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Agriculture

"The Memorable Winter of Jerry's Dairy Farm Job"

2024-12-03

We experienced a remarkable autumn weather-wise, with no real complaints despite some people finding fault. It started too warm and dry, then became too cold and wet when the rain came. There truly is no pleasing everyone.

Winter Woes and Wins on the Dairy Farm

Early and Late Winters

Living in our area means encountering winters that come early and stay late. One such winter struck when I was eighteen and felt invincible. I took a job on a dairy farm about twenty miles from Sioux Falls. The 72-cow dairy barn was brand new and a vast improvement from our old and primitive facilities at home.It was November 9 when a fierce blizzard blew in. The next day, the storm swept across the Great Lakes and sank the ore freighter Edmund Fitzgerald. Our dairy barn had a design flaw in its ventilation system, allowing snow to blow in through the eves and fill the north row of free stalls. I didn't mind shoveling several metric tons of snow as I was young and full of energy.

Milk Room Mishaps

The next day while milking, a ceiling panel crashed down along with snow due to the same ventilation mistake in the milking parlor's attic. I crawled through the attic and nailed plywood over the eaves to stop the snow. However, the builder had placed the milk room's water pipes inside the walls, and they froze solid when the temperature dropped below zero. We had to replumb the entire milk room, which I saw as a learning opportunity.

Blizzards and Sledding

Blizzards became a regular occurrence that year, making it seem like winter would never end. On the south side of the new barn, the snow was so deep that Bud's three-year-old granddaughter and I went sledding off the roof. After another blizzard, the milk truck got stuck in a snowdrift. I went out to help the driver shovel, despite the sub-zero windchill. I wore ill-fitting wire-rimmed glasses and later noticed a white stripe of frostbite where the metal nosepiece had rested.

Skid Loader Mishap

One day while hauling a heavy bucket of silage with the skid loader, one of its wheels suddenly came off. All the wheel's studs had sheared off. I held a long punch against the busted studs as Bud angrily whacked it with a huge sledgehammer. This made me nervous as my hands weren't sledgehammer-proof.

Overcast Nights and Hopes

On overcast nights, the lights of Sioux Falls made the low clouds glow like neon, making me wonder if something better was ahead. And indeed, I quit that job, and the seemingly never-ending winter finally came to an end.Jerry's book, “Dear County Agent Guy” can be found at www.workman.com and in bookstores nationwide.

Bluesky has emerged as a significant player in the social media landscape since Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter. With its unique features and growing user base, it has captured the attention of many. In this article, we'll delve deep into the world of Bluesky and explore its various aspects.

Uncover the Secrets of Bluesky in the Social Media Realm

What is Bluesky?

Bluesky is a decentralized social app conceived by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. It has a Twitter-like user interface with algorithmic choice, a federated design, and community-specific moderation. Built using an open source framework, the AT Protocol, it offers transparency into its development. Dorsey introduced it in 2019, but it became independent after Elon Musk's acquisition. As of May 2024, Dorsey is no longer on the board, and Jay Graber leads the independent public benefit corporation.Bluesky allows users to create handles like @username.bsky.social and display names. They can turn their owned domain names into usernames. The app functions like a basic X, with features like posting 256-character posts with photos, replying, retweeting, liking, and more. It has a "Home" timeline for viewing updates and a "Discover" feed that offers more personalized suggestions. A "Starter Pack" helps new users find interesting content right away.

How do you use Bluesky?

Upon signing up, users set up their handles and display names. The app is intuitive, with a plus button to create posts. Posts can be customized with photos and have various interaction options. Users can search for and follow others, and their updates appear in the "Home" timeline. The "Discover" tab offers more "who to follow" suggestions. User profiles have similar features to other platforms, with a profile pic, background, bio, and metrics. Custom feeds allow users to subscribe to different algorithms and pin them at the top of their timeline.

Who's on Bluesky?

By July 2023, Bluesky had topped a million downloads. Notable figures like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Mark Cuban, and others have migrated. News organizations like Bloomberg and TechCrunch are also on the platform. Since August 2024, heads of state can join.

Does Bluesky work just like X?

In many ways, Bluesky is similar to X. It recently added DMs, but they are limited to one-to-one messages. It is interested in implementing a feature similar to X's Community Notes. X does not use a decentralized protocol like Bluesky. Elon Musk's changes to X's block feature led to an influx in Bluesky sign-ups. Bluesky has always been an independent company since 2021.

Is Bluesky free?

Yes, Bluesky is now open to the public and free for end users.

How does Bluesky make money?

Bluesky aims to find alternative means to sustain its network outside of advertising. It offers paid services like custom domains and is developing a subscription service for premium features. It does not want to rely on selling user data for ads.

Is Bluesky decentralized?

Yes, Bluesky's team is developing the decentralized AT Protocol. In its beta phase, users can only join the bsky.social network, but it plans to be federated, allowing for endless individually operated communities. Users can move their accounts between different apps using the AT Protocol.

Is Bluesky secure?

In October 2023, Bluesky added email verification to improve account security. In December 2023, it allowed users to opt out of a change that exposed posts to the public web.

Is Bluesky customizable?

In May 2023, Bluesky released custom algorithms called "custom feeds." Users can subscribe to different algorithms and pin them. In March 2024, it launched "AT Protocol Grants" to foster growth and customization.

Is Bluesky on iOS and Android?

Bluesky rolled out to Android users on April 20 and was launched to iOS users in late February. Users can access it on the web.

How does Bluesky tackle misinformation?

After an October 2023 update, the app flags misleading links. In December 2024, it updated its impersonation policy and is exploring alternative domain handle verification processes.

Has Bluesky had any controversies?

Bluesky has faced moderation issues since its launch. It has been accused of not protecting marginalized users and moderating racist content. Users initiated a "posting strike" to demand better moderation.

What moderation features does Bluesky have?

In December 2023, Bluesky announced a batch of moderation updates, including more advanced automated tooling to flag violations and similar features to X like user and moderation lists. It is also developing a feature to limit who can reply to posts and launched Ozone for independent moderation services.

What's the difference between Bluesky and Mastodon?

Though similar in architecture, Bluesky is more intuitive, while Mastodon can be inaccessible. Mastodon's sign-up process has been simplified, and federation will make it more similar.

Who owns Bluesky?

Jack Dorsey funded Bluesky but is not involved in daily development and is no longer on the board. The CEO is Jay Graber, who worked on cryptocurrency and event planning.If you have more FAQs about Bluesky not covered here, leave us a comment below.

Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud computing division of Amazon, is making significant strides in addressing the issue of hallucinations in AI models. At the AWS re:Invent 2024 conference in Las Vegas, a new service called Automated Reasoning Checks was announced. This service validates a model's responses by cross-referencing customer-supplied information for accuracy. AWS claims it is the "first" and "only" safeguard for hallucinations, but this claim may be somewhat exaggerated.

Similarities and Differences with Other Providers

Automated Reasoning Checks is remarkably similar to the Correction feature Microsoft rolled out this summer. It also flags AI-generated text that might be factually wrong. Google offers a similar tool in its Vertex AI platform, allowing customers to "ground" models using data from third-party providers or their own datasets.In AWS's Bedrock model hosting service, specifically the Guardrails tool, Automated Reasoning Checks attempts to determine how a model arrived at an answer and discern its correctness. Customers upload information to establish a ground truth, and the tool creates rules that can be refined and applied to the model. As the model generates responses, Automated Reasoning Checks verifies them and provides the correct answer in case of a probable hallucination.AWS states that PwC is already using Automated Reasoning Checks to design AI assistants for its clients. Swami Sivasubramanian, VP of AI and data at AWS, believes that such tooling is attracting customers to Bedrock. The customer base of Bedrock grew by 4.7 times in the last year to reach tens of thousands of customers.However, as one expert pointed out this summer, trying to eliminate hallucinations from generative AI is like trying to eliminate hydrogen from water. AI models hallucinate because they don't actually "know" anything; they are statistical systems that identify patterns and predict answers based on previously seen examples. AWS claims that Automated Reasoning Checks uses "logically accurate" and "verifiable reasoning" to arrive at its conclusions, but it has not provided any data to prove the tool's reliability.

Model Distillation: Transferring Capabilities

In other Bedrock news, AWS announced Model Distillation today. This tool allows the transfer of the capabilities of a large model (such as Llama 405B) to a smaller model (like Llama 8B), which is cheaper and faster to run. It is a response to Microsoft's Distillation in Azure AI Foundry and provides a way to experiment with different models without incurring high costs.After the customer provides sample prompts, Amazon Bedrock will generate responses and fine-tune the smaller model. It can even create more sample data if needed to complete the distillation process. However, there are some caveats. Model Distillation currently only works with Bedrock-hosted models from Anthropic and Meta. Customers must select a large and small model from the same "family," and the distilled models will lose some accuracy, according to AWS (less than 2%).

Multi-Agent Collaboration: Streamlining Projects

Also available in preview is "multi-agent collaboration," a new Bedrock feature. This allows customers to assign AI to subtasks in a larger project. As part of Bedrock Agents and contributing to the AI agent craze, multi-agent collaboration provides tools to create and tune AI for tasks such as reviewing financial records and assessing global trends.Customers can designate a "supervisor agent" to break up and route tasks automatically. The supervisor can give specific agents access to the necessary information and determine which actions can be processed in parallel and which need details from other tasks before an agent can move forward. Once all the specialized AI complete their inputs, the supervisor agent can pull the information together and synthesize the results.This feature sounds promising, but like all new technologies, we will need to see how well it performs in real-world deployments.