Archive: March 10, 2023

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Iditarod day five (along the Yukon)

Friday,  03/10/23  10:34 PM

So we have reached the Yukon in the 2023 Iditarod - there are sort of five phases to this race: the Alaska range, the vast middle, the Yukon, the race to the coast, and Norton Sound.  At this point we're passed the halfway point, everyone has taken their "24", and we can see the race shaking out.  Here the view from the Flow Tracker:

Brent Sass appears to have a nice lead - he's the first one into Eagle Island, and is now resting 27 miles ahead of Richie Diehl, Ryan Redington, Kelly Maixner, and Pete Kaiser - but look at the 24/8 column - he has not taken his "8" yet.  (Neither has Kelly, nor Mille Porsild who is 6th on the trail.)  This means he's actually behind all of them except Kelly.  He'll have to take his 8 in Eagle or Kaltag, and when he does, they'll pass him.  Right now it look like a toss up between Richie, Ryan, and Pete, but don't count out Jessie Holmes or Nic Petit either (yes, the Iditarod tracker is having a problem, you can see the statuses for both of them are way old).  So ... stay tuned!

Some pics:

This is Jesse Holmes, enjoying the five-course meal he earned by being "first to the Yukon"

 

Friday,  03/10/23  10:54 PM

Not feeling that great today - even though good things happened - bear with me here...

DuckDuckGo launches DuckAssist.  "DuckAssist is the first in a series of AI-assisted private search and browser updates. It's free (with no sign-up required!) and available to try today in DuckDuckGo browsers and extensions.‌"  Huh.  AI made Bing more relevant, and now it's making DDG more relevant also.  I will have to try it! 

TechCrunch: If you have more than one business model, you don't have a business model.  And/or, you should figure out which one makes the most sense to your customers.  (Which might mean, you should figure out who are your customers.) 

I'm going to skip right over the release of the video footage from the Jan 6 "riots", which many have cast as an "insurrection".  For me the videos speak pretty loudly.  Equally evocative is those who drew different conclusions scrambling to explain. 

New Neo: DeSantis and those book bans.  "During a briefing on Florida’s supposed 'book banning,' DeSantis didn't just rhetorically defend his state’s measures to remove pornographic material from schools. He actually showed what was being removed on live television. That forced the same news organizations that have criticized him to have to cut their feeds."  Love it. 

Daring Fireball: Jason Kottke: Augmented reality ski goggles.  This makes so much sense because you're wearing goggles already.  A great entry point.  I guess cycling glasses will be next.  (Oakley?) 


Interesting: what the Oscars can teach us about ranked choice voting.  "This Sunday, March 12, millions of Americans will tune into the 95th Academy Awards. They may be watching for the red carpet fashion, or host Jimmy Kimmel’s stand-up, or to see whether “Everything Everywhere All at Once” or “Top Gun: Maverick” will be crowned Best Picture. They'll also be getting a lesson in better elections."  Winner-takes-all can definitely be improved-upon when there are multiple candidates. 


Excellent: Lilium e-VTOL achieves new top-speed in test flight.  (VTOL = vertical take-off and landing, aka, no runway needed.)  Now that we no longer have to worry about 140 characters, can we now have flying cars? 


Elon Musk’s criticism about ChatGPT’s “woke” nature gets response from OpenAI co-founder.  "We made a mistake: The system we implemented did not reflect the values we intended to be in there. And I think we were not fast enough to address that. And so I think that’s a legitimate criticism of us."  That's a good answer, but will they change?  I doubt it. 


Relativity Space scrubs first attempt to launch Terran 1.  Rooting for them, space is hard.  But so great to have multiple private companies building rockets! 


Yay: Ted Lasso returns with a stronger, more-focused third season.  Well we'll be the judges of that, but we enjoyed season one a lot.  Staying tuned! 


Big news!  There is now a yellow iPhone 14!  Boy, the innovation coming from Apple is breathtaking, right? 

I did have a yellow iPhone X and loved it; was great having a phone literally nobody else had, and nobody else had even heard about.  But that was then.  Not sure I'm motivated now.  I have a graphite iPhone 12 Pro... and no desire to upgrade.  Not even for yellow :)

 
 

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