gru:Bz

AnandTech shuts down after 27 years

For the past several years it seems as if there has been a trend away from ultimate understanding in content online and towards the tenets of modern mainstream media (sensationalism and the general silliness you see on US cable TV news).

I never read AnandTech but I definitely feel where its founder was coming from when he said this in an interview with The Verge, all the way back in 2011

Black mold, flies and roaches, rancid smells: No wonder Boar’s Head caused a listeria outbreak!

Boar’s Head deli meat was recalled last month after it caused a listeria outbreak that killed at least nine people and sent 57 others to the hospital…A black mold-like substance was seen throughout the room at the wall/concrete junction…Inspectors also found “a green algal growth…dripping over product being held.”

Eww. I always thought Boar’s Head was a super high quality brand but I guess not 🤢

This Is Doom Running on a Diffusion Model

the diffusion model is trained gameplay footage of Doom to produce the next frame based on the frames that came before it and player input.

the development process for video games under this new paradigm might be less costly and more accessible, whereby games could be developed and edited via textual descriptions or examples images.

this feels like the worst kind of use case for ai that would directly affect human game devs o_O

Corn sweat: crop moisture amplifies humidity and heat in US midwest

One acre of corn, which is a little smaller than the size of an American football field, can can create 3,000 to 4,000 gallons of corn sweat, Clark said.

Can confirm. Source: am in Ohio

Former Alaska Airlines pilot who tried to shut down engines in-flight shares his story

On Friday night, the group took psychedelic mushrooms – a drug that can make you hallucinate and typically has effects that last a few hours.

“There was a feeling of being trapped, like, ‘Am I trapped in this airplane and now I’ll never go home?”

One time I ate weed brownies that were too strong and had to call off work the next day. This guy is just fucking crazy lol

Man Spills Blue Cheese in Car, Interior Becomes Covered in Mold Overnight

…the closed car doors and lack of ventilation effectively created a greenhouse for the mold to grow, causing it to spread throughout the entirety of the vehicle, coating it in what looks like white film.

This definitely does not make blue cheese any less repulsive to me 🤢

In ‘Fictional Nature,’ Fabian Knecht Encloses Live Trees and Craggy Stones in a White Cube Gallery

Walk into one of Fabian Knecht’s installations, and you’ll likely smell the dewy, herbal scent of moss and the sweet musk of wood, fragrant evidence of life growing amidst clinical, fluorescent lights and stark walls. Branches, grass, and water features appear as if they’ve been cut to fit the exact dimensions of the gallery and transported from their native habitats into the classic white cube.

What We Learned In Our First Year of 404 Media

A year ago today, we published a blog post called “Welcome to 404 Media.” In that post, we explained that the four of us quit our jobs to start something new, and set some goals for ourselves.

They grow up so fast 🥲🎂

Authors sue Anthropic for copyright infringement over AI training

The complaint, filed on Monday, opens new tab by writers and journalists Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson, said that Anthropic used pirated versions of their works and others to teach Claude to respond to human prompts.

It’s one thing to debate on whether or not it’s okay to train on publicly available data, or the ethics of ignoring Robots.txt but this is a company with billions of dollars in funding, literally pirating books to train AI