Cowboy Who?

Adults who are unsure whether they’re vaccinated can get additional shots, health experts say.

Coulam's death comes two weeks after a judge ruled his popular festival north of Houston must be sold. A group of prospective buyers sued in 2023 after a $60 million deal fell through.

The White House insists that the gift is legal, but some of Trump's biggest backers have criticised the deal.

Widmer Agelviz-Sanguino, 24, is believed to have been deported to El Salvador after being detained last year at a Houston airport because of his tattoos.

U.S. Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz hope to fund an operation to kill the parasitic fly before too much damage is done.

He’s right, you know.

#Mia #Ully #RoninWarriors

Looks a lot like Saskatchewan, doesn't it? Except it isn't. You know how you can tell? First of all, it's December, and there's no snow! #CowboyWho

The other day I wanted to look up a specific IBM PS/2 model, a circa 1992 PS/2 Server system. So I punched the model into Google, and got this:

That did not look quite right, since the machine I was looking for had 486 processors (yes, plural). And it most certainly did use Microchannel (MCA).

Alright, let’s try again:

Simply re-running the identical query produces a different summary. Although the AI still claims that PS/2 Model 280 is an ISA-based 286 system. Maybe the third time is the charm?

The AI is really quite certain that PS/2 Model 280 was a 286-based system released in 1987, and I was really looking for a newer machine. Interestingly, the first time the AI claimed Model 280 had 1MB RAM expandable to 6MB, and now it supposedly only has 640 KB RAM. But the AI seems sure that Model 280 had a 1.44 MB drive and VGA graphics.

What if we try again? After a couple of attempts, yet different answer pops up:

Oh look, now the PS/2 Model 280 is a 286 expandable to 128 MB RAM. Amazing! Never mind that the 286 was architecturally limited to 16 MB.

Even better, the AI now tells us that “PS/2 Model 280 was a significant step forward in IBM’s personal computer line, and it helped to establish the PS/2 as a popular and reliable platform.”

The only problem with all that? There is no PS/2 Model 280, and never was. I simply had the model number wrong. The Google AI just “helpfully” hallucinates something that at first glance seems quite plausible, but is in fact utter nonsense.

But wait, that’s not the end of the story. If you try repeating the query often enough, you might get this:

That answer is actually correct! “Model 280 was not a specific model in the PS/2 series”, and there was in fact an error in the query.

Here’s another example of a correct answer:

Unfortunately the correct answer comes up maybe 10% of the time when repeating the query, if at all. In the vast majority of attempts, the AI simply makes stuff up. I do not consider made up, hallucinated answers useful, in fact they are worse than useless.

This minor misadventure might provide a good window into AI-powered Internet search. To a non-expert, the made up answers will seem highly convincing, because there is a lot of detail and overall the answer does not look like junk.

An expert will immediately notice discrepancies in the hallucinated answers, and will follow for example the List of IBM PS/2 Models article on Wikipedia. Which will very quickly establish that there is no Model 280.

The (non-expert) users who would most benefit from an AI search summary will be the ones most likely misled by it.

How much would you value a research assistant who gives you a different answer every time you ask, and although sometimes the answer may be correct, the incorrect answers look, if anything, more “real” than the correct ones?

When Google says “AI responses may include mistakes”, do not take it lightly. The AI generated summary could be utter nonsense, and just because it sounds convincing doesn’t mean it has anything to do with reality. Caveat emptor!

Here’s another entry in the extremely sporadic series of secret passages on Microsoft main campus. (Part 1, Part 2.)

The Building 83 loading dock is attached to the Building 84 parking garage by a vehicle tunnel, but the tunnel is now blocked off by bollards. My guess is that the tunnel was originally intended to allow service vehicles from Building 84 convenient access to the Building 83 loading dock, but it had the side effect of allowing employees to drive between Building 84 and Building 83, and the unwanted traffic may have created problems, so they just erected bollards to close it off to vehicle traffic.

However, pedestrians can easily pass between the bollards. (Bicycles slightly less easily.) This creates a walkable/bikeable path from the southwest corner of the Building 84 parking garage on level P1 and the Building 83 loading dock on level P2, continuing up the ramp to level P1 and the Building 83 parking garage main entrance.

If you combine this tunnel with the existing passageway from Building 84 to Building 86, you have a path from Building 83 all the way to Building 86 without being exposed to the rain.

The post Secret passages on Microsoft main campus, episode 3 appeared first on The Old New Thing.

If you open the Settings app and go to System, About, the first information block contains basic hardware information like the processor and RAM. But why does the processor speed get reported twice, sometimes with slightly different values?

Processor

Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4790 CPU @ 3.60GHz

3.71GHz

This field is actually showing two pieces of information, one after the other. Let’s break it down.

Processor	Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4790 CPU @ 3.60GHz	3.71GHz
	Processor brand string	Speed

The processor brand string comes from the unreliable CPUID function codes 0x80000002 through 0x80000004, which returns an arbitrary 47-character string¹ intended to be used for processor branding identification.

Some processor manufacturers include a CPU speed as part of that string,² which is why you see the “@ 3.60GHz” appended to the CPU identifier.

Windows itself does a rough calculation of the CPU speed and shows it after the processor brand string.

My guess is that this system is being 3% overclocked since 3.71 is 3% larger than 3.60.

¹ Really 48 characters, but it is required to be null-terminated, so only 47 useful characters.

² Perhaps they do it to make it easier to detect overclocking or systems being marketed as faster than they really are.

The post Why does Windows report my processor speed twice, with slightly different values? appeared first on The Old New Thing.

In brief: We’ll see a short reprieve in humidity today, but then we are back to hot, and mostly sunny weather through Saturday. The second half of Memorial Day weekend could see the onset of some scattered showers, and by next week a pattern change should bring cooler temperatures and more widespread precipitation.

Front status

A weak front moved into Houston overnight. It produced some stray showers and thunderstorms near downtown Houston and the Liberty area, but for the most part it was a dry passage. The front has now stalled near the coast and should allow for showers (mostly offshore) this morning before lifting back north as a warm front. Therefore, if you’re enjoying the slightly lower humidity levels this morning, don’t get too attached. Humidity levels will begin to climb this afternoon, and we’ll be back to sticky status this evening.

Wednesday

Skies will be mostly sunny for most of Houston today, with high temperatures in the low 90s. Winds will start out from the northeast this morning, but return to come from the southeast by this afternoon or evening—hence the rapidly recovering humidity levels discussed above. There likely will be some showers offshore, and a few of these may impact coastal areas today, but most likely they mostly remain over the Gulf. Lows temperatures tonight will drop into the mid-70s.

Thursday and Friday

These will be a pair of mostly sunny and humid days, with high temperatures in the low- to mid-90s for most locations and nights in the 70s. Rain chances are near zero. Winds from the southeast, generally, will be light.

Memorial Day weekend

It’s hard to believe we are already at the Memorial Day weekend stage of things, but here we are. Saturday should, more or less, see a continuation of the hot, humid, and mostly sunny weather of Thursday and Friday. Sunday may see a few more clouds, but will still be rather hot and humid. There may be a 20 percent chance of rain. By Memorial Day, however, we are likely to see the impacts of an advancing front. Highs may be around 90 degrees, with partly to mostly cloudy skies, and perhaps a 50 percent chance of light to moderate showers.

Next week

The details remain sketchy, but that front is likely to move into Houston and bring a period of moderately cooler and wetter weather. Most of next week should see highs in the 80s and lows in the 70s, with healthy rain chances. It’s difficult to pick a day with the greatest likelihood of rain, but we do look to be headed to a pattern in which showers are more abundant. We could use the break after a mostly hot, and mostly sunny May so far.

A reader writes:

I am the HR person for a small nonprofit which offers many different services to the public. We have one team in particular which has always been difficult to manage and has not really gotten along with any manager they have had.

We’ve most recently brought in a new manager for this team who does tend to do things quite differently than any of the other managers (current or former). Let’s call her Barbara. Barbara is a go-getter with a strong personality and is very focused on making rapid changes to many of the current or older practices and processes which she feels will better serve the public. Upper management is generally supportive of these changes!

It is important to note that this team has two specific focuses for their work output, and is tasked with creating and providing customized services to the public (among other things). This team is VERY resistant to change. They often flat-out refuse to make some of the changes Barbara is trying to make, and will say that it’s “too soon” or it “happened too fast” or they “weren’t included in the decision” or “were never notified of the change” (even though there is documentation saying otherwise). They will bring complaints such as Barbara isn’t doing enough to help them (though she is doing more than she should be already, and her boss — our CEO — had specifically requested she not get as involved with the creation and implementation of these special services to the public because past managers of this department had done just that and burnt themselves out). They have also said that they shouldn’t have to do anything with one of the main focuses of their jobs (even though it’s literally part of the department’s title and has been a task on their plate since the department’s inception) and that other departments need to help out more (even though the other departments don’t do the same work this department does, and they already have enough on their plates as it is). Basically, it’s giving “I don’t want to do the assignments I don’t like, and you can’t make me.”

Now, I will say that Barbara can be a little prickly and even intense in her management style, which has exacerbated this situation a bit. Upper management and HR (me) have identified some things that Barbara needs to work on to help make her a more effective manager and be better equipped to manage this team, but we understand it takes two to tango. Barbara does have some really great emotional intelligence for others, which has helped, but she does have a bit of a blind spot when it comes to her reactions.

With all that said, this team has brought these same complaints for every manager they’ve had. We’re starting to think that this is less a manager problem and more a team problem. And we are at our wits’ end of how to make this all stop, short of sitting them all down and firmly telling them to knock it off or get out (in so many more legal words, of course!). I should also note that we are in a unionized environment, which also complicates things.

Yeah, this sounds like a them problem, not a Barbara problem.

Barbara may not be a perfect manager, but it sounds like this team complains about the same things no matter who is managing them, and those things are nonsensical.

Your instinct to sit them all down and tell them to knock it off or leave is the right one. The framing you want is: “I want to be clear about what you can and can’t expect on this team, regardless of who is managing it. One of the fundamental jobs of this team is to do X, and it will continue to be a major focus of your work, and not one we pull other departments in to help with. We also support Barbara, or any manager of this team, making changes like X, Y, and Z. While input is always welcome, the final call will be made by your manager and we expect you to roll forward with those decisions once they’re made. At the end of the day, your manager will give you assignments and set policy, and your job is to carry those out. If this doesn’t work for you or isn’t the way you intend to operate, that’s of course your prerogative, but it does mean you can’t remain in this job. Take some time to think about whether you are or aren’t willing to work this way, and if you aren’t, we can begin planning on a transition out. But if you choose to remain on this team, those are the baseline expectations.” You should also say, “We should have been clearer about this earlier, because at this point the ongoing pushback has become disruptive to our work. We absolutely support you in deciding whether or not this will work for you, and I want you to have all the information about what you can expect going forward, so that you can make the right decision for yourself.”

From there, Barbara will likely need to have individual versions of that conversation with people because it’s unlikely that this will flip a switch overnight. But if she holds firm and doesn’t try to cater to unrealistic demands (the way it sounds like previous managers have tried), it’s likely to get better in time as people get the message. (And some people may leave over it, which wouldn’t be a bad thing.)

The union rules may dictate specific procedures that you need to follow in doing all of this, but it shouldn’t change the basic message or the fact that you can hold firm on what the job is and what will and won’t change in response to complaints.

The post managing a team that resists any change and complains constantly appeared first on Ask a Manager.

A Lufthansa flight with 205 people on board went without a pilot for 10 minutes last year after the copilot fainted while he was alone in the cockpit. What do you think?

The post Flight Flies Without Pilot For 10 Minutes After Copilot Faints appeared first on The Onion.

“A federal agency has cancelled a $117,000 grant that was set to go to the Emily Dickinson Museum.” — MassLive

Dear Miss Dickinson,

Following a routine audit of publicly funded projects for ideological alignment, your grant for digitizing a newly cataloged collection of your writing has been selected for termination. You will not be receiving the $117,000 allotted by the previous administration.

We understand this may be disappointing. However, voters sent a clear message: budget belt-tightening is a top priority. Anything not reflecting our current values is subject to re-evaluation.

And frankly, we don’t care much for your poetry.

We’re not required to elaborate—but in the interest of transparency, here’s why your work was flagged.

I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Don’t tell! They’d banish us – you know!

This poem reads as a thinly veiled defense of undocumented immigrants. Recall that these people sneak across borders and take pork plant jobs from veterans, threatening access to quality American food products.

We are left wondering why you oppose sandwich-based patriotism.

Also, be advised that we’re monitoring the em dashes, as they appear to be coded signals potentially indicative of subversive coordination.

Then there’s this:

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –

We suspect this is a call for Barack Hussein Obama to seek another term. You might want to run that by the Constitution, as only one president is eligible for thirdsies.

And, just because we’re curious: “never stops” what, exactly? Narrating boring documentaries?

And:

Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne’er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.

This translates as, “Losers should be compensated.” That’s not America. May we suggest, if you’re that hungry for “nectar,” consider reskilling and applying to ICE. Trade the little white dress for a crowbar.

We recommend that you refocus your writing on America and its core values.

For example, your little death poem:

I heard a Fly buzz – when I died –
The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air –
Between the Heaves of Storm –

Could be revised as:

I heard an Eagle scream at dawn
And Fife kept time with Drum
While Stars and Stripes marched hand in hand
And Freedom banged a gong.

Whichever approach you choose, your grant has been rescinded.

Respectfully,
DOGE

P.S. Please let your neighbors at the Amherst Bee Sanctuary know that we’re tracking the waggle dancing.

Norm!

LIBERTY, MO—After reading aloud a picture book about a puppy that works in a coal mine, local first grade teacher Brianna Montgomery asked her students Thursday what they want to be once child labor laws are repealed. “I want everyone to grab some crayons and draw a picture of what you want to be once the governor rolls back all the child labor laws,” Montgomery said as shouts of “fish processor!” and “farm laborer!” filled the classroom. “Joshua, you love video games, so maybe you could work at a plant assembling semiconductor chips. And Michelle, I know you like nature, so I bet you’d have fun being outside all day picking blueberries. Now, you may think that just because most kids end up working for the local meatpacking plant, you’ll end up there as well, but it’s not true. You can go to the big city and work in a poorly ventilated warehouse.” Later in the school day, students reportedly practiced their math skills by adding up how many hours of subminimum wage work it would take them to earn $100.

The post Teacher Asks What First Graders Want To Be Once Child Labor Laws Repealed appeared first on The Onion.

Nadia Zafirovski, 35, died in what was surely a coincidence Friday when she was struck by lightning while violently shaking her fist at the sky and cursing the name of Thor.

The post Nadia Zafirovski appeared first on The Onion.

There were reports of a new species… a FUN species.

Under the control of anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Food and Drug Administration is unilaterally terminating universal access to seasonal COVID-19 vaccines; instead, only people who are age 65 years and older and people with underlying conditions that put them at risk of severe COVID-19 will have access to seasonal boosters moving forward.

The move was laid out in a commentary article published today in the New England Journal of Medicine, written by Trump administration FDA Commissioner Martin Makary and the agency's new top vaccine regulator, Vinay Prasad.

The article lays out a new framework for approving seasonal COVID-19 vaccines, as well as a rationale for the change—which was made without input from independent advisory committees for the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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The 25-year-old died after authorities say he bombed a Palm Springs fertility clinic. Experts warn that online nihilism is fueling similar violence in the US and Europe.

On Monday, the developer of a large offshore wind farm being built off the coast of New York announced that the federal government had lifted a hold it had placed on the project roughly a month ago. The entire process has been shrouded in mystery. The government never fully enunciated its justification for the hold and hasn't yet commented on the fact that it had been lifted, although there is some hint that it was coupled to a reconsideration of a cancelled natural gas pipeline.

Empire Wind is a large project being built off the southeast shore of Long Island by Equinor, a Norwegian energy company. The first of two phases, Empire Wind 1, will have an 800 MW capacity and has already received permitting and environmental approval. Equinor had started construction of the foundations for the towers that would hold the wind turbines and onshore facilities that would support this and future offshore projects.

All that changed in mid-April when Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum announced via a social media post that the approval for Empire Wind had been rushed and his department would be reviewing it. A Fox News article published a few days later suggests that a review by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration "found the Empire Wind approval process relied on rushed, outdated, and incomplete scientific and environmental analysis." But nobody else has indicated that any such report exists, despite requests from the press.

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Joann Fabrics is reaching the end of a months-long liquidation sale. After exiting restructuring last year, the ailing fabric chain filed for bankruptcy again in January. The chain failed to find a buyer and had been slowly liquidating operations. The final day for most stores in Houston will be May 25th. According to employees, there is a possibility that some locations may stay open until the 28th to sell remaining fixtures. During the liquidation sale, ...

Well, that’s Beate drowned then. Hopefully whoever’s in that car that drove Lottie to the reservoir is the new central character of Solver. Unless this is about to become the Dean Thompson comic (if he ever speaks again).

The post Ene-mene-miste appeared first on Bad Machinery.

The second issue of new Shauna Wickle adventure GREAT BRITISH BUMP OFF: KILL OR BE QUILT is out (in comic shops and where digital comics are sold) today. There’s a free-to-all five-page preview up on my Patreon.

The post Kill Or Be Quilt issue 2 is out today! appeared first on Bad Machinery.

The Department of Homeland Security is considering a game show that would pit immigrants against each other for a chance at a fast-tracked path to citizenship. What do you think?

The post DHS Considers Reality Show Where Immigrants Compete For Citizenship appeared first on The Onion.

Watch: Homeland Security Secretary is asked what "habeas corpus" means during a Senate hearing.

There's a lot of matter around, which ensures that any antimatter produced experiences a very short lifespan. Studying antimatter, therefore, has been extremely difficult. But that's changed a bit in recent years, as CERN has set up a facility that produces and traps antimatter, allowing for extensive studies of its properties, including entire anti-atoms.

Unfortunately, the hardware used to capture antiprotons also produces interference that limits the precision with which measurements can be made. So CERN decided that it might be good to determine how to move the antimatter away from where it's produced. Since it was tackling that problem anyway, CERN decided to make a shipping container for antimatter, allowing it to be put on a truck and potentially taken to labs throughout Europe.

A shipping container for antimatter

The problem facing CERN comes from its own hardware. The antimatter it captures is produced by smashing a particle beam into a stationary target. As a result, all the anti-particles that come out of the debris carry a lot of energy. If you want to hold on to any of them, you have to slow them down, which is done using electromagnetic fields that can act on the charged antimatter particles. Unfortunately, as the team behind the new work notes, many of the measurements we'd like to do with the antimatter are "extremely sensitive to external magnetic field noise."

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It's shaping up to be a big year for telecom mergers, and it appears the Federal Communications Commission is eager to approve the deals—as long as companies involved drop any DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) policies criticized by FCC Chairman Brendan Carr. Verizon just got a big merger approved, and cable giant Charter is seeking permission to buy Cox.

The FCC on Friday announced approval of Verizon's purchase of Frontier, one day after Verizon committed to end DEI policies in a filing with the commission. Carr previously sent letters to Verizon and other companies alleging that their diversity policies are "invidious forms of discrimination" that violate federal law and threatened to block mergers pursued by firms that enforce such policies.

"Verizon has now agreed to end its DEI policies as specified in a new FCC filing," Carr wrote in a post on X. "These changes are effective immediately. A good step forward for equal opportunity, nondiscrimination, and the public interest."

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