@Sustainable2050@mastodon.energy2026-10-14 05:12:51
No, the drought isn't over yet. Despite some rain here in the Netherlands in recent weeks, the water flow in the Rhine is still in record low territory: around 600 m³/s, less than half of the normal flow in autumn. This keeps drawing groundwater away too.
https://waterberichtgeving.rws.nl/owb/
@chrisnelder@mastodon.energy2026-10-14 16:50:14
RE: https://mastodon.energy/@transitiontimes/117440288401734104
By popular demand, this episode is built on a lecture I gave at Oxford three years ago, and subsequently around the world. It’s time to learn how to fight the fossil fuel industry and …
@nemorosa@mastodon.nu2026-10-11 13:58:23
#WordWeavers 11 Oct: Share a passage from your WIP where the setting is doing as much storytelling as the characters.
This is a passage from 'Management Apologises for the Inconvenience':
#thementalmansion
@pre@boing.world2026-10-13 23:30:16
They tell me that Open AI have solved four hundred previously open maths problems this week.
The news media, and even the mathematicians, seem quite credulous about it.
No way to know how many of those will really stand up in the end. Lots of proofs turn out not to be really proofs coz they have a mistake, and AI is quite good at discovering mistakes as well as now apparently discovering maths.
Some of them are counter-examples that prove the conjecture is false and those are gonna be good at last. Machines can check it.
Some have other types of mechanical machine-checkable proof, which is interesting in that we can all believe the checker-machine: coz it's deterministic and understandable.
We can't trust the machine that isn't deterministic or understandable as much though.
GPT says these things are true. Now maths people have to check, because OpenAI staff aren't expert mathematicians either, mostly.
Some of the 400 proofs will fall, I'm sure.
How many tokens will be spent before machines find the flaws that are surely still there? How many tokens until you decide to stop?
But if a machine can prove a thing to itself, but not explain it to any person, is it really doing maths? Even if it's correct more often than people are? Or is doing maths more about making meat understand a thing?
🤔
I'm sure I can't tell if the proofs are true or not. No point me reading them. Mostly won't even understand the question. The boundary of my meager meat-mind's maths-understanding was around barely-degree level.
Can the academic discipline continue as one which is devoted mostly to trying to understand the output of a machine writing about maths, which is mostly right but nobody can really tell without an entire academic discipline trying to check.
In other words, mathematicians now also face a spam problem familiar to many github project leads.
#ai #maths
@ellie@ellieayla.net2026-10-11 05:16:06
If I had to be in Utrecht for a 2-3 day conference next year, could I stay at hostels for cheap? Is that a thing? Can I rent a bicycle as a forigner and toot around the little towns for a few days afterward?
#askfedi #netherlands #hostel
@cdarwin@c.im2026-10-31 23:11:27
Tokyo’s TeamLab, creator of popular immersive art wonderlands, to open SoCal location
TeamLab,
the Japan-born, tech-heavy immersive art collective,
is plotting its first permanent U.S. exhibition in Anaheim.
The group, stylized as teamLab, is moving into a 110,000-square-foot space at OCVibe,
the 100-acre mixed-use entertainment district currently in development near the Honda Center.
Details are scant, as the TeamLab spot is not estimated to open until…
@Mediagazer@mstdn.social2026-10-29 16:15:52
Memo: People Inc. is laying off 195 employees, or ~6% of its headcount, mostly in print and legacy web, and says it has added 320 employees so far in 2026 (Mark Stenberg/Adweek)
https://www.adweek.com/media/people-inc-lays-off-195-employees-around-6-of-h…
@catsche@nrw.social2026-10-10 13:34:37
Ab und zu statte ich unserem seit dem 16.09. gelangweilt beim Händler stehenden neuen Elroq einen Besuch ab. Gestern bemerkte ich einen neuen Zettel hinter der Windschutzscheibe mit meinem und dem Verkäufernamen sowie dem Tag der Anlieferung. 16.09. war ihm wohl selbst zu peinlich, darum hat er den Tag unserer Rückkehr aus dem Urlaub genommen: 05.10.2026.
@pre@boing.world2026-10-14 22:28:48
Watched the Stranger Things theater-play prequel in The Phoenix.
Amazing staging. The lights and projections and choreography and sets were dumbfounding. Whole stage of two dozen people rotating around and pacing about on the rotating stages near made me dizzy.
And that was the best thing about it. Yes.
Had the same mood as the show. Mostly that's music I guess.
I barely remember the Netflix show, only watched two seasons before losing interest. Guess this was all leading up to 11 being born.
Some of our party left early coz the story was so uninspiring but I barely noticed that, being entranced by the spectacle.
#london #strangerThings #theater
@cdarwin@c.im2026-10-31 17:06:54
Pete Hegseth has always assumed that experts are idiots,
believed he’s the smartest guy around,
and as a result ignores them and ends up breaking stuff (and failing in the process).
The entire Trump administration’s motto mirrors Mark Zuckerberg’s adage to
“move fast, break things,”
in this case literally.
Hegseth’s aggression, recklessness and blatant disregard for expertise is nothing new.
When he served as a 1st Lieutenant in Iraq in 2005-2006, …
