Tootfinder

US-Regierung will Alibaba, Baidu und BYD als „chinesische Militärfirmen“ listen
Die US-Regierung führt eine Liste mit Unternehmen, die Chinas Militär helfen. Darauf sollten auch Alibaba, Baidu und BYD stehen, meint das Pentagon jetzt.

Day 30: Elizabeth Moon
This last spot (somehow 32 days after my last post, but oh well) was a tough decision, but Moon brings us full circle back to fantasy/sci-fi, and also back to books I enjoyed as a teenager. Her politics don't really match up to Le Guin or Jemisin, but her military experience make for books that are much more interesting than standard fantasy fare in terms of their battles & outcomes (something "A Song of Ice and Fire" achieved by cribbing from history but couldn't extrapolate nearly as well). I liked (and still mostly like) her (unironically) strong female protagonists, even if her (especially more recent) forays into "good king" territory leave something to be desired. Still, in Paksenarion the way we get to see the world from a foot-soldier's perspective before transitioning into something more is pretty special and very rare in fantasy (I love the elven ruins scene as Paks travels over the mountains as an inflection point). Battles are won or lost on tactics, shifting politics, and logistics moreso than some epic magical gimmick, which is a wonderful departure from the fantasy norm.
Her work does come with a content warning for rape, although she addresses it with more nuance and respect than any male SF/F author of her generation. Ex-evangelicals might also find her stuff hard to read, as while she's against conservative Christianity, she's very much still a Christian and that makes its way into her writing. Even if her (not bad but not radical enough) politics lead her writing into less-satisfying places at times, part of my respect for her comes from following her on Twitter for a while, where she was a pretty decent human being...
Overall, Paksenarrion is my favorite of her works, although I've enjoyed some of her sci-fi too and read the follow-up series. While it inherits some of Tolkien's baggage, Moon's ability to deeply humanize her hero and depict a believable balance between magic being real but not the answer to all problems is great.
I've reached 30 at this point, and while I've got more authors on my shortlist, I think I'll end things out tomorrow with a dump of also-rans rather than continuing to write up one per day. I may even include a man or two in that group (probably with at least non-{white cishet} perspective). Honestly, doing this challenge I first thought that sexism might have made it difficult, but here at the end I'm realizing that ironically, the misogyny that holds non-man authors to a higher standard means that (given plenty have still made it through) it's hard to think of male authors who compare with this group.
Looking back on the mostly-male authors of SF/F in my teenage years, for example, I'm now struggling to think of a single one whose work I'd recommend to my kids (having cheated and checked one of my old lists, Pratchett, Jaques, and Asimov qualify but they're outnumbered by those I'm now actively ashamed to admit I enjoyed). If I were given a choice between reading only non-men or non-woman authors for the rest of my life (yes I'm giving myself enby authors as a freebie; they're generally great) I'd very easily choose non-men. I think the only place where (to my knowledge) not enough non-men authors have been allowed through to outshine the fields of male mediocrity yet is in videogames sadly. I have a very long list of beloved games and did include some game designers here, but I'm hard-pressed to think of many other non-man game designers I'd include in the genuinely respect column (I'll include at least two tomorrow but might cheat a bit).
TL;DR: this was fun and you should do it too.
#30AuthorsNoMen

I'm in a good mood today! Woke up at 4:30am with a bit of leg pain but took Tylenol and used a heating pad right away. I was able to lie in bed for 3 hours and the pain was only mild. Finally got out of bed and was dealing with minimal pain.
It's been well over a week since I've had this little pain when getting out of bed in the morning. I was able to do my morning stuff just fine. I even made pizza dough.
The next test will be trying to get some desk work done. (And…

There had been a patent on mask ROMs and it finally expired just a few months ago.
https://patents.google.com/patent/US20050254280A1/en

👶 Body illusion helps unlock memories, new study finds
#memory

Body illusion helps unlock memories, new study finds
New research has discovered that briefly altering how we perceive our own body can help unlock autobiographical memories—potentially even those from the early stages of childhood.

I was just thinking about how the fact that #Musk named his AI "Grok" is evidence that he "reads sci-fi" in the same way he "plays video games." Like, he claims to do it but when it comes time to show the evidence it's clear he does not actually "grok" it.
Like... To grok something is to have a layer deeper than simply knowledge, but mathematically encoding statistical relationships between words is pretty obviously not even understanding much less qualifying as "groking" it. In the book, the ability to grok something is also the ability to annihilate that thing with a thought. Just pretending that an LLM actually *was* something that could become AGI (which it's not), this name would imply the AI would have the power to annihilate reality. That's bad. That's a bad name for an AI.
And why would a greedy fascist name something of his after something an anarchist communist space Jesus taught to the hippie cult he started? There are so many layers of facepalm to this. It's some kind of php-esque fractal of incompetence.
Like, there's no reason to talk about this but my brain does this to me sometimes and now it's your problem.

Sources: Alibaba and ByteDance are among the top Chinese companies training their latest LLMs in Southeast Asian data centers to access Nvidia's AI chips (Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/96fe9898-a3a4-4a33-be1d-da06bdb6cb2b

This Is What Happens To Your Body After Eating Beets #nutrition

This Is What Happens To Your Body After Eating Beets
Discover what happens after eating beets and how this earthy root boosts blood flow, fights inflammation, and energizes your cells.

Inside OpenAI's deals with Nvidia, Oracle, and AMD, in which Sam Altman largely relied on his executive team, with little input from outside advisors (Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/967b0d78-62df-4eea-a441-8ce3a5d03564

Meta and TikTok say they will comply with Australia's under-16 social media ban, taking effect on December 10, but warn the landmark law may be hard to enforce (Agence France-Presse)
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20251028…

Meta and TikTok to obey Australia under-16 social media ban
Tech giants Meta and TikTok said Tuesday they will obey Australia's under-16 social media ban but warned the landmark laws could prove difficult to enforce.