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Iditarod day two

Tuesday,  03/07/23  08:21 AM

Hi all, an early update today as I'll be out working later (yeah, working as in an office, how weird :)...

Here's a look at the tracker* as of "now":

We can see Nic Petit has just made it into Nikolai after a long run through what most feel is the worst section of the trail.  Congrats to him.  It was a long run and he'll need a long rest, but it does put him in the [still early] lead.  For me Brent Sass is still the favorite - he took a long rest around mile 216 and so he has more gas in the tank, his average of 9.0 is still the fastest, and his rest/run mix is only 59%.  I would add Jessie Holmes to the leaders, based on the long rest he took at mile 221.  Ryan Reddington is probably going to be next into Nikolai and he did take a rest at mile 207 so he's also in the mix.

Next group would include Kelly Maixner and Riche Diehl, both seemingly running well.  At this point in the race the truism is true; you can't win it here, but you can lose it.  Interesting to note the rest/run mix of the "leaders" is higher in the top 20, 60%+ instead of 50%+.  That might mean their teams are in better shape, or it could be they're burning matches.  I feel like Peter Kaiser and Mille Porsild have fallen back a bit.  But stay tuned!

Some pics:

resting at Finger Lake
the lack of "crowds" in the early checkpoints is most apparent this year

Jason Mackey and team

from Mille Porsild - view of the trail from Rohn to Nikolai
"the first 20 miles out of Rohn has some of the consistently worst trail of the whole race"

* I've posted links to the tracker in a few places - if you're new here, welcome! - and thanks for your "thank you" emails ...

 

Tuesday,  03/07/23  08:59 PM

Today was rather fun; spent it in a business meeting!  In person!  First time since ... well I can't quite remember.  My then-company Teladoc stopped working in person in March 2020, and never really went back; there were a few in person meetings, but they were rather contrived.  Anyway, it was fun.  Definitely no longer the norm.

Percent change in state populations, July 2021 - July 2022.  Interesting.  (Note: Don Surber headlines this "the national divorce has begun", which is perhaps a bit overblown.  But no doubt there is a blue -> red migration under way.) 

[I looked at this chart again and the colors are, um, backward; perhaps correctly the US Census didn't do politics, but the red shading indicates states losing people, and they're actually "blue" politically - e.g. California, New York, and Illinois - while the blue shading shows states which are gaining people, and they're "red" politically - e.g. Texas and Florida.]

In Los Angeles Speech, DeSantis Warns America Must Choose Between California and Florida.  "Your governor is very concerned about what we're doing in Florida, so I figured I had to come by.'"  Looks like some people are voting with their feet. 

Mathematicians roll the dice and get Rock-Paper-Scissors.  I don't know about you, but non-transitive dice bother me.  They should not exist :) 

Dave Winer: new rule: idiots get muted.  Assholes are blocked.  Okay, but who decides?  This is the problem. 

Wow: Teladoc Health, which runs BetterHelp, settles with the FTC for $7.8M and agrees to stop sharing data with Meta, Snap, and other companies for ad purposes.  Assume the data being shared were demographics, not individual patient records, but still... 


Liron Shapira: the goalposts are moving at warp speed.  Note the things considered "nowhere near solved" in Jan 2021.  Of course, one might argue something like "human-level general intelligence" will never be "solved", but at this point "nowhere near" does not feel correct. 

A great example of slanted reporting: this algorithm could ruin your life.  The city of Rotterdam is analyzing demographics to determine welfare fraud risk.  Of course.  And they're using AI algorithms to do so.  Of course.  And yes, some demographic categories have higher risk.  

BTW Wired re-headlined this article "inside the suspicion machine".  Better.

I'm unimpressed with Wired lately.  They are entitled to their point of  view, but it's often not deeply analyzed or supported, and hence, uninteresting.


So impressive: Stolz speed.  Yes, you must watch, and yes, you will not regret it.  Speedskating has to be one of the most beautiful sports to watch. 

Also: the thighs have it.  Better longer video.


Check it out: the Rogue Amoeba blog celebrates the company's 20th anniversary with the MacOS screenshot library.  All those great UIs.  Hen3ry will love it :) 

As you know, I agree entirely with John Gruber: "I really miss UI design that made controls obvious. Clear affordances. All buttons obviously buttons, all text input fields obviously text input fields. Pop-up menus that are obviously pop-up menus (today’s MacOS 13 is chock full of pop-up menus that only reveal themselves at pop-ups when you hover over them). 20 years ago we bent over backwards to make the purpose of every control as obvious as possible; the style today is to make everything look like flat static text."  Sigh. 

Onward ... into a day of ... working from home :)

 

 
 

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