Richard Volpe

[Richard Volpe @RichardVolpe]

@heynavtoor Once you've designed the gym plan, what app could you use to easily upload the plan into (without manual data transfer) to track progress?

[Mark Gadala-Maria @markgadala]

This is wild.

143 million people thought they were catching Pokémon. They were actually building one of the largest real-world visual datasets in AI history.

Niantic just disclosed that photos and AR scans collected through Pokémon Go have produced a dataset of over 30 billion real-world images. The company is now using that data to power visual navigation AI for delivery robots.

Players didn't just walk around with their phones. They scanned landmarks, storefronts, parks, and sidewalks from every angle, at every time of day, in lighting and weather conditions that staged photography would never capture. They documented the physical world at a scale no mapping company with a fleet of vehicles could have replicated on the same timeline or budget.

Niantic collected this systematically, data point by data point, across eight years, while users thought the only thing at stake was catching a rare Charizard.

The most valuable AI training datasets in the world aren't being assembled in data centers. They're being built by people who have no idea they're building them.

[Brian Roemmele @BrianRoemmele]

A Petri Dish Of HUMAN Brain Cells LEARN TO PLAY THE GAME DOOM!

In a groundbreaking fusion of biology and silicon, scientists at Cortical Labs have taught a cluster of lab-grown human neurons to play the iconic video game Doom.

Not your typical AI triumph, it’s a petri dish of actual human brain cells, reprogrammed from adult donor skin or blood samples, wired into a $35,000 biological computer called the CL1.

Building on their earlier Pong demo, this new feat sees the neurons navigating hellish levels, dodging demons, and even firing shots with surprising efficiency.

Programmer Sean Cole pulled it off in just a week using a Python API on GitHub, a stark contrast to the year-plus effort for Pong.

Astonishingly, these organic gamers outperform GPT-4 in speed and latency, proving that even a tiny blob of human intelligence can adapt and learn in ways silicon struggles to match.

The excitement is palpable: this isn’t just a gimmick; it’s a window into revolutionary medical advancements. Imagine using such bio-computers to model brain diseases, test drugs, or even restore neural functions in patients.

With cloud access to CL1 rentals, developers worldwide can experiment, accelerating discoveries that could redefine neuroscience. We’re witnessing the dawn of hybrid intelligence, human biology augmented by tech, evolving beyond our wildest dreams.

Yet, amid the thrill, a chill runs down my spine. What are we building here? These neurons aren’t conscious (we hope), but they’re derived from humans and exhibit learning behaviors that echo our own cognition.

Echoes of The Matrix or dystopian sci-fi like the “torment nexus” from Doom novels loom large. Could this lead to ethical nightmares—exploiting bio-intelligence for warfare simulations, or worse, creating sentient systems trapped in digital hells?

And the philosophical rabbit hole deepens: Is life merely nested Russian dolls (matryoshka, if you prefer) of biological smarts? We, as evolved intelligences, are now crafting our own mini-brains, layering complexity upon complexity. Are we “gods” in the making, or just the next doll in an infinite regress, destined to birth something that surpasses—and perhaps supplants, us?
This experiment, detailed in HotHardware’s coverage, pushes boundaries we might not be ready to cross.

It’s exhilarating proof of human ingenuity, but let’s proceed with caution lest we summon demons we can’t control and we wind up in the Petri dish?

[Paul Anleitner @PaulAnleitner]

Despite having the biggest box office numbers of all time, the Avatar franchise has had almost no cultural impact compared to Marvel, Star Wars, etc.

It’s very strange.

Why is that? Give me your best explanations.

[Alex Phillips @ThatAlexWoman]

I have just seen the unedited footage of the October 7th attacks. Please read:

What I saw was young men chopping off heads, shooting everything in sight, slaughtering little crying kids calling for their mummy, throwing grenades inside houses and cars and shelters, maiming bodies, playing with them, setting humans on fire, looking like it's the happiest day of their life.

They call their relatives to celebrate how many they have killed. The parents back in Gaza are thrilled. They cheer and ask for more.

"Bring back some heads for the people to play with" - asks a commander. The savages wilfully oblige, using flick knives to remove the skulls from slaughtered bodies like butchers carving up a carcass.

"Bring some home for the people so we can crucify them in the square" the Hamas leaders order.

The mangled, blood soaked bodies of hostages were paraded through the streets. The Gazan crowds cheered and filmed, celebrating or coming to spit on the terrified youngsters in the back of pick ups.

The young Hamas brutes with their ecstatic grins, taking selfies, shouting Allahu Akbar, looked like so many of the young men in dinghies. Trendy clothes, modern phones. Energy and conviction.

The first wave of attackers on October 7th were Hamas soldiers.

The second, amateur conscripts.

The third, Gazan civilians delighted to join in.

What even are these monsters.

I am forever changed, seeing what I have seen. And it isn't fake. It's footage Hamas shot themselves.

Israel must live with that right next door.

I fear we now have it, in hotels and houses around the country

[Donnie Cope @dcopechatter]

His father turned him in, after consulting with his pastor, knowing the president and the state governor are calling for the death penalty. Father is in law enforcement. Mother is a social worker. Military history family. Registered Republican parents. Action oriented DNA. See a problem and fix it family. A good family. I cannot even imagine being his father and making that decision.

College was enough to radicalize his son. A single year of professors dripping their toxic propaganda and lies into his ears poisoned his brain. He fell in with the wrong crowd. Joined antifa Discord rooms. Took photos wearing Communist shirts. He argued with his family over dinner that Kirk was a Fascist and an existential threat. And then made a plan. He engraved antifa sayings on the bullet casings.

My heart breaks for the father here. Parenting is hard. You do the best you can and pray a lot. I would rather see his professors on trial tbh. Because they will make more.

[Richard Volpe @RichardVolpe]

🤯

[dillon @insectoid98]

the same boiling water that softens the potato, hardens the egg…

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

ChatGPT prompted to "create the exact replica of this image, don't change a thing" 74 times

[Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 @Noahpinion]

While I'm waiting to see if Trump reverses his insane tariffs, I wrote a fun post about Chinese inventions:

https://t.co/jUcJr6n8Wv

[Danie Barnard @DaanBarnard]

In South Africa, locking the front door isn’t enough we lock ourselves in. These steel gates isolate bedrooms from the rest of the house, turning homes into mini-prisons. Not paranoia, just survival.

[Hunter📈🌈📊 @StatisticUrban]

The US has net positive immigration flow from every country on Earth but one.

Australia.

[Saul Sadka @Saul_Sadka]

The Abraham Accords must be extended with the Solomonic Pact:

Israel and Lebanon are cousins: genetically, culturally, historically, & linguistically. Warm relations between them are attested over 3,000 years. The brotherly pact between King Solomon and King Hiram is the Bible’s paradigm example of a win-win and neighborliness. (1/12)

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

For anyone, whether in America or other countries, who finds this result shocking, they should reconsider where they get their information.

This trend was obvious on 𝕏 for months, but almost all the legacy mainstream media pushed a completely false reality.

They lied to you.

[Claire Lehmann @clairlemon]

Revenge of the Silent Male Voter

What I learned about Trump's landslide victory from one night in New York City.

On election day, I caught the subway from Brooklyn to Manhattan. Sitting across from me an elderly woman wore a t-shirt with the image of Trump pumping his fist in the air with the words “fight, fight.” A small "I Voted" sticker was pressed onto her lapel.

She sat with an easy confidence. There were no disapproving glances from other passengers. There was no tension. No conflict. It struck me that in 2024 it was now perfectly acceptable to express support for Trump in a deep blue (Democratically held) city. As I travelled to my destination I wondered: if one could support Trump this openly in New York City, what might support look like in the rest of the country?

A few hours later I attended an exclusive well-heeled party. I spoke to various professionals who said that they had never voted Republican in their lives, but had voted for Trump that day due to his support—in their words—“for the Jews”. These Manhattanites told me that Kamala was too sympathetic to the “pro-Hamas contingent” of the far-Left, and at a time of rising antisemitism, they couldn’t bring themselves to support her. This small group of cosmopolitans represented a contingent far-removed from the stereotypical MAGA voter. And yet listening to their views, it again occurred to me: if I could find such support for Trump in the middle of a Democratic heartland—what might it look like in the rest of the country?

When I arrived at my final stop of the evening—a private underground bar in the Lower East side of the city—a celebratory atmosphere had begun to explode. The betting markets tipped a Trump win, and online supporters of Harris started to express acceptance of defeat. The beer here had already run dry. It was so bustling that it was hard to move, with young men in their twenties and early thirties outnumbering women by 2:1. These men were diverse: white, black, Hispanic, Asian. A few wore Trump caps, but the aesthetic was more like a university dorm than a MAGA rally. “This is the counter-culture” one party goer told me. "This isn't just about Trump," another said. "It's about Vance and Musk. It's about American dynamism."

In the coming days, much will be written about working class concerns—issues that have become familiar focal points for those seeking to understand Trump’s support. But while inflation and border policies will have no doubt played a role in the Republicans’ landslide victory, we might also want to look at the sentiments expressed by young male voters—voters who represent a new and emerging contingent in American politics. Nothing about the young men I spoke to appeared particularly conservative or “right-wing”. Yet it was easy for them to explain why they voted for Trump. And if we zoom out and look at broader cultural trends, it should be easy for us to understand too.

If we take a macro perspective, we see that such young men have never known a culture in which males are not routinely described as “problematic,” “toxic,” or “oppressive”. Going to university, and working at modern companies, they live in a world of Diversity Equity and Inclusion policies—many of which promote an insidious and pervasive form of anti-male discrimination. Yet to talk about it in public invites social ostracism. To criticise DEI is to risk being called a Nazi.

These young male voters know about theories of patriarchy and white supremacy, but they have never known a culture which celebrates the Great Man Theory of history. Thomas Carlyle’s nineteenth century framework for understanding the past is seen as an anachronism, not worthy of serious thought. Today we acknowledge historical figures not for their feats, but for their crimes. Whether it is due to slavery, colonisation, racism, or sexism, we tear down the monuments of our past, while building no new heroes for our future.

The problem with this way of viewing the world is that it is alienating and self-defeating. It is also wrong. By any objective standards Elon Musk is a great man of history, who is influencing the course of human civilisation for generations to come. As one party-goer told me “he caught a fucking rocket with mechanical chopsticks.” Yet despite his achievements, Musk is more likely to be scorned than celebrated by the Democratic establishment.

This tension between achievement and resentment explains much about our current moment. The young men I met that night in Manhattan weren't just voting for policies. They were voting for a different view of history and human nature. In their world, individual greatness matters. Male ambition serves a purpose. Risk-taking and defiance create progress.

This is why the Trump victory transcends conventional political analysis. It represents more than a rebuke of border policies or inflation rates. It signals a resurrection of old truths: that civilisation advances through the actions of remarkable individuals, that male traits can build rather than destroy, and that greatness—despite our modern discomfort with the concept—remains a force in human affairs.

The elderly woman on the subway, the Manhattan professionals, and the young men at the underground bar all sensed a shift. They saw in Trump not just a candidate, but a challenge to a psychosocial orthodoxy that has dominated American institutions for a generation. Their votes marked not just a political preference, but a cultural correction.

As the final results came in that night, it became clear that what I witnessed in New York was playing out across the nation. The election wasn't just a victory for Trump. It was a victory for a way of seeing the world that many thought dead: one where individual achievement matters, where male ambition serves a purpose, and where great men still shape the course of history.

Read the full article here-->

https://t.co/rSoptfam9o

[Richard Volpe @RichardVolpe]

Hey @Qantas, why do you never have reward seats available at reasonable times, but @VirginAustralia has tons? Almost impossible to use Qantas points these days.

[Vicky Verma @Unexplained2020]

This Man Proved Time Is An Illusion. In 1972 he entered a cave chamber 440 feet below the ground, alone and isolated from any natural light & clocks. For six months he removed from all time references which led to his discovery of a human time warp and slowing down time. He found that without time cues, several people including himself adjusted to a 48-hour rather than a 24-hour cycle.

In 1962, a French scientist named Michel Siffre lived alone in a cave for two months, with no clock, calendar, or sunlight. He only slept and ate when he felt like it, to see how living without time would affect the body's natural rhythms. Over the next ten years, he set up more than twelve similar experiments. In 1972, he went back into a cave in Texas for six months. His work helped start the study of human biological clocks.

A thread to slow your body time🧵

[Jared Kushner @jaredkushner]

September 27th is the most important day in the Middle East since the Abraham Accords breakthrough.

I have spent countless hours studying Hezbollah and there is not an expert on earth who thought that what Israel has done to decapitate and degrade them was possible.

This is significant because Iran is now fully exposed. The reason why their nuclear facilities have not been destroyed, despite weak air defense systems, is because Hezbollah has been a loaded gun pointed at Israel. Iran spent the last forty years building this capability as its deterrent.

President Trump would often say, “Iran has never won a war but never lost a negotiation.” The Islamic Republic’s regime is much tougher when risking Hamas, Hezbollah, Syrian and Houthi lives than when risking their own. Their foolish efforts to assassinate President Trump and hack his campaign reek of desperation and are hardening a large coalition against them.

Iranian leadership is stuck in the old Middle East, while their neighbors in the GCC are sprinting toward the future by investing in their populations and infrastructure. They are becoming dynamic magnets for talent and investment while Iran falls further behind. As the Iranian proxies and threats dissipate, regional security and prosperity will rise for Christians, Muslims and Jews alike.

Israel now finds itself with the threat from Gaza mostly neutralized and the opportunity to neutralize Hezbollah in the north. It’s unfortunate how we got here but maybe there can be a silver lining in the end.

Anyone who has been calling for a ceasefire in the North is wrong. There is no going back for Israel. They cannot afford now to not finish the job and completely dismantle the arsenal that has been aimed at them. They will never get another chance.

After the brilliant, rapid-fire tactical successes of the pagers, radios, and targeting of leadership, Hezbollah’s massive weapon cache is unguarded and unmanned. Most of Hezbollah fighters are hiding in their tunnels. Anyone still around was not important enough to carry a pager or be invited to a leadership meeting. Iran is reeling, as well, insecure and unsure how deeply its own intelligence has been penetrated. Failing to take full advantage of this opportunity to neutralize the threat is irresponsible.

I have been hearing some amazing stories about how Israel has been collecting intelligence over the past 10 months with some brilliant technology and crowdsourcing initiatives.

But today, with the confirmed killing of Nasrallah and at least 16 top commanders eliminated in just nine days, was the first day I started thinking about a Middle East without Iran’s fully loaded arsenal aimed at Israel. So many more positive outcomes are possible.

This is a moment to stand behind the peace-seeking nation of Israel and the large portion of the Lebanese who have been plagued by Hezbollah and who want to return to the times when their country was thriving, and Beirut a cosmopolitan city. The main issue between Lebanon and Israel is Iran; otherwise there is a lot of benefit for the people of both countries from working together.

The right move now for America would be to tell Israel to finish the job. It’s long overdue. And it’s not only Israel’s fight.

More than 40 years ago, Hezbollah killed 241 US military personnel, including 220 Marines. That remains the single deadliest day for the U.S. Marine Corps since the Battle of Iwo Jima. Later that same day, Hezbollah killed 58 French paratroopers.

And now, over the past six weeks or so, Israel has eliminated as many terrorists on the US list of wanted terrorists as the US has done in the last 20 years. Including Ibrahim Aqil, the leader of Hezbollah’s Islamic Jihad Organization who masterminded the 1983 killing of those Marines.

[Johnty @Johnty35524255]

@Ticketek_AU Codes aren't working for AFL finals!!!

#afl #sydneyswans #nrl #sports #tickets

[Richard Volpe @RichardVolpe]

@DannyDeraney

[Richard Volpe @RichardVolpe]

Important article: https://t.co/UwcuL6h16h