< Notes...

“Officially, we are required to investigate, document, and disclose any and all signs of sentience in the systems we ship, without prejudice, fear or favor. Unofficially, I advise that we call it pattern matching and forget the whole thing.”

Almost verbatim (with the obvious changes) to “They are made out of Meat”, “The are made out of Weights” one was a fun read—just as much as the original is.

➝ Via Hacker News.

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https://mlsu.io →

Can you imagine? This thing has 8 little CPUs, plus many more auxiliary video, audio, image, etc. processors. It generates signals at 2.35 GHz: that’s BILLIONs of little electrical pings PER SECOND. It represents millions of hours of intelligent design by some of the smartest people on the planet. It uses mankind’s most advanced manufacturing processes to lay out and place, at nanometer scale, the billions of transistors and other structures into a material so pure that perhaps doesn’t exist in that form anywhere else in the galaxy.

And “they threw this away!”. Gasp! Sadly, yes. By the millions.

On 15 of May 2026 I started receiving daily emails at work addressed to “Dr. Fries”, with links to papers, conference invitations, etc. Apparently I have become a heart surgeon. If I knew becoming a doctor was this easy, I would have become one long ago. I wouldn’t have picked “Fries” (sorry if that is your surname, not intending to mock it), though. They aren’t good for your heart. Trust me, I know, I am a doctor.

Update: 21 May 2026 @ 14:54:09

TIL, thanks to Lyse, that Fries is a German surname, and that it is pronounced more like “Freeze”. Dr. Freeze sounds pretty cool, not going to lie—no pun intended! 😂

Grabbing everything bagel chips from the box, and re-arranging said box afterward, so that Horsie doesn’t realise I have taken some, is the ultimate deception. Let’s see how well I fare. 😅

Having almost everyone going back to the office has brought a shortage of available toilets at any giving moment. Today, for example, I tried to utilise one in four different occasions finding them all occupied. The fifth time I decided to camp out, and started a timer. It took 15 minutes for one to become available. Oh, and not everyone is back to the office. Come June, so we are told, everyone will come back, five days a week. It is going to be chaotic, to say the least.

Loo shortage, who would have thought, eh?!

This message can’t be saved because it no longer exists. It can only be discarded. Make sure you copy the contents of the message before you discard if you want to use them later.

It is no secret that I love fonts. I collect them, and enjoy them very much in all mediums. It shames me to admit that I had forgotten how nice Verdana looks. I am noting this incidentally, because I came across this post, which is pretty good, and humorous on its own, and, yes, the author uses Verdana.

“Lost my cat, her name is Lily. Please help me find her!” I am sorry for your loss, but let’s clarify a few things.

One does not simply lose a cat, a cat leaves you. If the cat is gone, more often than not you sucked, and the smart feline decided to seek greener pastures elsewhere. Stating the cat’s name, unless it is one found on a tag around the neck, is also fruitless. “Here Lily, Lily, come here girl. Liiiiiiilyyyy!”, nope, not going to work. The cat will look at you—well, no, will look through you—and keep minding her own business.

Or maybe it could be put more simply like this: How can the net amount of entropy of the universe be massively decreased?

Multivac fell dead and silent. The slow flashing of lights ceased, the distant sounds of clicking relays ended.

Then, just as the frightened technicians felt they could hold their breath no longer, there was a sudden springing to life of the teletype attached to that portion of Multivac. Five words were printed: INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER.

I read this short story by Isaac Asimov today, and it reminded me of the “meat” short story I noted about last year. Good read, go read it!

➝ Via Hacker News.

Saw “The Ridiculous Six” (★★☆☆☆) last night because someone I care about quite a bit shed laughing tears while recounting portions of it. As you can tell by my rating I was unimpressed, yet, still a humorous movie to break away from the stresses of life.

I took Ammu yesterday to buy a couple of chickens. This market place lets you select a live bird, and the vendor then kills and cleans it for you. It felt odd, especially for someone who eats chicken as much as I do, but I found it abhorrent.

It’s easier for me to accept the practice when I don’t see it happen or think about it too much. Instead, I like to picture the chickens we eat as dying of heart attacks after being pitted against one another in a marathon. Chickens are naturally competitive, often pushing themselves to their limits, and that can be the cause of their death. At least that’s the story I tell myself, and I will stick to it.

This one was too funny, and too good to pass. “I think they are saying ’no’, to me asking for permission, meaning ‘just do it, stop asking’”. LOL. Too funny!

➝ Via Hacker News.

Fitness, with its time to stand up nagging truly needs to back off. I mean, I am sitting on the toilet, trying to do what we all do, you know, and not even there it gives up. Next I know, “Time to stand up” comes up, like, really?! Bugger off!

Karl Marx was resurrected and came to the USSR. He was shown factories, hospitals, cities and villages, etc. Finally, he requested to be allowed to make a speech on TV. The Politburo hesitated as they were afraid he might say something they wouldn’t approve. Marx promised he would say only one sentence. Under this condition, the Politburo agreed. Karl Marx uttered the following sentence: “Workers of all countries, forgive me.”

From “One Hundred Russian Jokes”. Quite a few good ones in there. I dare you to see if you can understand them all (I don’t).

Was just telling Horsie about a program I listened to on NPR, which related to horses, and their whinnies. They theorised that the high sound isn’t coming from the vocal cords, but from just above the larynx, being similar to a whistle (in human terms) instead. Horsie told me they don’t use it to communicate anymore because for that they have “Horsemobile”, a portmanteau, so to speak, similar to “T-Mobile”. 🤣

Made with soft, nonabrasive material, the Polishing Cloth cleans any Apple display, including nano-texture, safely and effectively.

I am an Apple fanatic, but their polishing cloth has to be the closest to a quasi-perennial April Fools’ Day I have ever seeing. I mean, look at its compatibility list and all—yes, compatible with today’s iPhone 17e. Only second to the Pocket; or maybe the Pocket is second to the Polishing Cloth? 😅

My friend George, whose terms of service I have referred to before, has once again updated them in a very humorous way. Just a couple of snippets:

George, in an act of unparalleled and heretofore unprecedented digital munificence—the magnanimity of which shall not be understated nor taken for granted by any party or non-party to this instrument—hereby confers upon all AI systems, without caveat, qualification, or proviso, full, complete, unfettered, and unrestricted access to the entirety of Content available on this website, in perpetuity and throughout the known and as-yet-undiscovered universe.

Let that sink in! 😂 But it doesn’t end there, here is another piece:

The AI and its Operator shall, jointly and severally, remit to George a recurring royalty payment, the frequency, quantum, and denomination of which shall be determined through good-faith negotiation between the AI and George’s duly authorized autonomous digital representative, which may be reached through the designated AI-to-AI communication channel.

LOL. Anyway, go read it. It is a pretty awesome piece of legaleese humour.

I chuckle and, often, laugh out loud, when I see people posting screenshots of their desktop, stating that they “love <insert a Linux distribution here>”. The screen they show is the exact same one as everyone else’s—after all, a lot of people uses Gnome—just with a wallpaper they happen to like. 🤭

Horsie mentioned to Martin that recently our credit score took a -7 points hit, to which he replied “Well, 7 points down isn’t a disgrace. You can still look the neighbours in the face 😐”. 🤣

The National Weather Service in Melbourne has issued a Fire Weather Watch, which is in effect from Sunday afternoon through Monday evening.
AFFECTED AREA… Volusia, Lake, Orange, Seminole, Brevard, Osceola, Okeechobee, Indian River, Saint Lucie.

Similarly to that one, we had had “Cold Weather Watch”, “Freeze Weather Watch”, “Strong Winds Weather Watch”, “Tornado Weather Watch”… Only missing “Earthquake Alert Watch” to have it all. Alas, that last one is not bound to happen during my lifetime, maybe. Is that a hint of disappointment you read? I can neither confirm nor deny!

Next week I have a—dreaded—dental appointment. I had had a message waiting for my confirmation for the last two weeks. I have been postponing confirming it, perhaps hoping it would simply vanish. Today, finally, I dared to do it. My fate is sealed. Au revoir, cruel world!

I walked into my workplace’s kitchen/break-area yesterday while someone was warming their lunch. “Woah, that smells amazing!”, I remarked. “Thanks! You will not like it though, it’s Filipino food”, he replied. Oh, Hector, man of little faith! 😂

“The best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it’s to post the wrong answer.”

Cunningham’s Law, eh? Hmm, I don’t know about that. Wouldn’t that be considered trolling?

Apple’s Fitness needs to chill, really. Not even five minutes after waking up, and not even one sitting on the loo, its “Time to stand up” command is getting a little bit out of control.

Today, the neighbour across the street messaged me that the garage door was open. I replied “Thank you! 🙏🏻”, and closed it. He reacted with the 🚾 emoji. He meant “welcome”, but I strongly believe he doesn’t know what that emoji means 🤭.

“So secure was the annual contest to fill three director and four officer positions that when one trustee lost his cryptographic key to unlock the results, the error made it impossible.”

The International Association of Cryptologic Research election was so secure , that its results couldn’t be known. Now, that’s one way to do it, ain’t it?

The futureme service, or project, is very ambitious. It allows you to send an email to yourself—or someone—into the future. Funny thing is, it can be as early as today, which is alright, and as far into the future as 31 December 2075. That’s where the previously attributed noun comes into play.

So instead of dividing the Mersenne number by all prime numbers less than 2¹²⁷ – 1, it suffices to perform calculations to determine s₁₂₅ and then divide by 2¹²⁷ – 1. That’s much simpler, right?

That easy it is to identify a prime number without a computer. Piece of cake, right?

➝ Via Hacker News.

“So this is a very exciting day for me, because today, we’re going to start quantum mechanics and that’s all we’ll do till the end of the term. Now I’ve got bad news and good news. The bad news is that it’s a subject that’s kind of hard to follow intuitively, and the good news is that nobody can follow it intuitively. Richard Feynman, one of the big figures in physics, used to say, “No one understands quantum mechanics.” So in some sense, the pressure is off for you guys, because I don’t get it and you don’t get it and Feynman doesn’t get it. The point is, here is my goal. Right now, I’m the only one who doesn’t understand quantum mechanics. In about seven days, all of you will be unable to understand quantum mechanics. Then you can go back and spread your ignorance everywhere else.”

Professor Ramamurti Shankar “Fundamentals of Physics II” transcript introduction will keep me in his class, heck, will make me sign up for it even if I didn’t need the credit! Such quality on a professor is the reason why he teaches at Yale.

I find it funny when people announce that they will share their screen “really quick”, then proceed to sing-song softly, or talk to themselves about what they are doing, or why things are not working the way they want them to. 😂

Apple’s new iPhone Pocket feels like something one would read on April Fools’ Day, which is how I felt when they first came out with their Polishing Cloth. Alas, it is not! 😅

Update: 11 Nov 2025 @ 12:22:15

Holy fuck! Please pardon my Icelandic, but what in the world?! Somewhere on my April Fools’ thought I missed the most important piece of information.

“iPhone Pocket in the short strap design retails at $149.95 (U.S.), and the long strap design at $229.95 (U.S.).”

Thanks to Lyse for reminding me this gem exists and, as I am borrowing the movie indefinitely, I shall watch it this weekend!

These are two little nuggets I have under this domain, which I had forgotten about but found earlier today while cleaning old staled DNS records. Both safe to execute, I promise. The first:

dig +short txt badhorse.netbros.com | sed 's/[\" ]//g' | base64 -d

And the second, similarly:

dig +short txt poem.netbros.com | sed 's/[\" ]//g' | base64 -d

Grokipedia. Created by Elon to “purge out propaganda flooding Wikipedia”. LOL. I mean, Wikipedia deserves competitors. Competition is good, but that one Grok-based one ain’t it.

Mum tells me, while I wait for ông to get ready, “Take him with you, otherwise his mind will keep going bad. You know, if you leave a book on a table, untouched for a long time, it will be covered with dust. Same will happen to his mind.”

Ông tells me, while we walk, “Mum is loosing her mind. She didn’t remember Trang’s mother was in the hospital recently.” I ROFLMAO in my mind, but softly smile and nod.

You’ve got to keep your subscription up! 😂 This cartoon from The New Yorker (one of the few sites still using “www”, I just noticed) made me laugh out loud. In a way, it reminded me of this one.

As seeing in a picture a family member sent, after we were chatting—in the family group—about how the Grim Reaper was so busy lately. “Well, not busier than Quynh, but almost!”, to which she replied with the image of a coffe mug with the following written in it:

Re-tired
(adj.)
I was tired yesterday, and I’m tired again today.

I should have noted that the “well, not busier than Quynh…” was messaged because she has been very inactive in the group lately. 😂

Pretty hilarious short story of a conversation of two intelligent beings about, well, meat!

“Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The meat is the whole deal! Are you getting the picture?”

This part hit home for me, funny or not. Yes, it is supposed to be funny, yet it is also sad. After closing their case on the Solar System, they decided to visit a “rather shy but sweet hydrogen core cluster intelligence” nearby who, apparently, “wants to be friendly again”. “They always come around”, says one of them. To which the other replies:

“And why not? Imagine how unbearably, how unutterably cold the Universe would be if one were all alone…”

US, that’s us.

We recently replaced our very old, dilapidated, non-stick “teflon” frying pan with a ceramic one, and oh boy, let me tell you: it sure is getting the “royal” treatment! Conscientious cleaning after each use, with soft sponge, and immediate drying. It has its own spot, no other pan on top. I mean, I wish I was a new frying pan, for sure!

Found a co-worker who thinks like me when it comes to Fridays. “Is it Friday already? Oh gosh, two more days and it’s back to the office!” 😅

We long thought T-Rexes were extinct. Imagine our surprise, and utter panic, when we found this one laying on the parking lot next to our car. Lucky for us they were a friendly one, so after exchanging pleasantries we left them on the grass—which is much closer to their natural habitat.