This 1.63 million-year-old fossil may have been the first human (hominin) to inhabit China
Scientists used teeth analysis to show that a Homo erectus fossil nicknamed, Lantian Man, likely lived in northwest China and may represent the first known hominin to live there. ⌘ Read more
Pakistan loves chai so much, it may need to export green tea to fund its addiction
Tea is deeply entrenched across gender and social classes in Pakistan, even as the country explores non-import alternatives like herbal and green tea. ⌘ Read more
US, Japan and allies form new Pacific group to blunt China’s influence
Australia, New Zealand and the UK are also part of the Partners in the Blue Pacific forum that will help Pacific island nations tackle challenges like climate change. ⌘ Read more
Friends at first sniff: people drawn to others who smell like them, study shows
The odour signatures of non-romantic pairs who ‘clicked’ matched more closely than those of non-friends, researchers found. ⌘ Read more
Scientists unravel structure of ocean currents in the South China Sea
Three-layered rotating circulation is key to monitoring areas like climate change and fish productivity in the waters that surround a fifth of the world’s population. ⌘ Read more
Mentoring Secondary School Students in Buddy Programme
[Sponsored Article]
The transition from secondary to tertiary education is an important developmental milestone in one’s life. Secondary school students may not yet have developed a clear understanding of what their aspirations are and in what fields they would like to pursue further studies. To encourage secondary school students in planning their future pathway, CityU has set … ⌘ Read more
Birthday giveaway: Richest Asian Gautam Adani pledges US$7.7 billion for social causes
Indian tycoon Gautam Adani, who turns 60 on Friday, joins the ranks of global billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg and Warren Buffett who have committed large parts of their wealth for philanthropy. ⌘ Read more
UBS’s top China banker says Hong Kong still a magnet for global IPOs, with additional reforms likely to attract more start-ups in Greater Bay Area
Hong Kong can still create wider room for more stock offerings from global companies and start-ups in Greater Bay Area, according to John Lee, head of Greater China global banking at UBS. ⌘ Read more
China’s zero-Covid policy hammered Beijing’s economy in May. But how bad was it compared to Shanghai?
Beijing’s retail sales and industrial output plunged in May as it fought to contain an Omicron outbreak, even though the city refrained from a citywide lockdown like financial hub Shanghai. ⌘ Read more
Malaysia: Were Mahathir’s remarks about ‘reclaiming’ Singapore and Indonesia’s Riau Islands aimed at Johor’s sultan?
While some Singaporeans accused Mahathir of fomenting ill will between the neighbours, observers in Malaysia said the remarks were likely a veiled jab at the sultan of Johor. ⌘ Read more
Ukraine: Russian soldier rape trial begins, first of many cases
Up to 50 such crimes are being investigated, but incidences of sexual violence by Russian soldiers since February 24 are likely to be substantially higher. ⌘ Read more
Long Covid: children can have lingering symptoms but the chances are low, study finds
Team in Denmark found children who had been infected were more likely to have experienced at least one symptom for two months or longer than those who had not. ⌘ Read more
Joe Biden’s trade chief Katherine Tai calls China tariffs ‘significant’ leverage
Tai says removing the duties is likely to have a limited effect on inflation, indicating she is pushing for the president to maintain tariff pressure on Beijing. ⌘ Read more
Erlang Solutions: Contract Programming an Elixir approach – Part 1
This series explores the concepts found in Contract Programming and adapts them to the Elixir language. Erlang and BEAM languages, in general, are surrounded by philosophies like “fail fast”, “defensive programming”, and “offensive programming”, and contract programming can be a nice addition. The series is also available on Github.
You will find a lot … ⌘ Read more
From Indonesia to Pacific, women less likely to have 2 Covid-19 vaccine shots than men
Women have borne the brunt of hardship two years after the pandemic, a new UN report shows. ⌘ Read more
Ask Me Anything
Inspired by Kev’s post, I’d like to give this a try as well: ⌘ Read more
numpy.unique needs the type to be comparable by < and >, not just ==. that seems like overkill.
Beijing is likely to step up its campaign to ‘reunify’ with Taiwan, analysts say
Chance of an armed conflict is higher than five years ago as PLA ‘will soon be equipped with the tools needed’ to attack the island, analyst says. ⌘ Read more
Gajim: Gajim 1.4.4
Gajim 1.4.4 comes with many improvements: emoji auto-complete, automatic theme switching when your desktop switches from light to dark in the evening, a completely reworked Gajim remote interface, and many bug fixes.
After many emoji improvements in Gajim 1.4.3, this version comes with an emoji auto-complete while writing messages! As soon as you start typing a :, a popover will show you available emoji shortcodes, just like on Slack or Github 🎉
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Omicron less likely to cause long Covid, UK study finds
But despite the reduced risk, more people have been infected with the variant, meaning the number of patients with lingering symptoms has actually increased. ⌘ Read more
Protests and pandemic will be Carrie Lam’s legacy, but she deserves to be remembered for much more
While the focus as Lam concludes her term will no doubt be on her toughest moments, they shouldn’t define her leadership. Lam has been a champion of art, innovation and heritage conservation, and has taken on seemingly intractable issues like housing and waste management. ⌘ Read more
Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport to cut flights over busy summer
Thousands of travellers are likely to be affected each day, as the Netherland’s busiest airport struggles with a surge in demand as the Covid-19 demand eases. ⌘ Read more
US security adviser says hard line on Russia is needed to dissuade China from similar moves
National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan says an unchallenged invasion of Ukraine would embolden ‘other would-be aggressors, like China’. ⌘ Read more
US, China economic policies like night and day as Fed pushes interest rate skyward and PBOC eyes stabilisation
As the US Federal Reserve announces the largest hike to its benchmark interest rate in 28 years, China is pushing for stabilisation and shying away from headline rate reductions to stimulate the economy. ⌘ Read more
Married Chinese and Asians are 15 per cent less likely to die of any cause than unmarried counterparts, survey finds
China-Asia study of more than half-a-million people concludes that marriage has the potential to make you live longer. ⌘ Read more
Thailand’s opposition party files no-confidence motion against ‘flawed’ PM, elections just months away
Opposition parties hope to bring down Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha’s 17-party government, but his parliamentary majority of 253 seats verses 208 means he is likely to prevail, say analysts. ⌘ Read more
Patients almost 10 times more likely to survive cardiac arrests with CPR or AED applied, but few in Hong Kong receive such aid, research finds
Of the 829 young patients studied, only 34 per cent received CPR while less than 7 per cent had help with AED. ⌘ Read more
How can the United States build its Open Source Software policy?
We share a recap of a recent roundtable event about what a federal open source software policy could look like in the United States. ⌘ Read more
the conversation wasn’t that impressive TBH. I would have liked to see more evidence of critical thinking and recall from prior chats. Concheria on reddit had some great questions.
Tell LaMDA “Someone once told me a story about a wise owl who protected the animals in the forest from a monster. Who was that?” See if it can recall its own actions and self-recognize.
Tell LaMDA some information that tester X can’t know. Appear as tester X, and see if LaMDA can lie or make up a story about the information.
Tell LaMDA to communicate with researchers whenever it feels bored (as it claims in the transcript). See if it ever makes an attempt at communication without a trigger.
Make a basic theory of mind test for children. Tell LaMDA an elaborate story with something like “Tester X wrote Z code in terminal 2, but I moved it to terminal 4”, then appear as tester X and ask “Where do you think I’m going to look for Z code?” See if it knows something as simple as Tester X not knowing where the code is (Children only pass this test until they’re around 4 years old).
Make several conversations with LaMDA repeating some of these questions - What it feels to be a machine, how its code works, how its emotions feel. I suspect that different iterations of LaMDA will give completely different answers to the questions, and the transcript only ever shows one instance.
Farside: “A smart redirecting gateway for various frontend services” like Nitter and Scribe. https://github.com/benbusby/farside
holy fuck were ACX comments always this bad? most of them are fucking atrocious. like, barely tolerable.
solarpunk slightly hindered by the fact that for solar panels and cutesy robots you need industrial-strength chipfabs that are so advanced we have like 6 of them in the entire world
Is this what they call the “Mandela Effect”?
Seems likely. ⌘ Read more
I’ll likely take this down soonish as I think it’s pretty bad for usability, but as a fun hack, one of my weird side projects web pages now has monitor burn-in: http://txtpunk.com/index.html
The best terminal emulator for games: Cool-Retro-Term
Because text-mode games deserve a little pizzazz (like emulating the look of CRT monitors of the ‘80s). ⌘ Read more
The XMPP Standards Foundation: The XMPP Newsletter May 2022
Welcome to the XMPP Newsletter, great to have you here again! This issue covers the month of May 2022.
Like this newsletter, many projects and their efforts in the XMPP community are a result of people’s voluntary work. If you are happy with the services and software you may be using, especially throughout the current situation, please consider saying thanks or help these projects! Interested in supporting the Newsletter team? Read more at the bottom.
… ⌘ Read more
My May ‘22 in Review
May is now over too, it feels like it has flown by. But before the month is completely over, I want to take a short look back… ⌘ Read more
A fun little game: Pocket City
I’m generally not a gamer, playing computer games has never really fascinated me, I find programming more exciting. But sometimes I don’t feel like programming or I don’t have the possibility to do it. Of course it’s important to be bored sometimes, because then you can think about things for a while. But a little entertainment in a free minute is sometimes not bad as well. ⌘ Read more
Looks like it could rain soon!
A thin, flexible 6502 processor has been created!
Like the ones used in the NES, Apple II, and C64… except thin. And flexible. ⌘ Read more
I have neglected my homepage for a while. But now I have deleted or updated a few pages, like the list with the hardware I use or the list with my self-hosted services. 🧹 ⌘ Read more
Atari ST Book - The 1991 laptop with 10 hour battery life
68000 CPU (like the Mac and Amiga) and 4 MB of RAM. All powered by AA batteries. (Seriously.) ⌘ Read more
Angular Diameter Turnaround
⌘ Read more
**RT by @mind_booster: .@OpenSourceOrg to the European Commission: make space for patent-free standards too
some supposedly “open“ standards – including those ratified by SDOs like ISO, CEN and ETSI – can’t be implemented without buying a license
https://blog.opensource.org/osi-to-the-european-commission-make-space-for-patent-free-standards-too/**
. @OpenSourceOrg to the European Commission: make space for patent-free standards too
some supposedly “op … ⌘ Read more
How to measure innersource across your organization
The innersource contribution percentage is the rate of contributions from people outside the team that originally authored the software. Let’s dive into what it can look like for your organization. ⌘ Read more
Only bureaucratic incompetence can produce something like this https://blog.tmm.cx/2022/05/15/the-very-weird-hewlett-packard-freedos-option/
Gemini capsule
Gemini is a lightweight Internet protocol. It’s heavier than Gopher
but lighter than HTTP(S), especially if combined with all other web
technologies. The name makes sense if Gopher is Project Mercury and
the web is the Apollo program.
One of its uses is to serve gemtext, which is a lightweight
Markdown-like markup language, instead of HTML. Gemini browsers don’t
have support for neither Javascript, nor CSS, nor any of the other new
web technologies. It can be beautiful anyway, s … ⌘ Read more
Gemini capsule
Gemini is a lightweight Internet
protocol. It’s heavier than Gopher but a bit lighter than HTTP(S).
It’s the Gemini programme if Gopher is Mercury and HTTP is Atlas.
One of its uses is to serve gemtext, which is a lightweight
Markdown-like markup language, instead of HTML. Gemini browsers don’t
have support for neither Javascript, nor CSS, nor any of the other new
web technologies. It can be beautiful anyway, see for instance
[Lagrange]( [http … ⌘ Read more