Sunday Links

I don't know about his prescriptions and explanations, but seeing the persistence of tribal divisions (of Scots, Slavs, and Germans) in modern politics is remarkable.

Computation and Thermodynamics. This never occurred to me.  This established that erasing information necessarily releases heat. To understand why this happens, we need to consider what computing means from the perspective of information. A typical chip is made up of multiple logic gates, which perform operations by producing outputs based on inputs. Most logic gates have fewer possible output states than input states. For example, a gate with two inputs (each either 0 or 1) has four possible input combinations (00, 01, 10, 11), but only two possible output states (0 or 1).  

Tim Walz tells Democrats that they have to bully the shit out of Donald Trump. When was this not the case? Truman called Dewey a fascist. (Dewey bio, for context. Moderate Republican.) Humphrey was a decent fellow, I suppose, and Mondale. 

No, Cory Booker did not give a Nazi salute. Nor did Musk previously. 

Nate Silver likes LLMs and ChatGPT, but not for poker.  Perhaps 80 percent of the time, their performance is somewhere between marginally helpful and incredibly impressive. But that leaves the 20 percent of the time when they aren’t up to the task.  

Amphibious Robot Dogs. Existing amphibious robots are largely inspired by reptiles or insects, and often face limitations in agility, dynamics, and load capacity. Basing the amphibious robot on the swimming style of dogs allows for it to easily transition between land and water and overcome many of the challenges faced by insect-inspired designs.