Charles Yang

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on the atlas — 52

highlights — 331

So, think about Skinner and his trained pigeons the next time you find yourself pecking at your smartphone, searching for a delectable little electronic reward.
The Saga of the Bird-Brained Bombers | NIST
One element of Project Pigeon is still with us today. The conductive touchscreen display technology the pigeons used made its way into early radar consoles and is the ancestor of our modern touchscreen phones and tablets.
The Saga of the Bird-Brained Bombers | NIST
Writing for the Telegraph, William Dalrymple noted, "In villages across south Asia, hundreds of people would gather around a single set to watch the gods and demons play out their destinies. In the noisiest and most bustling cities, trains, buses and cars came to a sudden halt, and a strange hush fell over the bazaars. In Delhi, government meetings had to be rescheduled after the entire cabinet failed to turn up for an urgent briefing."[43]
Ramayan (1987 TV series) - Wikipedia
Arvind Rajagopal in his book Politics After Television: Hindu Nationalism and the Reshaping of the Public in India (2000) wrote that with the series, the government "violated a decades-old taboo on religious partisanship, and Hindu nationalists made the most of the opportunity." It confirmed to the idea of Hindu awakening and the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party capitalizing on this.[46]"
Ramayan (1987 TV series) - Wikipedia
Friday night has become the big night in most of our industrial picture. It used to be Saturday night we have cut 20 per cent off our machine time. Can we afford to do this? Can't we stop this blackout, this lack of production from Friday to Monday, and get more out of the equipment? We can train the men to operate it. Isn't it possible to put the defense job on a war basis, even if we are at peace? When I think of the seriousness of the whole world situation, where the Americas are the only spot where freedom and law still have a foothold, I wonder if we are not justified in doing just that. …
Text of Knudsen's Address Asking Industry to Put Defense on War Basis; Gives List of Needs - The New York Times
The modern machinery of that criminal violence, war, now threatening the very dignity of mankind, is enormous, complicated and swift in its scientific development. We are engaged in building a defense which our President has proclaimed shall be able to prevail against any possible combination and we will do it. But as a producer, I say that our speedy procurement of the necessary defense implements which our President and Congress have promised the people demands intense concentration on production as an objective in itself.
Text of Knudsen's Address Asking Industry to Put Defense on War Basis; Gives List of Needs - The New York Times
I am deeply honored by having assigned to me by our President a responsible part in this work of preparation and development. Despotic power we abhor, but we recognize that it compels the exercise of certain qualities which we must voluntarily exercise if we are to prevail in times of conflict. Among these qualities is concentration on definite objectives with singleness of purpose. We are a peaceful people. The ways of war are foreign to us. Our industries are now being organized for national defense, which, to be effective, must be capable of the maximum of resistance to attack.
Text of Knudsen's Address Asking Industry to Put Defense on War Basis; Gives List of Needs - The New York Times
El Segundo Mayor Pro Tem Chris Pimentel spoke about how his city makes great use of their limited real estate to support successful startups but when it comes to scaling up larger manufacturing facilities, growth stage startups often look to Long Beach just a short drive away. To keep the region’s leadership position, both of the local municipalities are very involved in helping ensure the innovators are not stifled by unnecessary regulation or bureaucracy, like expediting electrical power upgrades to support expansion and modifying pre-existing zoning regulations. Long
SoCal Leaders Converge for Innovation-Based Economic Development Workshop - Alliance for SoCal Innovation
We estimate the cost to perform a SAMPLE run of 20 rounds with a batch size of 3 is US$5,200 (US$2,400 for the DNA fragments, US$1,300 for all the reagents and US$1,500 for the Strateos Cloud Lab).
Self-driving laboratories to autonomously navigate the protein fitness landscape | Nature Chemical Engineering
That free license gets you access to Gemini 2.5 Pro and its massive 1 million token context window. To ensure you rarely, if ever, hit a limit during this preview, we offer the industry’s largest allowance: 60 model requests per minute and 1,000 requests per day at no charge.
Google announces Gemini CLI: your open-source AI agent
What was unique in Sannerz was that we had no “guests,” only coworkers. Everyone who came was handed an ax or a hatchet for splitting wood, or a spade, regardless of who he was. Often at conferences or lectures people asked if they could come to Sannerz for a few days of rest, and maybe pay a fee. We always refused. Even our relatives were asked to work with us when they came. So some simply stayed away. And for many it was a hard test to haul wood from the forest in ice and snow and cold wind. Even some tramps and workmen walked out on us. The food was too poor and the work too hard. Nights w…
Community Is Born by Emmy Arnold
Such conflicts are a problem. After watching the CDC make so many errors—and always in the same direction—Krohnert co-wrote a paper for the open-access Social Science Research Network, with Dr. Vinay Prasad, the new head of the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, calling for a firewall between the government entities that gather statistics and those setting policy as a shield against “real or perceived systematic bias.”
A Ragtag Group of Covid Truth-Tellers Go to Washington
The proposed congressional pay amendment was largely forgotten until 1982, when Gregory Watson, a 19-year-old student at the University of Texas at Austin, wrote a paper for a government class in which he claimed that the amendment could still be ratified. He later launched a nationwide campaign to complete its ratification.[2][3] The amendment eventually became part of the United States Constitution, effective May 5, 1992.[4]
Twenty-seventh Amendment to the United States Constitution
The reaction was the Birmingham extension of the infamous ‘Brown Ban’ in 1965, after being introduced in London the previous year. For any new office space over 5,000 sq ft, an ‘Office Development Certificate’ (ODC) would be required. This produced a furious reaction from the Sutton Coldfield MP Geoffrey Lloyd. “This Order is a kind of penalty on the success of the West Midlands and Birmingham, imposed [...] as they believe, to help somewhere else. There is a growing anxiety in Birmingham that the Government may have carried too far this process of siphoning off the prosperity of the Midlands …
The forgotten post-war decree that deliberately strangled Birmingham
The future won’t be built merely by those who move fastest, but by those who remember how to stand still. Until we recover the courage to receive what we cannot produce, we will mistake velocity for vision. And we’ll keep accelerating—not toward the good, but simply away from the ground.
Everything is Fast - Luke Burgis Newsletter
There’s a lot of talk about developing “high agency” these days—reclaiming agency in our lives so that we can act with integrity even when the most base incentives are pointing us in a different direction. The problem with nearly all of the attempts that I’ve seen, though, is that agency is associated with something we have the power to exercise on our own: as if we can pull ourselves out of the mud by our own hair. The foundation of agency, it turns out, is contemplation. It is prayer. It is surrender.
Everything is Fast - Luke Burgis Newsletter
A master craftsman at steering around stubborn obstacles, whether they were technical or political or bull‐headed generals and admirals, Vannevar Bush was the paradigm of the engineer—a man who got things done.
Dr. Vannevar Bush Is Dead at 84 - The New York Times
Rather, he treated his mission as one of getting good men and letting them get on with the job without interference. “My job,” he wrote, “was to handle relations with the President, Congress and the military services, and to try to keep the lines free and money available so that others could do some work.”
Dr. Vannevar Bush Is Dead at 84 - The New York Times
“I made no technical contribution to the war effort. Not a single technical idea of mine ever amounted to shucks. At times I have been called an ‘atomic scientist.’ It would be fully as accurate to call me a child psychologist.”
Dr. Vannevar Bush Is Dead at 84 - The New York Times
Even so, some felt that his methods were unduly hard and that he ruled the roost like a monarch. “He was feared,” a close wartime associate said. “No one was sure what he was up to, and he induced anxiety. When things did not go his way he got pretty nasty.” And some felt that he was peeved at never having been able to sit on the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Dr. Vannevar Bush Is Dead at 84 - The New York Times
up to 3 megawatts of electricity
FSQ-7_Combat_Direction_Central
Think in writing. Write Google Docs, scrawl in notebooks. This extends working memory arbitrarily and allows your thoughts to compound on each other. (”The difference between a Turing machine and a finite state machine is the tape.”)
Principles - Nabeel S. Qureshi
A Defense Technology Security Administration official commented in July 1998 that the agency had concerns about the study.106
U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY AND THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA -- CHAPTER 3
An IDA technical assessment reported that a consensus of computing experts, supported by available data, believed that supercomputing restrictions for systems above 10,000 MTOPS, but below about 20,000 MTOPS, could be circumvented to some extent by aggregating lower performance processors. However, the IDA assessment stated that it was difficult to go beyond this level as of 1996, except for a small set of "embarrassingly parallel problems" - that is, problems that could easily be broken up into parts that could be solved simultaneously.99 The assessment predicted that, by 1996, users should b…
U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY AND THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA -- CHAPTER 3
By 1995, NSA had moved away from its activities in the supercomputer area, and had backed out of the high performance computer export control debate entirely. The stated justification for this change in policy was concern for the health of the U.S. computer industry and the industry's need for exports.
U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY AND THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA -- CHAPTER 3
Weather modeling and prediction is essential in military operations in that it effects force deployments, protection against chemical, biological, and nuclear environments, weapons effectiveness, and logistics.65
U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY AND THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA -- CHAPTER 3
Since the 1996 relaxation of U.S. export controls on HPCs, U.S. sales of HPCs between 2,000 and 7,000 MTOPS to the PRC have burgeoned. Of computers not requiring licenses under the 1996 regulations, 23 HPCs in this performance range were exported in 1996 and 123 in 1997. An additional 434 HPCs were to be exported in the first three quarters of 1998. Between 1994 and 1998, the U.S. Government approved licenses for 23 HPCs greater than 2,000 MTOPS.
U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY AND THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA -- CHAPTER 3
At 14:00, four brothers named Woo from Beopwon-ri were out cutting firewood and stumbled across the unit's camp. After a fierce debate over whether to kill the brothers, it was decided instead to try to indoctrinate them on the benefits of communism and they were released with a stern warning not to notify the police. However, the brothers immediately reported the presence of the unit to the Changhyeon police station in Beopwon-ri.[4]
Blue House raid
While the synoptic forecasters were fuming, the modelers were convinced that NWP would eventually produce a superior product and, according to Staff Members, JNWPU (1957), “[probably] show a clear advantage over subjective methods of area prognosis within the next year or so,” since their products had already matched the “subjective skill and wisdom of 30 years’ experience” (p. 328). That statement must have dismayed the forecasters. But the modelers argued that they would always be able to make incremental changes to their models until they were better than a subjective forecast, thus providi…
History of Synoptic Meteorology in the Age of Numerical Weather Forecasting | Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Environmental Science
The project helps uses products from key U.S. manufacturers, including: Megapack battery energy storage systems manufactured by Tesla in Lathrop, California; First Solar thin film photovoltaic solar panels and Nextracker smart solar trackers. San Diego-headquartered SOLV Energy led the engineering, procurement and construction activities.
Arevon completes one of country's first utility-scale solar peaker plants
However, we want to reiterate that these are highly experimental results. The position of the Big Sleep team is that at present, it's likely that a target-specific fuzzer would be at least as effective (at finding vulnerabilities).
Project Zero: From Naptime to Big Sleep: Using Large Language Models To Catch Vulnerabilities In Real-World Code
after years of fuzzing, it seems the tool has reached a natural saturation point. While our results so far seem minor in comparison to the dramatic step-change in effectiveness that came with the release of AFL, it's interesting to see that it has its own strengths and might be able to effectively uncover a distinct set of vulnerabilities.
Project Zero: From Naptime to Big Sleep: Using Large Language Models To Catch Vulnerabilities In Real-World Code
DOT’s e-bike trade-in program — the nation’s first municipal program of its kind — will focus on exchanging unsafe e-bikes and lithium-ion batteries for new devices. The $2 million trade-in program was established in response to Local Law 131 of 2023, sponsored by New York City Councilmember Keith Powers. The e-bikes provided will be UL-certified, the nationally-recognized standard for e-bike safety and performance. Selected participants will receive a UL-certified e-bike and two compatible, UL-certified batteries in exchange for their unsafe devices and batteries. By swapping these illegal de…
Mayor Adams Announces Finalized E-Bike Trade-In Program to Keep New Yorkers Safe | City of New York
Data from the national labs is almost universally trusted, but many users are frustrated that the labs do not regularly update and maintain their datasets. Instead, over time the data goes stale and becomes less relevant, and when a new source appears it may not be comparable or have the same structure.
Insights From 60+ Energy Data User Interviews - Catalyst Cooperative
For many users, trust in data is primarily social/institutional rather than empirical. If the data is coming from a government agency or a well-respected source that many other people are using, it’s deemed trustworthy. Actual cross-checking of data by users against other similar or related data sources is less common, but still important.
Insights From 60+ Energy Data User Interviews - Catalyst Cooperative
Energy system domain knowledge and technical skills are very independent of each other. Lots of people with deep domain knowledge work primarily or entirely in spreadsheets. This is true across multiple disciplines and age groups. Spreadsheets are going to be with us for the long-haul and we need to think of these users as part of our core audience, even if it’s challenging to serve them.
Insights From 60+ Energy Data User Interviews - Catalyst Cooperative
Multiple interviewees in the private sector made enthusiastic, unprompted statements in favor of open products, and expressed a desire to support their ongoing development.
Insights From 60+ Energy Data User Interviews - Catalyst Cooperative
Commonly available datasets are considered a commodity. Commercial users do not have a proprietary interest in the kind of data we’re publishing. It’s not part of their competitive advantage. Our value proposition is that they don’t have to think about it any more.
Insights From 60+ Energy Data User Interviews - Catalyst Cooperative
Some users are willing to learn new things, but only if they have high confidence that they are learning the right new things
Insights From 60+ Energy Data User Interviews - Catalyst Cooperative
Open models and open data have gotten good enough that they are being used in some commercial applications. Or conversely, proprietary models have been slow to adapt to the new requirements of the energy transition. This is resulting in a flow of resources and knowledge between the academic researchers that have produced most of the open models. People who have been developing open models are starting to use them in commercial contexts.
Insights From 60+ Energy Data User Interviews - Catalyst Cooperative
nt. Only if we study these well will we be able to carry out socialist modernization rapidly and efficiently. We should learn in different ways — through practice, from books and from the experience, both positive and negative, of others as well as our own. Conservatism and book worship should be overcome
Emancipate the Mind, Seek Truth From Facts and Unite As One In Looking to the Future « The Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping
At present most of our cadres need also to apply themselves to three subjects: economics, science and technology, and manageme
Emancipate the Mind, Seek Truth From Facts and Unite As One In Looking to the Future « The Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping
First, we must extend the authority of the managerial personnel. Whoever is given responsibility should be given authority as well. Whoever it is — a factory director, engineer, technician, accountant or cashier — he should have his own area not only of responsibility but of authority, which must not be infringed upon by others. The responsibility system is bound to fail if there is only responsibility without authority. Second, we must select personnel wisely and assign duties according to ability. We should seek out existing specialists and train new ones, put them in important positions, ra…
Emancipate the Mind, Seek Truth From Facts and Unite As One In Looking to the Future « The Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping
e their political status and increase their material benefits. What are the political requirements in selecting someone for a job? The major criterion is whether the person chosen can work for the good of the people and contribute to the development of the productive forces and to the socialist cause as a whole. Third, we must have a strict system of evaluation and distinguish clearly between a performance that should be rewarded and one that should be penalized. All enterprises, schools, research institutes and government offices should set up systems for evaluating work and conferring academ…
Emancipate the Mind, Seek Truth From Facts and Unite As One In Looking to the Future « The Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping
In fact, this means that no one is responsible. When a task is assigned, nobody sees that it is properly fulfilled or cares whether the result is satisfactory. So there is an urgent need to establish a strict responsibility system. Lenin said, “To refer to collegiate methods as an excuse for irresponsibility is a most dangerous evil.” He called it “an evil which must be halted at all costs as quickly as possible and by whatever the means”.
Emancipate the Mind, Seek Truth From Facts and Unite As One In Looking to the Future « The Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping
In 2019, President Trump presented Rescorla with a posthumous Presidential Citizens Medal. During the ceremony, Trump called him a “great gentleman” before expressing unconcealed jealousy over his abundance of public tributes, including from the English, who named a passenger train in Rescorla’s honor. Nonetheless, Trump was all too happy to accept a scale-model replica of the train on Rescorla’s behalf, and to pin blame for 9/11 on his political enemies. His friends, Frank Argenbright among them, he has gladly exonerated of any wrongdoing.
The Thin Purple Line, by Jasper Craven
it was Argenbright Security that allowed nine hijackers, some armed with box cutters, to pass through checkpoints at Dulles and Newark Airports. Surveillance footage from Dulles shows that, after some of the men triggered metal detectors, guards wanded them in ways that were, according to an expert consulted by the 9/11 Commission, “marginal at best.” A couple of hours later, American Airlines Flight 77, from Dulles, hit the Pentagon. United Airlines Flight 93, from Newark, crashed in a Pennsylvania field following intervention by ordinary passengers. Additional lapses by guards in Boston allo…
The Thin Purple Line, by Jasper Craven
Stable carbon isotope measurement of methane in woody surface chamber air and process-level investigations on extracted wood cores are consistent with methanotrophy, suggesting a microbially mediated drawdown of methane on and in tree woody surfaces and tissues. By applying terrestrial laser scanning-derived allometry to quantify global forest tree woody surface area, a preliminary first estimate suggests that trees may contribute 24.6–49.9 Tg of atmospheric methane uptake globally.
Global atmospheric methane uptake by upland tree woody surfaces | Nature
The belief that scientific advancements can be kept safe behind lock and key like family jewels mistakes a dynamic, social, and political process for an inanimate object
Troubling the Water | Made in China Journal
Manhattan Project alumni and member of the Atomic Energy Commission Henry D. Smyth (1951) described scientists as assets of war who must be ‘stockpiled’ and ‘rationed’
Troubling the Water | Made in China Journal