gravelc

The fact the incident occurred in June and OpenAI only notified the Australian government on September 10 is a major issue. Hacking a nation-state's universal healthcare system is about as serious as it gets, yet OpenAI seem quite relaxed about the whole thing (presuming they have known about it for some time).

I've been on a GloBird plan with 3 free hours for a while. Works out very well as I have a 20 KWH battery and solar. Costs about $15 a month to run the house inc. cooking, heating/cooling, hot water, and charging my PHEV. To make the best of these sorts of plans you need to be home during that period and/or have a decent battery/inverter.

Tried this to see how it goes in my particular field - computational design of RNAi-based biopesticides. One-shotted a design for targeting the DvSnf7 transcript of western corn rootworm. It took a fairly naive approach (maybe how a 1st year PhD student would go about it), but got the job done. Also noted caveats with its approach (e.g. using mammalian design rules, limited off-target screening). Not bad really. But also not great. When its flaws were pointed out, the AI determined that it could have taken a more informed approach. Then Opus 4.8's safety system flagged the session.

The 'Ask Reason for Calling' iPhone feature has completely eliminated scam calls for me. Real callers not in contacts leave a short message and I pick it up. Best iOS feature from the last few years IMO.

Pesticides form the backbone of crop protection. Without them, we're looking at at least a 40% reduction in global yield, and much greater uncertainty in food supply chains (the oil shocks show how bad that can be). Pesticides per se are not the problem; synthetic broad-spectrum pesticides with many unintended effects are. They're often toxic to people and ecosystems, and resistance among pests and pathogens is increasing anyway, so their days are numbered to a degree. Biopesticides, which are generally safer and much more sustainable, offer a real solution to at least the safety issue.

I work on RNAi-based biopesticides (sprayed dsRNA) - non-GM, doesn't impact beneficial species, doesn't hang around in the environment, etc. Already ubiquitous in nature (and part of our diet). Peptide-based biopesticides are another approach that is going well. Both approaches are now commercialised by smaller players (e.g. for varroa mite control in bee hives by GreenLight), and not by the Bayer, Syngenta types.

I had a Merida Magnesium 909 road bike back in the day. They were common in Australia. Was (wrongly) convinced magnesium was going to overtake carbon. Never had any issues in 10 years of ownership and a lot of kms. Welds looked shocking and it was very rigid and unforgiving though.

Surprised Australia isn't much higher given the incidence of melanoma.

Exactly what I was going to write. Why not at least demo the AVP before writing a whole article?

Some fungi require dead organic matter for survival - necrotrophs. Many dont (e.g. yeast)

Sceptical of this. Where did that number come from? What's the uncertainty? Yes, it's an extremely unlikely event, but unlikely events happen all the time. There's just as good an argument that given the advantages conferred by the union, it's bound to be successful given enough iterations.

It's common enough in sheep grazing areas.

I grew up in Australia with mutton making up 90% of my meat intake, as we slaughtered our own merino wethers (so not the breeds of lamb raised for eating).

The local butchers would also have a decent stock of different cuts, particularly things like neck chops for stews. Numbers of sheep around are lower now, so that may have limited things a little.

I also think hogget is equally as or more common than lamb in city butchers. Some of those chops are huge and have a nice tang.

As usual, the manuscript itself is a bit more discrete than the press release, but this sentence in the conclusion shows the potential benefits - scalable and practical resetting of somatic stem cells, which has been a barrier in translation to actual therapies:

- "Our work shows that TNT reprogramming is a practical and scalable approach to overcome these intrinsic characteristics of hiPS cells, which is important for the clinical delivery of this technology."