Today I Learned

[BillTre]

There is a sea otter that steals surfboards and rides them in Santa Cruz.

No one knows why.

 

[phinds]

No one knows why.

Because it's there !

 

[DaveE]

There is a sea otter that steals surfboards and rides them in Santa Cruz.

View attachment 329220

No one knows why.

And marine mammals are protected from harassment in California, so you can't easily take your board back (so I hear).

Sea Lions basking on harbor piers can be a big problem sometimes. They are used to people and don't easily scare away.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

There is a sea otter that steals surfboards and rides them in Santa Cruz.

View attachment 329220

No one knows why.

She was raised in captivity and released back into the wild so she probably has no fear of humans. And why surfboards? Maybe she got tired of body surfing. :) Or maybe she just wants a nice place to lie in the sun and knows she can chase off humans.

 

[Hornbein]

Well, @Hornbein might have a point here.

It goes without saying that AI is in its infancy, and that's certainly true in legal realms.

But there have been some early signs (and again, everything involving AI is "early" at this point in time) that AI generated works will not be afforded the same copyright protections as other works.

Here is an article as an example: US Copyright Office: AI Generated Works Are Not Eligible for Copyright.

So what does this mean? If an image is generated by AI (not just "AI sharpened," but wholly created such as diffusion based methods discussed in several PF threads), and you get ahold of such an image, you might be able do what you will with it and nobody's really going to stop you. At least in the US.

On the other hand, if your computer wholly generates an AI image, and some marketing department you've never heard of gets their hands on it and decides, without asking, to plaster that image on their cereal boxes, there's not much that you can do about it either.

Here's an article that's a little more recent: New US copyright rules protect only AI art with ‘human authorship’

So maybe it's kinda free? I speculate that rules and rights will become much less ambiguous in the coming years.

I'd guess what he had in mind is that the AI company is selling my data. But as I recall I didn't register.

 

[jack action]

So maybe it's kinda free?

I was thinking more along the line that it cost something to produce. Someone has to pay somehow.

 

[Hornbein]

And marine mammals are protected from harassment in California, so you can't easily take your board back (so I hear).

I used to surf in Santa Cruz. I lived next to Steamer Lane, where the otters hang out. They float on their backs with a little flat rock on their chest, then tap crabs against them to break the shell. Do they have a special place where they save the rock whenever they dive again?

I will say that the Santa Cruz police would greatly sympathize with a surfer retrieving a stolen board.

There is a big rock at Steamer Lane where the sea lions live. They like to doze on their backs in the ocean with their flippers sticking straight up. One time while windsurfing I almost ran into some. If I had I would have fallen off the board and gotten bitten. As it was they chased me away barking.

Once at Waddell a sea lion body surfed a wave then swam away barking. Having a good time.

A Great White bit a surfer at Davenport. His board with the tooth marks was on display at Haut surfboards. Big. He paddled to shore and survived. He was an EMT and was able to tell the surfers how to save him.

 

[jack action]

TIL about the Big Chute Marine Railway. So simple, so cool!

​

 

[wrobel]

...that the Poincare recurrence theorem is a corollary of Birkhoff's ergodic theorem...

 

[BillTre]

TIL Chipotle has an autocado, a robot machine that processes avacados.

I like the word. Its almost autocad.

 

[Swamp Thing]

Today I learned that bacteria can share useful genes with each other "on the Cloud".

 

[Rive]

I like the word. Its almost autocad.

We have an old (cold war era) joke about that

Something about Russia producing a hair cutter automate for the military, and then bragging about it for the big rival
The first question: OK, but how does it work? Not every head is the same size and shape...
The answer: well, indeed... Not for the first time... ...

 

[Ivan Seeking]

TIL that Willie Nelson and the President's son smoked a joint on the roof of the White House back when Carter was President. Carter confirmed it.
https://consequence.net/2020/09/jimmy-carter-willie-nelson-weed-white-house/

Too funny!!! Long story but when I was much younger, my uncle had virtually unlimited access to the busses of many celebrities for weeks or months at a time. On one occasion my family took Willie's bus for a um....1000 mile test drive for a week. Sure enough, we found a weed tray under one of the bed mattresses.

Reminded me of this song

 

[Hornbein]

TIL that megastar Mary Pickford sold locks of her curly hair. The curls cost $50 each, a fortune when a movie ticket was just over a nickel, and Pickford travelled with a suitcase of them. At the time of railroads and ships it wasn't unheard of to travel with twenty or so suitcases.

At a rally for The Great War she inspired the sale of five million dollars in bonds.

 

[jack action]

TIL that Willie Nelson and the President's son smoked a joint on the roof of the White House back when Carter was President. Carter confirmed it.
https://consequence.net/2020/09/jimmy-carter-willie-nelson-weed-white-house/

Too funny!!! Long story but when I was much younger, my uncle had virtually unlimited access to the busses of many celebrities for weeks or months at a time. On one occasion my family took Willie's bus for a um....1000 mile test drive for a week. Sure enough, we found a weed tray under one of the bed mattresses.

Reminded me of this song

Let me try to understand this: Something you wrote 4 days earlier reminded you of something else?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Let me try to understand this: Something you wrote 4 days earlier reminded you of something else?

LOL! Yes, when I looked back at the thread. The thing about Willie smoking weed at the WH reminded me of the entire business. If he had left some of his weed in that tray I may have had more to tell.

 

[Hornbein]

​

Today I learned that

The accumulation and bursting of carbon dioxide bubbles can cause a peanut in a glass of beer to repeatedly float and sink. The process may help in understanding phenomena in Earth’s magmas.​

According to Michael Manga this is a thing in the bars of Argentina.

In a highly carbonated beer, such as a craft beer, the peanuts stay bobbing at the surface for longer than they do in a less carbonated beer, such as the lager they used for their experiments.

The Manga magma study is reviewed here.

https://physics.aps.org/articles/v16/121

 

[Frabjous]

TIL that a formal peace treaty was signed by the mayors of Rome and the modern city of Carthage on 5 February 1985; 2,131 years after the 3rd Punic War ended.

https://cherwell.org/2016/02/05/lessons-from-history-the-end-of-the-third-punic-war-1985/

 

[Hornbein]

TIL that a formal peace treaty was signed by the mayors of Rome and the modern city of Carthage on 5 February 1985; 2,131 years after the 3rd Punic War ended.

https://cherwell.org/2016/02/05/lessons-from-history-the-end-of-the-third-punic-war-1985/

One might hope that they mutually swore to refrain from the environmentally destructive practice of sowing the Earth with salt. Elephants would of course be banned as weapons of war. Will there be inspections to verify compliance?

 

[Frabjous]

The modern historical consensus is that Carthage was not salted. Regretfully, the North African Elephant has gone extinct.

 

[Astronuc]

TIL about The Medieval Kingdom of Pengwern that was Erased from History



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynddylan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northumbria
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_monarchs_of_Northumbria

 

[BillTre]

TIL, from the NY TImes, its been hot recently:

[Mentors’ note: Stray text unrelated to the TIL theme removed]

 

[jack action]

TIL about an helicopter technique: autorotation.

[...] they go on to demonstrate how to safely land a helicopter when its motor has failed using a technique called “autorotation.” Using this technique, Gerry Friesen [...] even believes landing a failed helicopter is safer than landing an airplane with a busted engine.

[...]

As Destin explains in the video: "If the rotor blade quits turning you are going to fall like a brick – but helicopter pilots have a physics trick to keep that from happening." All it requires is a simple lever and a hell of a lot of practice. Check it out for yourself in the video below.

​

 

[BillTre]

I like curry and I found an article in Science Advances on its early history about 2,000 years ago.
It has an interesting map of ancient spice availability:

 

[Hornbein]

I like curry and I found an article in Science Advances on its early history about 2,000 years ago.
It has an interesting map of ancient spice availability:

View attachment 329500

The Dutch East Indies company grew fabulously wealthy selling nutmeg as a quack cure for the plague. The tree grew only on three islands in the Moluccas. Nutmeg traveled well and could not be counterfeited

 

[Hornbein]

TIL that Tour de France riders to beat the heat wore ice vests.

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/the-tour-de-france-already-has-one-winner-ice-vests-1.1946080

 

[Hornbein]

TIL that the US military keeps accidentally sending highly sensitive information to email addresses in Mali because they write “.ml” instead of “.mil.” The Dutch company managing Mali’s domain has collected 117,000 emails this year alone.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I wish I could talk about it.

 

[jack action]

TIL that the US military keeps accidentally sending highly sensitive information to email addresses in Mali because they write “.ml” instead of “.mil.” The Dutch company managing Mali’s domain has collected 117,000 emails this year alone.

How is the US military sending "highly sensitive" information without encrypting it first? That would be the real mistake.

 

[DaveC426913]

How is the US military sending "highly sensitive" information without encrypting it first? That would be the real mistake.

True. Horny didn't say they could *read* it...

 

[Flyboy]

TIL about an helicopter technique: autorotation.

Yep. Turning physics from a cold hearted sonofabitch into a temporary ally.

Unfortunately, tilt rotors like the V-22 or the upcoming V-280 don't have that luxury. Nor do they have enough wing area to glide worth a damn. If you lose both engines in a tilt rotor... you're ****ed.

 

[jbriggs444]

How is the US military sending "highly sensitive" information without encrypting it first? That would be the real mistake.

It is doubtful that the sending mail servers in the U.S. would be running mandatory TLS to a random domain such as .ml. I've been out of the business for over a decade, but last I knew, mandatory TLS was only for designated targets that you know can handle it and should never not do so.

But that's transport security. Possibly you are talking about end to end security between cooperating user agents. Like PGP

Where I worked (DoD Contractor) we were taught to just not send sensitive material via Internet email. But users do what users do. And the poor mail admins had to clean up classified spills from time to time.

 

[jack action]

Possibly you are talking about end to end security between cooperating user agents. Like PGP

Yes, that one.

 

[pinball1970]

TIL some mammals preyed on dinosaurs larger than themselves according to this fossil find.

Estimated 125 mya

Forgeries are not unheard of – see “Assessment of fossil association” section of the paper.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-37545-8

Fossil

Artist impression

 

[Bystander]

From Wiki:
When the wasp dies, it is broken down by enzymes (Ficain) inside the fig. Fig wasps are not known to transmit any diseases harmful to humans.