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Octopuses recorded hunting with fish — and punching those that don't cooperate[^]
Quote: Octopuses don’t always hunt alone — but their partners aren’t who you’d expect.
A new study shows that some members of the species Octopus cyanea maraud around the seafloor in hunting groups with fish, which sometimes include several fish species at once.
The research, published in the journal Nature on Monday, even suggests that the famously intelligent animals organized the hunting groups’ decisions, including what they should prey upon.
What’s more, the researchers witnessed the cephalopod species — often called the big blue or day octopus — punching companion fish, apparently to keep them on task and contributing to the collective effort.
Octopuses have often been thought to avoid other members of their species and prowl solo using camouflage. But the study suggests that some octopuses have surprisingly rich social lives — a finding that opens a new window into the marvels of undersea life. It’s an indication that at least one octopus species has characteristics and markers of intelligence that scientists once considered common only in vertebrates.
“I think sociality, or at least attention to social information, is way more deep-rooted in the evolutionary tree than we might think,” said Eduardo Sampaio, a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and the lead author of the research.
“We are very similar to these animals,” he added. “In terms of sentience, they are at a very close level or closer than we think toward us.”
To understand the inner details of octopus lives, researchers dived for about a month at a reef off the coast of Eilat, Israel, and tracked 13 octopuses for a total of 120 hours using several cameras. The team followed the octopuses for 13 hunts, during which they observed groups of between two and 10 fish working with each octopus.
These hunting groups typically included several species of reef fish, such as grouper and goatfish. The octopuses did not appear to lead the groups, but they did punch at fish to enforce social order — most often at blacktip groupers.
“The ones that get more punched are the main exploiters of the group. These are the ambush predators, the ones that don’t move, don’t look for prey,” Sampaio said.
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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Given that we now have 4 potential setters, do we want to set up a rota to start next Monday. The identified setters are Peter_in_2780, pkfox, OriginalGriff, and me. I'm happy to pick up any of the weeks, so who wants to do week 1, week 2, week 3 or week 4? I'll take whichever one isn't chosen.
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I was recently pondering this and recalled the best team I once worked with.
We were headed by an outgoing salesman-type The team included a fellow who specialized in low level hacking, A chemist who knew Excelinside and out, and I handled all the technical/engineering and artificial intelligence stuff.
He would call a meeting to announce that we had a new project.
We would inevitably say
"
"Are you crazy, we can't do that!"
He would reply: " too bad, we have a contract, so figure it out!"
Then we would put our heads together and figure it out and did it.
He knew just enough to be dangerous, but he had assembled a group that could work miracles and we did.
CQ de W5ALT
Walt Fair, Jr.PhD P. E.
Comport Computing
Specializing in Technical Engineering Software
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Not sure if this is meant to be a question, but going off the question mark in the title... And this isn't you you, but the colloquial you...
First and foremost, from the worker side a good team starts at the hiring process. After giving probably close to a 100 interviews (never counted), you gotta be able to sniff out talent from fluff.
You need someone technically skilled or honest enough about their shortcomings and willing to learn. And, you need peeps that vibe with you. Throw ego and being argumentative out the door. Nobody with an inflated ego has ever been talented... nobody. Sometimes you'll get your way, sometimes you won't. Part of being in a team.
Oh, and whatever you do, do not hire devs that go sit in the corner and refuse to talk to anyone when an issue arises. They need to go find a solo gig in a small company that's going nowhere. Conversely, the dev should also be able to figure stuff out. It's a balance.
Equally as important from the managerial side, also throw ego out the door. You're nothing without the workers... remember that. You also need someone skilled (structure, soft skills, methodologies, etc.) and honest. A good manager needs to be a leader and not a boss. He/she creates a vibe that inspires and tries to keep things fun as much as possible. They also need enough courage to talk to the business frankly.
As I'm sure all of us know, finding this perfect match is very difficult.
And above all else, if the workers have to stay late because poop hit the fan... get them a lap dance. Ok ok, I kid... maybe...
Jeremy Falcon
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The summary for Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) deprecation - Windows IT Pro Blog reads:
WSUS remains operational but is no longer investing in new features.
As far as I'm concerned, this doesn't change anything. And frankly, MS could have made this announcement 10 years ago, it wouldn't have made any difference either. WSUS today looks and feels and performs exactly the same as it did 10 years ago. It hasn't improved. It hasn't gotten any worse either. It's a known quantity.
The role will still be in Windows Server 2025, and the blog entry points out "we are preserving current functionality and will continue to publish updates through the WSUS channel".
In other words, if you have WSUS today, it'll continue working. Since the role is still in Server 2025, I'm betting they're still going to be publishing updates through that mechanism at least until Server 2025 itself goes out of extended support (in 2035). If there's anything to worry about, it's whether the next version of Server after that includes the role or not. Until then? This is a non-event, IMO.
But the resulting discussion somehow degenerated into how MS is trying to get everyone to manage their patching through Azure, and that some related features on Azure in the past have (already) been deprecated, and the end goal is to get people to subscribe to some service costing $5/server/month.
People are freaking out about that and coming up with all sorts of scenarios like it's a big conspiracy, but in the end none of that is a WSUS issue. MS can start charging for Azure services all it wants, WSUS isn't going away. Besides, people have already built viable alternatives. Today you could script pretty much everything WSUS does, within a few hours.
You commit to cloud provider services, you're giving up control, then you're at their mercy, and then they can start charging you for those services. But this announcement doesn't say, or even suggest, WSUS is gonna get broken soon and people won't have a choice but to move to Azure. Of course MS would love that. But the blog entry makes it clear WSUS isn't going away.
So Azure is, and remains, a different problem. Those Azure complaints are completely valid, but they belong in another discussion altogether.
If you're using WSUS today, does this announcement worry you?
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This is yet another example of Microsoft's desire to move everything from on-premise to cloud.
WSUS has always had huge problems with database fragmentation, to the point that I wrote a PS script combined with a SQL Server database defragmentation script I pulled off a Technet blog over a decade ago to keep my WSUS servers healthy and responsive.
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Explain
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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What do they expect to gain from posting a stupid comment ?
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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Sometimes I remind them that there is no meaningful difference between pretending to be stupid for attention and actually being stupid.
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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There is a classification of a multi-talented person called a Polymath. This is a person who has mastered a number of specialized fields of knowledge. I'm wondering if there is a specific definition of that term. Does anyone here know that answer?
Will Rogers never met me.
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In my experience, the term is used for very highly talented folks (e.g. Von Neumann) so the bar is high, but I never met (neither Roger nor) an exact definition.
"In testa che avete, Signor di Ceprano?"
-- Rigoletto
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My dictionary definition gives it as from the Greek: poly = many, mathes = learned.
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The closest person to it I know is Mr. The Codewitch who has multiple degrees, and is a polyglot, but I don't know if he would actually fit most people's estimation of the term. He's talented in several areas, but he does tend to lean on linguistics a little harder than medicine.
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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The wikipedia page is a good place to start looking.
From what I understand, there is no one true definition of a polymath.
And my interpretation is that it's probably less ans less possible in the modern world to be one.
In the scientific world, new discoveries and research fields are a lot more specialized.
Maybe in the Arts and social studies it can be easier.
CI/CD = Continuous Impediment/Continuous Despair
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Maximilien wrote: In the scientific world, new discoveries and research fields are a lot more specialized. My tongue-in-cheek explanation: human brain can hold only a limited volume of information. Just like the volume of a lake is "surface" x "depth" we can know more about less or less about more. The two extremes are when we know nothing about everything and everything about nothing.
In my particular case, I have a very shallow mind
Mircea
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Reminds me of this Conan Doyle - Sherlock Holmes quote:
"I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones".
From A Study in Scarlet
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Nice! Not long ago I had a conversation with my grandson on a similar theme and I was arguing that looking at a brain in action is not unlike looking at a skilled juggler that can keep all those balls in the air. While one has to admire the skill, there is also another element - the balls. Looking at a juggler without balls is not very impressive; looking at a brain operating without knowledge is also not fun. You have to add stuff in that attic!
There is a third element beside the skill and balls: the curiosity that puts everything in motion.
Quote: The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.
Plutarch
Mircea
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My undrstanding, possibly flawed, is someone who is a recognized expertin several technical fields.
CQ de W5ALT
Walt Fair, Jr.PhD P. E.
Comport Computing
Specializing in Technical Engineering Software
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A customer of a customer went to use our new software yesterday.
At the end of the day I made a quick fix based on an incident we had during the day.
And this morning, 6:45, I got a call... It didn't work.
And because that didn't work, nothing worked anymore.
So apparently, the flow is: my service gets a message, I send back a direct "basic" message and later (asynchronous) I get a full OK message from the software.
Now the issue was that only the basic message was returned.
I then interpreted that basic message as being the full message from the software, and the software hadn't changed and worked well yesterday.
So my conclusion was that somehow my really small quick fix stripped the full message down to a basic message.
Turned out someone set a setting preventing the software from returning full OK messages altogether
Nothing better than being called out off bed with a full production stop so you can search for an error that isn't there
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"Yesterday, upon the stair
I met an error who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today.
I wish, I wish he'd go away!"
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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From a lovely little poem
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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Wordle 1,193 4/6*
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