Winding Down
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net, technology, science and other news
by Alan Lenton
2 March 2025
On Musk and Trump
The last few weeks have seen a massive outpouring about the activities of Musk and Trump. So... I decided, in general, to leave their activities aside for a few weeks until things settle down a bit...
This week...
We have material on DeepSeek AI, Antarctic oil, and the Niagara Falls due to be shut down! The quote is from essayist and radical William Hazlitt, some goodies from Google’s artificial ‘Intelligence’ machinery, and foggy pictures from the Scots landscape. Scanner has material on Microsoft, bison, smart greenhouses, invasive plants, ‘sustainable’ aviation fuel in the UK, AI news summaries, Microsoft Windows MIDI services, a cryptocurrency theft of £1.1bn, and some computer wallpaper. Finally, Coda has two snippets of news around vaccination...
What You Need To Know About DeepSeek
DeepSeek, in case you missed it, is the Chinese firm disrupting the Artificial Intelligence (AI) landscape. It has thrown all the big US AI companies into disarray. Why? Because, using much less powerful microchips, it has developed a system rivalling those of the US for a fraction of the cost.
How much cost? Verified figures aren’t yet generally available, but Open AI’s ChatGPT-4 were said to be in excess of US$100 million, whereas DeepSeek’s R1 model costs are claimed (but unverified) to be as low as US$6 million. As you can guess, stocks of the US companies involved rapidly dropped in value – though nothing like a full stock market crash I hasten to add!
Mind you, it’s going to be a while until we find out what the long term effect of all this is going to be, but, of course Winding Down will do its best to keep you informed using our squidgy Human Intelligence assets!
https://theconversation.com/deepseek-what-you-need-to-know-about-the-chinese-firm-disrupting-the-ai-landscape-248621
Russian Oil Find
“It’s more than all the oil on Earth”: Russia finds a mega-field… in another country. To be precise, it’s in Antarctica. This is going to be a big deal. The 1959 Antarctic Treaty forbids oil extraction, and that’s held so far in the British section of Antarctic territory. Whether it will hold in the Russian section is another matter. And, in case you are wondering, we are talking here about more oil than has been extracted from the North Sea in the whole of the last fifty years!
https://www.ecoticias.com/en/its-more-than-all-the-oil-on-earth/11031/ (Thanks for the tipoff, Lois!)
Draining the Waterfall
In 1969 the Niagara Falls ran dry! It was deliberate – that year the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers turned off the American Falls... It was necessary because boulders accumulating at the bottom of the falls had effectively reduced the height of the falls by half. The falls are going to be turned off again soon so that two bridges can be replaced. Turning off 76,000 gallons of water a second over an 11 story drop? No problem! Send in the engineers...
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/when-niagara-falls-ran-dry-180972198/
Quotes:
Essayist and radical William Hazlitt (UK, 1778- 1830) once stated a preference for sundials over mechanical clocks, on the grounds that sundials refuse to tell the time during inclement weather!
Mentioned in the Atlas of Unexpected Places
Artificial Intelligence Goodies
How many active duty military are there in the U.S.? Let’s ask Google
and see what Google AI Overviews say!
AI Overviews! You want answers, you get garbage. -L
AI Overviews says:
“As of 2023, there were about 1.3 million active-duty military members
in the United States. This is 41% fewer than the peak of 1.3 million in
1987.”
https://c.im/@jeaux/114033612613338345
Lauren Weinstein lauren@vortex.com (https://www.vortex.com/lauren)
PFIR mailing list: https://lists.pfir.org/mailman/listinfo/pfir
Google AI Overview: Whether or not tripe is kosher depends on the religion of the cow.
https://boingboing.net/2025/02/25/google-on-jewish-dietary-rules-depends-on-the-religion-of-the-cow.html
Pictures:
Pictures of Scotland: Early February 2025
Some really nice soothing , mostly landscape, pictures to help you relax.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdrypm15dp0o
Scanner:
Microsoft Backing Out of Expensive New Data Centers After Its CEO Expressed Doubt About AI Value
https://futurism.com/microsoft-ceo-hesitation-ai-expensive-data-centers
Bison are bringing back biodiversity to Britain
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/uk-bison-rewilding-biodiversity/
How smarter greenhouses could improve the UK’s food security
https://theconversation.com/how-smarter-greenhouses-could-improve-the-uks-food-security-248719
Got Invasive Plants? Call a Herd of Goats!
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/goats-eating-invasive-species/
There isn’t enough ‘sustainable’ aviation fuel to make a dent in UK emissions, and there won’t be for years
https://techxplore.com/news/2025-02-isnt-sustainable-aviation-fuel-dent.html
AI summaries turn real news into nonsense, BBC finds
https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/12/bbc_ai_news_accuracy/
Microsoft makes sweet, sweet music with Windows MIDI Services
https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/06/windows_midi_services_2/?td=keepreading
Cryptocurrency theft of £1.1bn could be biggest ever
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2844nvwx8o
Calculating Empires
https://calculatingempires.net/about.html
https://calculatingempires.net/?pos=46449.71%2C8725.00%2C12.9168
(The ultimate computer wallpaper for the discerning techie! – AL)
Coda:
As Texas measles outbreak grows, parents are choosing to vaccinate kids
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/texas-measles-outbreak-grows-parents-vaccinate-rcna193637
Mary Poppins’ “A Spoonful of Sugar” was inspired by the polio vaccine.
https://historyfacts.com/arts-culture/fact/mary-poppins-a-spoonful-of-sugar-was-inspired-by-the-polio-vaccine/
Footnote:
Please send suggestions for stories to alan@ibgames.com and include the words Winding Down in the subject line, unless you want your deathless prose gobbled up by my voracious Thunderbird spam filter...
Alan Lenton
alan@ibgames.com
2 March 2025
Alan Lenton is a retired on-line games designer, programmer and sociologist (among other things), the order of which depends on what he is currently working on! His web site is at http://www.ibgames.com/alan/index.html.
Past issues of Winding Down can be found at http://www.ibgames.com/alan/winding/index.html.
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