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September 6, 2021 Archives
Monday, September 6, 2021
CONTINUITY: The Relaxed Wife—“Who Needs Tranquillity? I'm Hopped Up on Goofballs!”
From 1957, Pfizer promotes “ataraxic medicine”.
It makes those who fear they're about to quit feel like they're ready to begin, bidding their darkened spirits goodbye, for the calming peace of a cloudless sky. [8:20]
What could possibly go wrong?
CONTINUITY: A History of Bitcoin Transaction Dust and Spam Storms
“A History of Bitcoin Transaction Dust and Spam Storms”https://t.co/vRdbdabJIq
— John Walker (@Fourmilab) September 6, 2021
Build it, and they will try to wreck it.
CONTEXT: International Space Station Transits Mars
Perfect timing! The ISS crossing in front of Mars, captured by Tom Glenn📸 pic.twitter.com/eUl3I4sAIj
— Latest in space (@latestinspace) September 3, 2021
THE HAPPENING WORLD: 110 Year Old, US$78 Billion Company Spins Off 90,000 Employee Subsidiary, Nobody To Know What It Is
And then there's the name, “Kyndryl”, about which CNN Business reported, “IBM spinoff joins a long list of questionable corporate names”, which begins:
There's a new member in the pantheon of the worst-named companies in history. Introducing "Kyndryl."
That is the actual name of the IT services unit that IBM is spinning off from its core business.
Soon, the 90,000 employees affected by the change will no longer say they work for "IBM" — perhaps one of the more classic, unambiguous corporate names ever — but instead for "Kyndryl," a portmanteau whose meaning and pronunciation aren't immediately clear.
IBM says the "kyn" part of the name is derived from is the word "kinship," and "dryl" comes from tendril, which it said should bring "to mind new growth and the idea that ... the business is always working toward advancing human progress."
Somehow, explaining it just makes it worse. We can deduce that the pronunciation, based on IBM's stated logic, is "KIN-drill," but the seemingly arbitrary use of Ys as vowels opens the door to long-I interpretation: KINE-drile?
Googling the term doesn't find many alternate uses, although there is a scary-looking "World of Warcraft" character that goes by that name.
They've come a long way since “Ever Onward IBM” (lyrics).
TRACKING WITH CLOSEUPS: Simulating Biological Neurons with Artificial Neural Networks
“How Computationally Complex Is a Single Neuron?”
— John Walker (@Fourmilab) September 6, 2021
Neuroscientists have said for decades that artificial neural networks are a vast over-simplification of the biological neuron. It may take a 5 to 8 layer deep net to simulate a single one. https://t.co/pNUJ9Wdx8s