⚡Travis⚡

Electrical Engineer. Navy veteran. Climb, bike, hike, ski. Question everything.

[⚡Travis⚡ @TravisTraction]

@wolfsxblood24 Bad marketing

Wtf even was this?

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

@ThomasAlxDmy You don’t seem to understand that SpaceX will be worth more than the rest of Earth if we accomplish our goals

[NSF-DOE Rubin Observatory @VRubinObs]

The start of a new survey of the Universe? That deserves a new view of the cosmos 🌌

Meet the Ocean of Stars, NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory's newest wide-field image.

🔗: https://t.co/4dGdSww0zT

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

A massive brown bear was spotted navigating the high-altitude peaks of Alaska.

[Voyageurs Wolf Project @VoyaWolfProject]

Without a doubt, our best trail camera capture yet: the first documented observation of a cougar with kittens in Minnesota in modern history. Turn up the volume to hear all the vocalizations.

The footage, which was captured on March 25, shows a cougar with 3 large kittens while they feed on a deer they killed just south of Voyageurs National Park.

We captured this surreal footage because we started a study to understand the survival and mortality patterns of deer in our area this winter. As part of that work, we GPS-collared several deer in the area in January. 

In late March, we received a mortality signal from a GPS-collared deer and found the carcass buried under a pile of leaves on a hillside—a tell tale sign of feline predation. 

We suspected it was likely a bobcat but thought, just possibly, it could be a cougar. So we put up two trail cameras on the cached deer carcass and 4 hours later, two cougar kittens returned to the kill.

The entire family showed up that evening and spent hours in front of our cameras. In total, we captured 7.3 hr (435 minutes) of video footage of these animals. We will share more footage soon!

Huge thanks to the Minnesota Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund for supporting the Voyageurs Wolf Project and the recent effort to understand deer survival in the area. Their support was critical to this observation—without it, we would never have captured this footage.

And huge thanks to the >10,600 donors who have supported our project and enabled us to purchase trail cameras supplies. The cameras (and batteries, SD cards, mounts) we set at this kill were purchased with funds from donations.

[How To Prompt @HowToPrompt__]

Researchers just proved that every single elementary function, sin, exp, log, sqrt, comes from one single binary operator.

It is like finding the “God Particle" for calculus.

In computer science, every complex program breaks down to a single logical operator: the NAND gate. It is the fundamental building block of all digital reality.

But for continuous math, physics, engineering, machine learning, we thought we needed a massive toolbox.

Addition. Subtraction. Trigonometry. Logarithms.

Every scientific calculator and neural network has to juggle all of them.

Until today.

But this paper proved that every single mathematical function can be generated by a single, bizarre binary operator.

eml(x,y) = exp(x) - ln(y).

Combine that with the number 1, and you can build everything.

Pi. The square root. Sine and Cosine. Arithmetic.

It is all just the exact same operator, repeating over and over again in a binary tree.

Nobody anticipated this existed. It was found by systematic exhaustive search.

But the implications for AI are massive.

Instead of an AI struggling to combine different mathematical rules to discover a new scientific law, it can just use a single, uniform architecture.

One trainable circuit. One repeatable node.

We thought the language of the universe was complex.

It turns out, it's just one equation repeating in the dark.

[Latest in space @latestinspace]

#BREAKING 🚨: NASA HAS SUCCESSFULLY LAUNCHED THE ARTEMIS II ROCKET

[⚡Travis⚡ @TravisTraction]

@yacineMTB If you go down the path of computer engineer, they are combined and you get the best of both worlds.

[hattie @oh_that_hat]

There's a fruit fly walking around right now that was never born.

@eonsys just released a video where they took a real fly's connectome — the wiring diagram of its brain — and simulated it. Dropped it into a virtual body. It started walking. Grooming. Feeding. Doing what flies do.

Nobody taught it to walk. No training data, no gradient descent toward fly-like behavior. This is the opposite of how AI works. They rebuilt the mind from the inside, neuron by neuron, and behavior just... emerged. It's the first time a biological organism has been recreated not by modeling what it does, but by modeling what it is.

A human brain is 6 OOM more neurons. That's a scaling problem, something we've gotten very good at solving. So what happens when we have a working copy of the human mind?

[⚡Travis⚡ @TravisTraction]

@Engineering67 It's actually not refined to 99.99% pure silicon, but 99.9999999% pure called the "nine-nines". This is essential for proper chip performance. In the US, the quartz is mined only in the town of Spruce Pine, NC due to its naturally high grade.

[Latest in space @latestinspace]

NEWS 🚨: In just 30 days, Artemis II will send astronauts around the Moon for the first time in over 50 years!!

Currently targeting Feb 6, 2026 📅

[⚡Travis⚡ @TravisTraction]

@FischerKing64 This can't be true. I engage in the hiring process of Gen Z and this has never happened.

[⚡Travis⚡ @TravisTraction]

@Rainmaker1973 Hey, that's my old carrier! I had my teeth checked in that very dental clinic. I deployed around South America and to the Persian Gulf on her. She doesn't have that many years left in her now before decommissioning.

[Brian Roemmele @BrianRoemmele]

How to make a CPU.

[⚡Travis⚡ @TravisTraction]

@BrianRoemmele What sort of applications use this?

[The Kobeissi Letter @KobeissiLetter]

The ratio of the Nasdaq to US Treasuries return is currently at a record 8.2x.

To put this in perspective, even at the peak of the 2001 bubble, the largest tech bubble in history, this ratio was ~4.8x.

In other words, the Nasdaq to US Treasuries return ratio is now 70% HIGHER than it was in 2001.

It's now also 5.5x HIGHER than it was at the peak of the 2008 financial crisis.

There has never been a larger gap between return in equities and US Treasuries.

Something needs to give.

[⚡Travis⚡ @TravisTraction]

@FischerKing64 I currently work in the semiconductor industry. It will take decades to rebuild it here. It's incredibly complex. The fabs, processes, and talent are all very difficult and expensive to develop. Taiwan is the world's semi capital, and they may self sabotage everything if invaded.

[NWS Twin Cities @NWSTwinCities]

Quiet today. Areas along & north of I-94 can still expect a dusting to an inch of snow Monday.

Midweek system hasn't changed much. Winter Storm Watch decision to come later today. It isn’t a question of snow amounts, rather, timing & duration of watch.

#MNwx #WIwx

[⚡Travis⚡ @TravisTraction]

@stephen_wolfram The 2nd law of thermodynamics has always been an intriguing subject. It's hard for me to understand how it is actually understood. Explanations provided have always been too simple for me to fully accept it. I'll read your entire series on this, even though it will take a while.

[⚡Travis⚡ @TravisTraction]

@Walter_Su11ivan @FutureAmRefugee @upstatefederlst We manage ourselves well for now. Sometimes the interstates get shutdown during a blizzard until snow stops and the plows come through. I've never seen municipal plowing be a problem though. This thread does give me pause for our future.