saturnV's recent activity

  1. Comment on How GPS warfare is playing havoc with civilian life in ~tech

    saturnV
    Link Parent
    another relevant video, from dylan beattie - "Why Does My Phone Think It's In Cairo?"

    another relevant video, from dylan beattie - "Why Does My Phone Think It's In Cairo?"

    2 votes

  2. Comment on Some observations about some of the conversations here in ~tildes

    saturnV
    Link
    As a self-admitted pedant, I don't think this is a necessarily a bad thing. Being more precise, especially around important issues, helps prevent misunderstandings and can even clarify points and...

    As a self-admitted pedant, I don't think this is a necessarily a bad thing. Being more precise, especially around important issues, helps prevent misunderstandings and can even clarify points and hidden assumptions in the original point.
    Also, it's better to have disagreement than a fawning echo chamber where ideas are never challenged (not to imply those are the only two options)

    11 votes

  3. Comment on How GPS warfare is playing havoc with civilian life in ~tech

    saturnV
    Link
    Relevant scott manley video, titled "GPS Jamming & Spoofing - How Does It Work, And Who's Doing It?"

    Relevant scott manley video, titled "GPS Jamming & Spoofing - How Does It Work, And Who's Doing It?"

    2 votes

  4. Comment on A Study In Scarlet & Blue in ~comics

  6. Comment on Generative AI for Krita in ~tech

    saturnV
    Link Parent
    FYI, you can add timestamps to youtube URLs by right clicking and hitting "Copy video URL at current time" e.g. demo

    FYI, you can add timestamps to youtube URLs by right clicking and hitting "Copy video URL at current time"
    e.g. demo

    4 votes

  7. Comment on Musi’s free music streaming app is a hit with thrifty teens. The app claims to tap content on YouTube, but some in the music industry question the legitimacy of that model. in ~music

  8. Comment on The youth need your help in ~life

    saturnV
    Link Parent
    even historically: women's suffrage, end of prohibition, lowering the voting age to 18, passing of ADA, establishment of EPA,FDA,OSHA. These definitely all created genuine long-lasting change, and...

    even historically: women's suffrage, end of prohibition, lowering the voting age to 18, passing of ADA, establishment of EPA,FDA,OSHA. These definitely all created genuine long-lasting change, and I would argue did so in a way that align with progressive values. The deaths that caused these to happen were not of a shocking kind but of a mundane one, so aren't really similar to BLM/Vietnam war/AIDS deaths

    5 votes

  9. Comment on The youth need your help in ~life

    saturnV
    Link Parent
    I think assigning that strong of a causation to this is entirely unjustified. It may be helpful, but to say necessary is IMO too bold a claim to make. Also, there is only so much that Biden is...

    I think assigning that strong of a causation to this is entirely unjustified. It may be helpful, but to say necessary is IMO too bold a claim to make. Also, there is only so much that Biden is going to do in an election year given he doesn't want to alienate moderate voters, especially as he is already now pressing the Israeli government harder than past administrations have. About 50% of US money given to israel is either for defensive weaponry or for humanitarian aid, which the US gov would be unwilling to drop, and Israel is perfectly capable of continuing the war without US support given how advanced their military industry is, and willing due to high internal support for it.

  10. Comment on Telegram creator on Elon Musk, resisting FBI attacks, and getting mugged in California in ~tech

    saturnV
    Link
    For a more balanced overview of Telegram I liked this article tl;dr: it's making “hundreds of millions of dollars” in revenues, with 900mn monthly active users, up from 500mn at the beginning of...

    For a more balanced overview of Telegram I liked this article
    tl;dr: it's making “hundreds of millions of dollars” in revenues, with 900mn monthly active users, up from 500mn at the beginning of 2021, $30bn-plus valuations
    Only 50 full-time employees, which is why so much dodgy content remains on it, alongside his "free speech advocate" attitude
    According to Durov, he fled Russia a year later after refusing to share the data of certain Ukrainian users of VK with Russia’s security agency. Durov has said he sold his shares in VK to Kremlin-friendly oligarchs for $300mn under duress.
    Critics have suggested that the Kremlin may have links to or leverage over Telegram, a claim that Durov dismissed as “inaccurate”.

    10 votes

  11. Comment on ChatGPT provides false information about people, and OpenAI can’t correct it in ~tech

    saturnV
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    Yes, in fact openAI have done something very similar to the first half of what you suggest (https://openai.com/research/language-models-can-explain-neurons-in-language-models). This whole field...

    Yes, in fact openAI have done something very similar to the first half of what you suggest (https://openai.com/research/language-models-can-explain-neurons-in-language-models). This whole field goes under the name of "mechanistic interpretability" if you're interested in further research. Currently the hardest part is that all labels are quite broad and vague, and it is hard to do precise "surgery" on models. Also, as models get larger, this approach gets more impractical, e.g. GPT-4 is rumoured to have 1.7 trillion parameters

    7 votes

  12. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    saturnV
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    I did set 1 of cryptopals pretty quickly but then got distracted with other things and never got bothered enough to resume it. If you're looking for a comprehensive source of n-gram frequencies...

    I did set 1 of cryptopals pretty quickly but then got distracted with other things and never got bothered enough to resume it. If you're looking for a comprehensive source of n-gram frequencies without having to parse all the data I found peter norvig's blogpost helpful. Seeing how/if frequencies change over time would be interesting, because it's well known that different languages have different unigram frequencies, so you'd expect some sort of change over time as well. I think the issue with google books is that the data for older books are pretty low-quality, lots of OCR mistakes and low sample size, but better than nothing

    edit: If you want a good source to start learning about how to approach the ciphers, practical cryptography is a good shout

    1 vote

  13. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    saturnV
    Link Parent
    Sounds interesting, I did something similar when I was at school with the cipher challenge which is mostly archaic ciphers, but I've been recommended cryptopals as something to learn "real" encryption

    Sounds interesting, I did something similar when I was at school with the cipher challenge which is mostly archaic ciphers, but I've been recommended cryptopals as something to learn "real" encryption

    1 vote

  14. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    saturnV
    Link Parent
    Autohotkey is the tool that most people use on windows for this sort of stuff, on macos I know there is Keyboard Maestro and on Linux Espanso, but I don't know if they are as powerful, sounds...

    Autohotkey is the tool that most people use on windows for this sort of stuff, on macos I know there is Keyboard Maestro and on Linux Espanso, but I don't know if they are as powerful, sounds pretty crazy what you're doing with it! Personally I would generally delegate most of the logic to python (because that's what I'm used to) as soon as it gets moderately complex, helps keep it fairly tool-agnostic. For scraping websites sometimes beautifulsoup or selenium can be less hacky. Obviously the tool you have is better than the one you don't though ;)

  15. Comment on UK asylum seekers will be deported to Rwanda in ~news

    saturnV
    Link Parent
    Well more specifically it was unlawful until they just passed a law effectively overruling the court and forcing them to treat it as a safe country (ridiculous but that's what you get with...

    Well more specifically it was unlawful until they just passed a law effectively overruling the court and forcing them to treat it as a safe country (ridiculous but that's what you get with parliamentary sovereignty). The biggest potential challenge left is now from the ECHR.

    12 votes

  16. Comment on Looking for free or cheap places to learn some SQL and XML in ~tech

    saturnV
    Link
    https://sqlbolt.com/ is a nice free way of learning simple SQL

    https://sqlbolt.com/ is a nice free way of learning simple SQL

    1 vote

  17. Comment on New Brexit checks will cause food shortages in UK, importers warn in ~food

    saturnV
    Link
    Feels a bit weird that this is in ~food, even if it is technically correct. Should this be moved to ~news or ~misc, or is tagging it with politics mean that it's fine here?

    Feels a bit weird that this is in ~food, even if it is technically correct. Should this be moved to ~news or ~misc, or is tagging it with politics mean that it's fine here?

  18. Comment on Where will people commune in a godless America? in ~humanities

    saturnV
    Link Parent
    I think it is overly dismissive of theologians and critical scholars of the Bible to say that religious people are unwilling to examine their beliefs in depth. I do understand that the academic...

    I think it is overly dismissive of theologians and critical scholars of the Bible to say that religious people are unwilling to examine their beliefs in depth. I do understand that the academic version of religion is quite different to how it is actually practiced, but still think it's worth mentioning.
    Also, I do think it is possible to be a Christian without believing in much of the Bible being literal, one can believe that Jesus' miracles were just teachings like his parables, and that religion is just a way of transmitting morality and culture through non-literal stories.

    3 votes

  19. Comment on Where will people commune in a godless America? in ~humanities

    saturnV
    Link Parent
    I'd be interested to know how you justify belief in scripture and a specific religion over another from a rational point of view. I have found arguments for an Aristotelian prime mover or even a...

    I'd be interested to know how you justify belief in scripture and a specific religion over another from a rational point of view. I have found arguments for an Aristotelian prime mover or even a pandeist kind of thing plausible, but never heard convincing reasons why one specific religion with specific doctrines determined by humans should be followed, short of religious experience literally telling you what to follow. For instance, looking at Christianity, one can see an evolution of beliefs throughout the bible, which one would not expect if God was guiding the writing of scripture.

    5 votes

  20. Comment on New Brexit checks will cause food shortages in UK, importers warn in ~food

    saturnV
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    Labour have said that they are going to attempt to build closer relations with the EU, basically creating a roadmap to eventually rejoin the EU. Thing is, the EU are not going to let the UK back...

    Labour have said that they are going to attempt to build closer relations with the EU, basically creating a roadmap to eventually rejoin the EU. Thing is, the EU are not going to let the UK back in on the same terms, because the UK is currently a lot less powerful than it was 5 decades ago, and also because they want to discourage right-wing populists from making it look like a risk-free move for them to do their own exit, and making those kinds of concessions would be immensely politically damaging for UK politicians to make so soon after Brexit.

    6 votes