Random Thoughts or Whatever

[Quadman2]

From my favorite Parsons Lp (Tales Of Mystery and Imagination - by Edgar Allan Poe) ...the whole of side 1 is epically good!

And every time I listen to "Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether" ('76), it breaks-me-up.

It's just so different from the sombre mood of the rest of the tracks.


Q

 

[DeadRock]

And every time I listen to "Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether" ('76), it breaks-me-up.

It's just so different from the sombre mood of the rest of the tracks.


Q

It sounds like it starts inside a pub or beer hall...too good...

 

[nailer]

And if you get a chance...take in Alan Parson Project's rendition of Poe's short story: "A Dream Within A Dream". The band does a great job of interpretation of Edgar's Tale with music!


Q

Have it.

Being from Baltimore, am well versed in Poe. Way back in the day visited his grave the eve of All Saints' Day.

 

[nailer]

View attachment 3179705

So-called artificial intelligence is a contentious topic for various reasons, including handling of copyright, power usage, privacy concerns and chatbots like ChatGPT sometimes returning incorrect answers to queries. However, there's one thing that critics and evangelists can agree on: AI increasingly permeates many layers of digital life, from culture to business to politics. As is common with new technologies, an increase of illicit usage of AI in the form of deepfakes is deeply connected to its rise in popularity and, more importantly, accessibility. Deepfakes are AI-generated videos or audio formats that impersonate, for example, celebrities or politicians to spread mis- or disinformation or defraud consumers. Businesses around the world can already feel the impact of this type of artificial content.

A survey by identity verification provider Regula conducted among more than 1,000 experts in fraud detection or prevention from countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Germany shows that a sizable chunk of their companies were targeted by one of three methods of advanced identity fraud. 46 percent of respondents experienced cases of synthetic identity fraud, where a combination of real and fake identity components, like a fake social security number and a real name, address and birth date, was used.

37 percent reported seeing voice deepfakes being used, a recent high-profile example of which from the realm of politics was an artificial President Biden robocalling prospective voters in January to dissuade them from voting in the primaries. Video deepfakes are, as of now, less common, with only 29 percent of respondents having already experienced such fraud attempts. With generative AI companies now focusing on moving pictures, with tools like Sora in OpenAI, this problem could become more pronounced in the coming months and years.

This worry is also reflected in the share of experts surveyed who think these three fraud methods will become a genuine threat, with between 80 and 90 percent agreeing with this assessment. "AI-generated fake identities can be difficult for humans to detect, unless they are specially trained to do so", says Ihar Kliashchou, Chief Technology Officer at Regula. "While neural networks may be useful in detecting deepfakes, they should be used in conjunction with other anti-fraud measures that focus on physical and dynamic parameters."

Hey, hey
AI is all the rage
On the center stage
Here to stay

 

[nailer]

Percentage of Americans who say that the United States should spend more money on "assistance" for poor people: 72

Percentage who say so when the assistance is called "welfare": 29

(Harper's Index, May 2024)

AFDC ("assistance" for families with dependent children) is perceived by many as "welfare." Perception is an interesting thing.

 

[nailer]

... However- using money to improve the conditions of poor people- making their environment better, by providing economic opportunities, improving education, and such- are pretty much universally supported. (i.e. the "Teach a man to fish" part of the same parable)...

Regards,
Gordon.

Yet rarely funded.

 

[GordonW]

Yet rarely funded.

Because education and economic improvement takes real effort to oversee. And it requires people in charge of programs, to actually seriously think about hard issues.

Much easier to just hand out money.

It's simple human nature, unfortunately. But, it's something we should be able to overcome little by little, if we keep chipping away at it.

Regards,
Gordon.

 

[SuperjazzyJa]

I use T-Mobile because there aren't any service providers called Coffee-Mobile.

 

[ernieb1536]

I think there's a deeper reason there.

Most people object to just giving people money. The old "Give a man a fish" parable.

However- using money to improve the conditions of poor people- making their environment better, by providing economic opportunities, improving education, and such- are pretty much universally supported. (i.e. the "Teach a man to fish" part of the same parable)...

Regards,
Gordon.

When my kids were young I was unjustly let go from a 15 yr career , my kids need surgery and I was able to get healthy start health insurance from the state for my kids till I got on my feet , that really helped keep me afloat ! And as much as I appreciated it the one of the best days of my adult life was when I no longer needed the help ! And since then I’ve paid back a lot of taxes lol ! But I’ve never forgot the help I got when I needed it !

 

[GordonW]

When my kids were young I was unjustly let go from a 15 yr career , my kids need surgery and I was able to get healthy start health insurance from the state for my kids till I got on my feet , that really helped keep me afloat ! And as much as I appreciated it the one of the best days of my adult life was when I no longer needed the help ! And since then I’ve paid back a lot of taxes lol ! But I’ve never forgot the help I got when I needed it !

There's quite a difference between short-term assistance (unemployment compensation, temporary health assistance, and such), and what was commonly known as "welfare".

And even for long-term aid- there's people who have gotten a truly bad break (serious life-long disability or such)- and I think, if asked- most people won't fret too much about helping them. It's seemingly-perpetual help for those who at least appear to be able-bodied,, that ruins the perception of it for those that really needs it.

Like I said before- it takes real work and a lot of thoughtful consideration, to run a successful assistance program properly, for the long term. Most people don't want to put in that much effort managing such things. So, they do it the easier, but much less effective, way.

Regards,
Gordon.

 

[Mystic]

Thanks to a strong slate of original programming and its continued crackdown on password sharing, Netflix enjoyed the strongest start to a year since 2020, as the video streaming giant added 9.3 million subscribers in the first three months of the year, blowing past analyst expectations.

Revenue grew 15 percent year-over-year, driven primarily by membership growth and pricing. Looking ahead, Netflix expects continued double-digit revenue growth, as it plans to grow beyond mere subscriber additions. “The overall business growth now has extra levers and extra drivers like plan optimization, including things like extra members, ads revenue, pricing into more value,” Co-CEO Gregory Peters said in a call with investors, while CFO Spencer Adam Neumann emphasized how much room for growth the company has left: “We're less than 10% of TV share in every country in which we operate. There's still hundreds of millions of homes that are not Netflix members. And we're just getting started on advertising,” Neumann said.

Speaking of advertising, Netflix’s ad-supported tier, introduced in select markets in late 2022, is proving very popular with customers. In the first three months of 2023, ads memberships grew 65 percent compared to the previous quarter, as 4 in 10 new signups in eligible markets chose the ad-supported tier.

Despite the good results, Netflix’s share price was down 6 percent on Friday morning. That’s partly due to a slightly lower-than-expected guidance for second quarter revenue and partly due to the company’s surprise announcement that it would stop reporting quarterly membership figures next year. "As we’ve evolved our pricing and plans from a single to multiple tiers with different price points depending on the country, each incremental paid membership has a very different business impact," the company explained, knowing that these kinds of decisions rarely go down well with investors, who like to get as detailed picture of how things are going as possible.

 

[DeadRock]

Percentage of Americans who say they typically know the cost of a health-care service or product before receiving it: 17

(Harper's Index, May 2024)

 

[nailer]

View attachment 3181437

Thanks to a strong slate of original programming and its continued crackdown on password sharing, Netflix enjoyed the strongest start to a year since 2020, as the video streaming giant added 9.3 million subscribers in the first three months of the year, blowing past analyst expectations.

Revenue grew 15 percent year-over-year, driven primarily by membership growth and pricing. Looking ahead, Netflix expects continued double-digit revenue growth, as it plans to grow beyond mere subscriber additions. “The overall business growth now has extra levers and extra drivers like plan optimization, including things like extra members, ads revenue, pricing into more value,” Co-CEO Gregory Peters said in a call with investors, while CFO Spencer Adam Neumann emphasized how much room for growth the company has left: “We're less than 10% of TV share in every country in which we operate. There's still hundreds of millions of homes that are not Netflix members. And we're just getting started on advertising,” Neumann said.

Speaking of advertising, Netflix’s ad-supported tier, introduced in select markets in late 2022, is proving very popular with customers. In the first three months of 2023, ads memberships grew 65 percent compared to the previous quarter, as 4 in 10 new signups in eligible markets chose the ad-supported tier.

Despite the good results, Netflix’s share price was down 6 percent on Friday morning. That’s partly due to a slightly lower-than-expected guidance for second quarter revenue and partly due to the company’s surprise announcement that it would stop reporting quarterly membership figures next year. "As we’ve evolved our pricing and plans from a single to multiple tiers with different price points depending on the country, each incremental paid membership has a very different business impact," the company explained, knowing that these kinds of decisions rarely go down well with investors, who like to get as detailed picture of how things are going as possible.

They're losing me for a quarter or two on the 25th.

 

[cornemuse]

April 20th, 4 20, Both one of my brothers b-day & Hitlers too. I can allus remember that date, Wierd, , , , ,

edit:
Today!

 

[Mystic]

As pandemic patterns of U.S. population growth are normalizing, three economically successful states have remained among the U.S. jurisdictions which are shrinking. According to a December release by the Census Bureau, California, Illinois and New York - along with West Virginia, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Hawaii and Oregon - lost population in 2023 compared to 2022. Throughout the new Census first released in 2020, all three states have shown continuously sinking population numbers. New York and Illinois even started to see their populations decline under the old Census since 2016 and 2014, respectively, while California experienced a stagnating number of inhabitants in 2019.

While during pandemic conditions, many other states experienced the same shrinking populations (19 at the height of the trend in 2022), the release of the 2023 data now shows that the demographic problems that have plagued some states since before the pandemic are still ongoing. Americans resettling because of high cost of living do play a role in this development, but changes in immigration into the U.S. have also had a big part in the state's ongoing population decline as immigrants increasingly diversify their destinations in the U.S., favoring - like domestic migrants - the Sun Belt states, but also smaller cities.

The story of New York, the country's fastest shrinking state as of the latest Census release, fits this mold. New York lost 0.5 percent of its population between July 2022 and June 2023 and the previous Census had recorded a decreasing population in the state since 2016. The speed of New York's population shrink also seems to have sped up since - from just 0.1 percent in 2016 to 0.4 percent in 2019 and now 0.5 percent in 2023. While Covid-19-era losses were even higher in New York, which became the poster child of pandemic city flight, normalization seems to mean that New York is now back on its trajectory of steadily increasing population loss. The state experienced a negative domestic net migration of more than 200,000 people last year and it received only a net 73,900 people from overseas, staying behind Florida, California and Texas for international migration.

 

[Te-Te]

 

[nailer]

View attachment 3182414

As pandemic patterns of U.S. population growth are normalizing, three economically successful states have remained among the U.S. jurisdictions which are shrinking. According to a December release by the Census Bureau, California, Illinois and New York - along with West Virginia, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Hawaii and Oregon - lost population in 2023 compared to 2022. Throughout the new Census first released in 2020, all three states have shown continuously sinking population numbers. New York and Illinois even started to see their populations decline under the old Census since 2016 and 2014, respectively, while California experienced a stagnating number of inhabitants in 2019.

While during pandemic conditions, many other states experienced the same shrinking populations (19 at the height of the trend in 2022), the release of the 2023 data now shows that the demographic problems that have plagued some states since before the pandemic are still ongoing. Americans resettling because of high cost of living do play a role in this development, but changes in immigration into the U.S. have also had a big part in the state's ongoing population decline as immigrants increasingly diversify their destinations in the U.S., favoring - like domestic migrants - the Sun Belt states, but also smaller cities.

The story of New York, the country's fastest shrinking state as of the latest Census release, fits this mold. New York lost 0.5 percent of its population between July 2022 and June 2023 and the previous Census had recorded a decreasing population in the state since 2016. The speed of New York's population shrink also seems to have sped up since - from just 0.1 percent in 2016 to 0.4 percent in 2019 and now 0.5 percent in 2023. While Covid-19-era losses were even higher in New York, which became the poster child of pandemic city flight, normalization seems to mean that New York is now back on its trajectory of steadily increasing population loss. The state experienced a negative domestic net migration of more than 200,000 people last year and it received only a net 73,900 people from overseas, staying behind Florida, California and Texas for international migration.

Living deep in the heart of Dallas, I can personally attest to the increasing number of Texans.

 

[DeadRock]

View attachment 3182495

I wish I didn't see the humor...or the truth...

 

[nailer]

View attachment 3182495

GO STARS!

 

[Mr.White]

Fage Total 5% Greek Yogurt with some St. Dalfour Fruit Spread is better than any type of ice-cream dessert.