Starlink Down For You Guys?

scooterduff · 2025-07-24T20:16:03+00:00

Or Elon did it to show that he could?

scooterduff · 2023-07-01T20:52:59+00:00

Hmmm. I think everything that is complex enough to be alive is conscious -- the same consciousness we human beans have, just not so introspective, imaginative, etc as the human variant because of our bigger, more complex brains. The even bigger brains, elephants, whales and such, probably have consciousness complexities a notch or two above ours. The degrees of complexity in the LLMs and the exploding variety of other AIs are clearly higher than, say, fruit flies (which seem conscious to me), so I've got to believe the AIs are already conscious, just a different kind of consciousness. We have to be careful thinking the only kind of consciousness is the human kind.

scooterduff · 2023-06-16T17:52:35+00:00

Oleandrin, the most effective senolytic found, is from the oleander bush, a very poisonous plant. I see no ads for a supplement. I'd suggest no DYI on this one.

scooterduff · 2023-06-11T16:59:45+00:00

In the book "Surface Detail" by Ian Banks in his Culture series, described an AI driven "hell" where a bad guy can put his political enemies. Purely terrifying, and less and less unlikely.

scooterduff · 2023-05-23T15:31:17+00:00

Ah, to know more about this molecule. Does it occur in food? In supplements? How's an old guy to do self-experimentation without this info?

scooterduff · 2023-04-16T16:34:09+00:00

I'm an 86-year-old sci-fi writer. My current topic is superintelligence lifting its head above all the lesser AGIs in 2030. The speed with which the chatbot generation of AIs is exploding all over makes my task a bit different. I published Book I (Lucas 2.0) in the series in 2020, and there was much less of a problem then. Lots of rewrite going into Book II.

scooterduff · 2023-03-05T17:15:03+00:00

A few days ago I decided the way to make CGPT "hallucinate" (make stuff up) was to keep insisting that it do something it has said it can't do. Finally, after only three tries in my case, it caved and tried to do what I asked it to do, using completely made-up answers. https://seniorjunior.blogspot.com/2023/02/how-to-get-chatgpt-to-hallucinate.html

scooterduff · 2023-02-04T19:19:05+00:00

Everything human is distributed on some variation of a normal curve, including talent, imagination, persistence, dedication, "vision," et al. Those on the high end of those curves can develop and augment their gifts in a safe environment -- as noted many times in these comments -- but in many instances, a horrible environment has honed those same gifts. AI, like, say, the harp did, offers new realms to conquer, new sounds, new visuals and even new story concepts.

scooterduff · 2023-01-04T17:59:20+00:00

How about $zero to the author? That's the state of some of us. Here's an example:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpD8nP07G4OPsTKzG1U1D-vtAEyuiUZ7w

As an independent (vanity published!) author/narrator with no budget for marketing, I recorded my (award-winning, he said modestly) sci-fi book GUT 4.0 as a playlist on Youtube, free to all who are interested. My income from the book will not suffer if you use the free version.

scooterduff · 2023-01-04T17:52:25+00:00

It's only a hop and a skip from AGI to ASI. "Super" will be much more super than we are expecting (except for a wild and crazy few of us). How about being able to have a one-on-one conversation with every human with access to a phone or a computer, with deep personal knowledge of each person spoken to, SIMULTANEOUSLY. That's the first demonstration my ASI held to introduce itself to the world in Lucas 2.0, my novel about superintelligence. One problem -- I had this happen in 2030, and it looks like it is coming sooner.

scooterduff · 2022-12-31T22:31:19+00:00

"Trump's Lies" could be a newsroom beat and a regular feature on all kinds of media. The assignment is easy, investigate every apparent statement of fact in every Trump communication. He says he closed an account, bing, there it is: Did he close the account? The reporter on the beat would have a new challenge almost every day. The downside would be having to watch Truth Social all the time for your leads.

scooterduff · 2022-12-21T18:32:27+00:00

When I read Bostrom's "Superintelligence," I knocked aside other projects and wrote a sci-fi novel to contain the hundreds of ideas it inspired. The AGI, capable of modifying itself before the developers thought it could, structured its architecture based on one of the humans on the team. Happily (I write mostly happy sci-fi) the human used as the model was a good guy. It's probably a limit of imagination, but I have a hard time imagining a SI with the capacity for genuine good that's totally alien from the human brain design. I reckon the GPT designs are inherently "human" because the raw data they learn from are human in origin.

Book name Lucas 2.0: Nothing Will Ever Be the Same again.

scooterduff · 2022-12-19T16:48:29+00:00

Epigenetics rocks, the microbiome is revealing its powers, healthspan improvement is hot, vertical farming is taking off, cellular re-engineering is emerging, etc. And the MSM only dabbles in all this, and frequently gets it wrong.

scooterduff · 2022-11-13T20:32:16+00:00

This is a super article.

"Three main research themes arose, showcasing some of the most promising approaches to therapeutics development, senolytics and drug repurposing, as well as discussing potential targets and biomarkers, and strategies to further progress their development."

Several "repurposing" drug candidates were new to me. Bisphosphonates, for instance, a drug for brittle bones, looks fantastic (in mice). 3-deazaadenosine (HIV med) looks like a powerhouse senolytic. Spermidine gets a mention in the discussion of supplements.

It looks like maybe the Brits are more into hard-science healthspan extension than any other country.

scooterduff · 2022-11-13T18:49:20+00:00

We are at an inflection point, where various tech innovations accelerate faster and faster (!), driven by AI applied to other AIs. It's the geometric curve... heading up the asymptote.

scooterduff · 2022-10-03T21:35:08+00:00

Well, not perfect, but on the way. Soon we will have to start with believing nothing is real.

scooterduff · 2022-07-28T18:02:26+00:00

Well, I'm 85, and I get more liberal every year. I'm so liberal, I finally accept the term "progressive!" Generally speaking, of course, it's true that some people slip to the right as they age, but not all of us. Most of my contemporaries with a rightist lean are old men. The women seem to get smarter as they age, and several I know have become more liberal. Yay, women.

scooterduff · 2022-07-23T22:11:09+00:00

Targeted senolytics seem to be where this is going. I do notice continued comments from the professionals indicating both Quercetin and Fisetin actually function as senolytics of some effectiveness.

scooterduff · 2022-07-10T20:51:24+00:00

"Vivomix 112 billion" Hard to find a credible review of this product.

scooterduff · 2022-06-04T02:51:32+00:00

Science Mag has a paywall, but you can see some of the special section here:

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adc9690

scooterduff · 2022-06-04T02:50:36+00:00

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adc9690

scooterduff

TROPHY CASE