From time to time I swing by norvig.com looking for signs of life from Peter Norvig, but it hasn’t been updated in years. However today I pushed on the internet a bit harder and I found signs of life over at github.com/norvig. Norvig continues to hack on his pytudes project, which is cool. I was reading its documentation today and I learned about the book Etudes for Programmers. If I had more money I would definitely buy myself a copy of that book, but at the moment AUD$355 is just a tad out of my league.
Daily Archives: 2023-08-03 [Thursday]
Why AI Is So Dangerous & How It Could Destroy Humanity
Ah, click bait. Sign of the times! MEGATHREAT: Why AI Is So Dangerous & How It Could Destroy Humanity | Mo Gawdat.
Mo Gawdat is an Egyptian entrepreneur and writer. He is the former chief business officer for Google X and author of the books Solve for Happy and Scary Smart.
Mo says there are some things we shouldn’t waste time talking about because they are going to happen, inevitably. These are:
- There is no shutting down or reversing AI, we can’t stop it
- AI will be significantly smarter than humans
- Bad things will happen in the process of developing AI (the specifics to be determined)
…and the fourth inevitability? Utopia..?
Soldering iron temperature
I have the info below taped to the front of my bench drawer, but I thought I would put it out there in text format for anyone who it might be useful to, so I made some notes over here: soldering temperature.
In The Lab With Jay Jay – August 3, 2023 – Sorting Soldering Iron Tips
This post is part of my video blog: In The Lab With Jay Jay.
I was watching EEVblog #168 – How To Set Up An Electronics Lab and Dave suggested using chisel tips instead of conical tips, which inspired me to check what I was using and also to sort the tips I presently own into three categories:
- Chisel tips
- Other tips
- Conical tips
If you’re interested in soldering temperatures I wrote a follow-up post on that topic: soldering iron temperature.
Fluke VoltAlert
I was watching this old EEVBlog video: EEVblog #168 – How To Set Up An Electronics Lab and Dave recommended a Fluke VoltAlert. I discovered there are various versions, such as the 1AC and 2AC, and those alternatives are explained here: Best Non-Contact Voltage Tester.
The Fluke 1AC II Non-Contact Voltage Tester looked like a pretty good one for my purposes and I found one on eBay for AUD$35.40 so I hit the buy button.
Video streaming quality
I found Google’s video streaming quality report. It seems to be context sensitive, so for me it reports results for my ISP (Dodo) in the Sydney region.