldtribune.co.uk

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Andy Arthur💃🏰⚓🦌 Threadinburgh 🧵 @threadinburgh.scot · 6d

🔥 Bonfire in the Grassmarket, 1952.
Not for the 5th of November, but for Victoria Day, Edinburgh's discretionary local public holiday, traditionally held on the last Monday in May on or before her birthday on the 24th.

Black and white photo showing a crowd around a large bonfire on a street paved with setts. In the background are tall tenement flats.

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PJ @pjarvis.bsky.social · 7d

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PJ @pjarvis.bsky.social · 7d

2038 seemed forever away when we were patching for y2k, now it's not so far (and I'm old).

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LaurieWired @lauriewired.bsky.social · 7d

You’ve heard of the Unix 2038 Problem. 

I bet you haven’t heard of the GPS 2038 problem. 

Every GPS navigation device in existence experiences an integer overflow every 19.6 years. 

Last time, it wiped out iPhones, NOAA weather buoys, and a number of flights in China:

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spurtle.bsky.social @spurtle.bsky.social · 8d

CROSSED LINES, INTENSE PRESSURE, SPURTLE DERAILED.—Reader's letter: www.broughtonspurtle.org.uk/letters/cros...
#Edinburgh #hyperlocal #news #railwayhistory

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PJ @pjarvis.bsky.social · 10d

Yes and we can fit a wide variety of tooling to cover pretty much any task. We also have specialist saturation divers onboard who can work down to 200m water depth which covers most of the North sea (it's shallower than people think).

PJ @pjarvis.bsky.social · 10d

Bit of both, I don't have any involvement in the finance side but i believe there's some kind of government fund to do with decommissioning work as well as from the operator.

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PJ @pjarvis.bsky.social · 10d

It would eventually rust to pieces I guess (and leak). They do last a long time (we've worked on some that were installed in the 1970's) they use cathodic protection to help with corrosion but it would get them eventually. They're plugged, cemented, cut and pulled. Takes a while for each one.

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PJ @pjarvis.bsky.social · 10d

Not ours, but it's a better picture than I have to hand. Typical ROV used with a pair of robot arms. About the size of a mid sized car for scale.

A Schilling UHD Remote Operated Vehicle (ROV) in yellow and grey. It has a couple of robot arms mounted at the front.

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PJ @pjarvis.bsky.social · 10d

Yes, although a lot of the assets (wells) aren't directly below the rigs. They can be spread out for miles around and tied back via pipeline. It all has to come out so it's going to take a fair while (should see out my career anyway!) Everything has to be completely removed.

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PJ @pjarvis.bsky.social · 10d

Launched overboard from a ship, we're decommissioning oil and gas assets in the North Sea mostly (I'm out there right now). I do still get to pilot now and then although mostly supervise now.

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PJ @pjarvis.bsky.social · 10d

Yeah and it's amazing I never seem to be on shift for that one! We just do it here, no extra and no half and half split between shifts.

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PJ @pjarvis.bsky.social · 10d

I'm on 6/6 nights and had to do the 13 hour shift last week over here, somewhat bitter about it, mostly because I'm always on it and never seem to get the other side of the deal heh.

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PJ @pjarvis.bsky.social · 10d

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Captain Howdy @captainhowdy.bsky.social · 10d

There can't be many TV series that are invariably listed as "political thriller" which also happen to be an ecological warning wrapped in a detective story about a good man who's done a bad thing in a world where the mystical and paranormal coexist.

Susie M @wrathofgodherself.bsky.social · 10d

BBCFOUR tonight (and onwards) is showing the original series Edge of Darkness - please book your seat now.. www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/epis...

Edge of Darkness - Series 1: 1. Compassionate Leave

Thriller set in a world of obsessive state security. Ronald Craven is haunted by the murder of his daughter and begins his own investigation into her death.

www.bbc.co.uk

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PJ @pjarvis.bsky.social · 12d

"Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.

- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide.

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Charlie Warzel @cwarzel.bsky.social · 12d

so @matteowong.bsky.social & I wrote on data centers: arguably the most important buildings in the world & are, in a way, holding the economy hostage. Byzantine financial instruments, private equity, depreciating tech, hype, $trillion valuations. it’s all there. an ai crash prob starts here.

Here’s How the AI Crash Happens

The U.S. is becoming an Nvidia-state.

www.theatlantic.com

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PJ @pjarvis.bsky.social · 13d

Watch out for the statues...

A Weeping Angel stone statue covering its eyes with its hands, from the TV series Doctor Who.

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