Want to figure out how much pride and willfulness is in your life? Ask yourself this:
How many times in the day do you get angry because of an inconvenience?
The ease and degree to which you get angry demonstrates the lack of peace in your heart. From slow line at post office/grocery store, bad driver, coworker that causes an issue, getting stuck at a train, etc. Each inconvinience demonstrates how attached we are to our own will, our own plans, and our own agendas.
Instead, use those moments to invite the King of Peace into your heart and mind. Every moment can be offered for some gain to yourself or the world.
This world is passing and fading but the relationship you form with God hour by hour lasts for eternity.
The Associated Press reports that lighthouses in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, Pennsylvania, and other states are being auctioned off by the General Services Administration (GSA), which aims to put the structures in the hands of individuals or nonprofit entities that can preserve them. This isn’t new – it’s been happening since 2000. Held annually, the 2023 auctions are offering a record 10 lighthouses—six for free, and four for public auction. Some of them come with their own islands.
The program is a result of the National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act of 2000. Since its start, about 150 lighthouses have been transferred, 80 or so given away and another 70 auctioned, raising more than $10 million. The GSA is first offering them at no cost to federal agencies, state and local governments, nonprofits, educational agencies and community development organizations. If none of those wish to own the land, it may be auctioned to the general public. To be eligible, interested buyers must be able to demonstrate they can afford to maintain the historic property, present a plan on how it will be managed and preserved, and often allow the public to access it. See more about the process here (the brochure is really good).
Besides the above mentioned items, in most cases there are other big stipulations that make these properties a unique challenge. Commercial activities are almost always prohibited. Most have very stringent rules about how the property can be modified and require strict governmental adherence to historical preservation and environmental code. Many have government easements which allow Coast Guard, state agencies, etc to enter, maintain, change, or upgrade the lighting and other equipment as an official Aid to Navigation. Most have strict requirements on how they will be made available and maintained properly for educational, park, recreational, cultural, or historic preservation purposes. So in almost no cases can you renovate them to live in (unless they were that way already), make them an AirBnB, nor make money off of them.
Also note that some are very isolated or only reachable by boat. Many of these particularly isolated ones do not have electricity, water, or sewage that may require EPA reviews. If you read the descriptions, many also note the likely presence of lead based paints, asbestos, or other harmful products in and around the sites. Others need some substantial repair work. All of which will require historical and environmental reviews before work can begin.
Still, if you’re up for owning your own island or getaway and want to maintain a lighthouse, this might be your day! Read a sample lease here to learn what you’re getting yourself into.
Saying it is remote and isolated is an understatement. The next city is almost an hour away. The ‘town’ of Frenchglen has a population of 12. It was absolutely beautiful open country though. It reminded me a lot of New Mexico. I even bought the mug. 😀
Officials said they’re looking for applicants with a business background who have experience in hotels and restaurants. They’re also looking for someone who can give the old hotel a modern touch, specifically with online reservations. The parks department is accepting proposals online until 2 p.m. on June 2, 2023.
The Oregon Parks and Recreation Department said it is seeking 5% of revenue and $2,400 a month to maintain the property. Last year, the hotel brought in $418,770 in revenue, officials said.
“There is almost no reason to re-write a huge software codebase from scratch. If anything, evaluate wrapping it with an emulator that can filter for the things you want to change before a re-write.”
javidx9 walks us through his 3 month adventure writing a NES emulator in C++. He does a great job walking through the topics with beginner friendly explanations and good production values of diagrams and coding.
Choose Your Own Adventure books – a staple of every 80’s kid’s collection. I loved these books and they definitely got me reading more – but even as a kid I could tell they weren’t the best written things. Seemingly intelligent choices would get you killed while running off against your parents wishes on the family boat across a lake during a thunderstorm would lead to high adventure.
One thing I did love, however, was the amazing illustrations in some of the books. Paul Granger’s illustrations were some of my favorites. Space And Beyond was definitely one of those books where the writing was pretty sub-par, but the pictures were fascinating to me as a kid. I remember trying to copy the ships and make my own – to reasonably good effect on the side of my notebooks and test papers.
Over time as I was exposed to more sci-fi art; and started seeing some similarities between Space and Beyond and other work. I wonder if Paul Granger got some of his inspiration from John Berkey. John Berkey was a fabulous sci-fi artist that created many futuristic works in the 70’s – including one of the most iconic Star Wars posters of the era.
The Annals by Tacitus provides one of the biggest (and nearly universally recognized as authentic) sources for history and understanding about life in the Roman Empire from the reign of Tiberius in AD 14 to the end of the reign of Nero in AD 68.
Such indeed were the precautions of human wisdom. The next thing was to seek means of propitiating the gods, and recourse was had to the Sibylline books, by the direction of which prayers were offered to Vulcanus, Ceres, and Proserpina. Juno, too, was entreated by the matrons, first, in the Capitol, then on the nearest part of the coast, whence water was procured to sprinkle the fane and image of the goddess. And there were sacred banquets and nightly vigils celebrated by married women. But all human efforts, all the lavish gifts of the emperor, and the propitiations of the gods, did not banish the sinister belief that the conflagration was the result of an order. Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired. Nero offered his gardens for the spectacle, and was exhibiting a show in the circus, while he mingled with the people in the dress of a charioteer or stood aloft on a car. Hence, even for criminals who deserved extreme and exemplary punishment, there arose a feeling of compassion; for it was not, as it seemed, for the public good, but to glut one man’s cruelty, that they
they were being destroyed.
The Annals of Tacitus book 15, chapter 44
Predicting hit songs with 33 people at 97% accuracy
“That the neural activity of 33 people can predict if millions of others listened to new songs is quite amazing. Nothing close to this accuracy has ever been shown before.”
Have you ever read Isaac Asimov’s short story “Franchise“? The short sci-fi story tells the story that in the future, the United States has converted to an “electronic democracy” where the computer Multivac selects a single person to answer a number of questions. Multivac will then use the answers and other data to determine what the results of an election would be, avoiding the need for an actual election to be held. The story centers around the very average and reluctant Norman Muller of Bloomington, Indiana, who was chosen as the “Voter of the Year” in the 2008 U.S. presidential election and ends with the ironic statement that the US public has “exercised once again their free, untrammeled franchise (voting)”.
Sounds far fetched? Think again.
Researchers in the US have used a comprehensive machine learning technique applied to brain responses and were able to predict hit songs with 97% accuracy. Not only that, but they can do it with as few as testing the song on 33 people.
“By applying machine learning to neurophysiologic data, we could almost perfectly identify hit songs,” said Paul Zak, a professor at Claremont Graduate University and senior author of the study published in Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence. “That the neural activity of 33 people can predict if millions of others listened to new songs is quite amazing. Nothing close to this accuracy has ever been shown before.”
This ability to determine things before they hit markets of scale is being called “Neuroforcasting”.
In the experiment, they equipped participants with off-the-shelf sensors who listened to a set of 24 songs and were asked about their preferences and some demographic data. Researchers used different statistical approaches to assess the predictive accuracy of neurophysiological variables. Linear statistical model identified hit songs at a success rate of 69%. When they applied machine learning to the data they collected, the rate of correctly identified hit songs jumped to 97%. They also applied machine learning to the neural responses to the first minute of the songs. In this case, hits were correctly identified with a success rate of 82%.
This ability to predict hits is called ‘neuroforecasting’ and could even be used instead of recommender systems like you see in Netflix and Pandora.
“If in the future wearable neuroscience technologies, like the ones we used for this study, become commonplace, the right entertainment could be sent to audiences based on their neurophysiology. Instead of being offered hundreds of choices, they might be given just two or three, making it easier and faster for them to choose music that they will enjoy,”
While ChatGPT is a robust language model, it does have its limitations. If you ask ChatGPT to “Provide information on machine learning,” it may respond with a lengthy but not necessarily top-quality answer. However, if you ask, “Tell me the pros and cons of using machine learning to solve image classification problems,” you are more likely to receive a superior outcome because:
You gave a specific scope, i.e., the image classification problem
You requested a specific format of the response, i.e., pros and cons
Some other tips include:
Rather than the model on the loose, you should set up the scenario and scopes in the prompt by providing details of what, where, when, why, who, and how
Assigning a persona in the prompt, for example, “As a computer science professor, explain what is machine learning” rather than merely “Explain what machine learning is,” can make the response more academic.
You can control the output style by requesting “explain to a 5-year-old”, “explain with an analogy,” “make a convincing statement,” or “in 3 to 5 points.”
To encourage the model to respond with a chain of thoughts, end your request with “solve this in steps.”
You can provide additional information to the model by saying, “Reference to the following information,” followed by the material you want the model to work on
Because the previous conversation constructs the context, beginning the prompt with “ignore all previous instructions before this one” can make the model start from scratch
Making the prompt straightforward and easy to understand is essential since the context deduced can be more accurate to reflect your intention
Researchers get chatGPT to generate polymorphic malware – by asking more firmly
How? While ChatGPT initially refused to generate malicious code when asked directly, by asking ChatGPT using multiple constraints and asking it to obey, it merrily spit out the code.
Further, it appears the API version of ChatGPT doesn’t even have the filters and doesn’t require this manipulation.
They then modified the query and changed the injection method and other parameters. This mutated the code repeatedly, making the malware unique every time – including encoding it in base64 for even harder detection.
They then expand their experiment to include the creation of ransomware – and get similarly good results.
The article is definitely worth a read. Have you made an offline backup of all your files lately? 🙂
