disk's recent activity
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Comment on Why do you like your job? in ~life
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Comment on I built my own phone... because innovation is sad rn in ~tech
disk Link ParentAdditionally, I think we went "past" peak smartphone because a lot of features that I personally care about (and lots of my friends also do) were deliberately removed from newer phones. We're...Additionally, I think we went "past" peak smartphone because a lot of features that I personally care about (and lots of my friends also do) were deliberately removed from newer phones.
We're losing the headphone jack, removable SD cards, removable batteries and other features which we did not need to get rid of. There are plenty of amazing new developments, like hyper efficient OLED screens, but we could've kept them without ridding our phones of everything else.
My Moto G9 is so large it doesn't fit in some of my older jeans, and it "stabs" me in the thigh when sitting down or going up staircases, whilst I literally played tennis with my G3 in my pocket.
I really want phones to be smaller, with higher capacity batteries and more efficient screens, that's about it for me. Any efficiency benefits are incredibly welcome, and much like a car engine, we really need to iterate over the basics to extract efficiency out of them instead of focusing on new gizmos.
Most importantly, the software is actively getting worse, with Android hinting at getting rid of sideloading, and the OS in general getting less reliable and more resource intensive (A/B partitions come to mind). My alarm app stopped working for a good two weeks, and the whole OS seems to make directly accessing the filesystem as cumbersome as possible.
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Digital Museum of Plugs and Sockets
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Comment on How “grid-forming inverters” are paving the way for 100% renewable energy in ~enviro
disk LinkI've read the UK's black start plan, and my first question was indeed "what about the renewables transition", and at this point I was aware of grid-forming inverters, but didn't realise some of...I've read the UK's black start plan, and my first question was indeed "what about the renewables transition", and at this point I was aware of grid-forming inverters, but didn't realise some of them were being trialed already.
Part of the reason why the Iberian peninsula had a prolonged blackout was precisely lack of grid forming/load absorbing capabilities, so this will be immensely important for making renewable-based grids way more resilient too.
As a small digression, I can't stress just how amazing pumped storage is, if you have favourable geographical characteristics. I'm not too fond of building huge battery banks if you can opt for a simple, mechanical solution that provides the same benefits of a regular gas-fired plant, so I hope more countries jump on that whenever possible.
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Buildings in Berlin are weird
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Comment on Smartphone gambling is a disaster in ~health.mental
disk LinkThis is what makes this so pervasive; the only other parallel I can think of where you're almost forced to indulge in your addiction every day like that is food. You are "exposed" to sugar when...Imagine being a gambling addict and always having a slot machine in your pocket except you also need that slot machine to stay in touch with friends/family, to get jobs and contact coworkers, for banking, for navigation.
This is what makes this so pervasive; the only other parallel I can think of where you're almost forced to indulge in your addiction every day like that is food. You are "exposed" to sugar when consuming food in a controlled manner the same way you're exposed to gambling, and we've recognised the dangers of excessive sugar in our diets, implementing measures to counter that as much as we could.
Meanwhile, in many countries, we saw the opposite - a liberalisation of gambling despite all scientific evidence pointing that online gambling is far more destructive than in-person gambling. Even with all the taxes and restrictions, gambling is very much a net negative for society and the state.
Although I'm not in favour of outright prohibition, we need to acknowledge that we need hard limits. We banned tobacco advertising, but why do we have gambling ads everywhere? I can't watch any sports without gambling ads, I can't stop seeing references to gambling companies in sports uniforms.
Notably, about 19% of those ages 18 to 24 were at high risk for problem gambling
If 19% of our young population was comprised of unrepentant alcoholics, we'd be on crisis mode. Yet, we have nearly 1/5th of a population still in their formative years essentially moulding their brains to throw away their money at every waking opportunity.
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Comment on Exercise boosts colon cancer survival in ~health
disk Link ParentLots of cancers are, apparently (speaking for myself from the Hodgkin's side of things) So if you're young, still keep an eye out for blood in faeces, bloating, stomach pains or unexplained sudden...Lots of cancers are, apparently (speaking for myself from the Hodgkin's side of things)
So if you're young, still keep an eye out for blood in faeces, bloating, stomach pains or unexplained sudden weight loss (especially that one), as catching the disease early greatly improves your prognosis
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Comment on I don't really cry. I'm fine. in ~life.men
disk LinkI believe a lot of people think of expressing emotion in an undeniably "potent" way as the only way to demonstrate you care. Part of maturing is realising that not all emotions are a realistic...I believe a lot of people think of expressing emotion in an undeniably "potent" way as the only way to demonstrate you care. Part of maturing is realising that not all emotions are a realistic representation of what you see or even what you really feel on the inside (hence the "never trust your brain after 22:00" meme), and you're supposed to watch some of these feelings come and go without taking them in.
There were plenty of moments in my life where I was deemed "uncaring" because I knew a person too well, and knew that they wouldn't react well to emotional outbursts - so I stayed calm because that was what would make them feel at ease. The people that criticised me were people that barely knew that person, and didn't realise different people react differently to the same things.
The best parallel to this is an old parenting trick: babies mimic their parents' emotions, and reacting "outwardly" can stress them, so while some people would think of a tranquil parent as emotionally detached, it's very much the opposite.
It's also that although there's nothing wrong with expressing feelings or thoughts, I'm not comfortable with sharing them with everyone. My parents would falsely associate this with mistrust and lack of confidence in them, and whenever they expressed that, it would (counterproductively so) further cement that I should never share any of these feelings with them. This is, of course, not directly correlated with how much you know someone, but a myriad of factors, like whether or not this is relevant to that person, whether you're/they're in the right mental space, etc.
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Comment on Data manipulation within the US Federal government in ~science
disk LinkThis is done in the shoddiest of ways too - basically search and replace. This has immense implications for anyone doing metaresearch/studies on conditions linked to sex. This is a sure-fire way...The switch from gender to sex also occurred in other public health datasets, including US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) datasets tracking global adult tobacco consumption, stroke mortality data from 2015 to 2017, and a survey of nutrition, physical activity, and obesity (appendix pp 4–9).
[...]
We found that 114 (49%) of the 232 included datasets were substantially altered. Of these, the vast majority (106 datasets [93%]) had the word gender switched to sex (appendix p 2). Only 15 (13%) of the 114 altered datasets logged or otherwise indicated that the change had occurred.This is done in the shoddiest of ways too - basically search and replace. This has immense implications for anyone doing metaresearch/studies on conditions linked to sex. This is a sure-fire way to demolish any goodwill in US public datasets, and it would be perfectly comprehensible if this had rippling effects into the far future, compromising the US' position as a global leader in research for many administrations to come.
I've had coworkers mention that US-based conferences basically begged them to come, as the number of European researchers willing to attend in-person conferences in the US has diminished significantly. I can't blame them - the ones that are going are instructed by their institutions to carry burner phones and minimal amounts of material.
Not only is performing research in the US becoming more difficult, they are retroactively sabotaging previous research, and preventing foreign scientists from participating in discussions.
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Comment on US National Institutes of Health suspends dozens of pathogen studies over ‘gain-of-function’ concerns in ~science
disk LinkThis is ludicrous, the official reasoning was basically just "better safe than sorry"? This is akin to saying that there is no scientific, valid reasoning behind this. They've casted such a wide...For 17 projects, that rationale included the phrase “suspended out of an abundance of caution.” One such study involves examining protective antibodies to two deadly viruses, but the work does not involve the actual pathogens, raising questions about why the work sparked GOF concerns.
This is ludicrous, the official reasoning was basically just "better safe than sorry"? This is akin to saying that there is no scientific, valid reasoning behind this.
They've casted such a wide net that they're applying the same conditions to low-risk experiments and novel, higher risk research. Add a "no appeals" approach to this, and this is a serious hindrance to pathological research as a whole.
All I can think of when reading this is that this is by no means a technical decision, and was made on a shaky political basis. All that remains is figuring out what political motivations lie behind this.
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A Higgs-bugson in the Linux kernel
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Comment on Which unanswered questions do you want to see an answer for in your lifetime? in ~science
disk LinkWhy gravity is so "weak"! That makes little to no sense since we feel it every day, but gravity as a force is significantly weaker (a trillion billion times weaker than strong nuclear force, in...Why gravity is so "weak"! That makes little to no sense since we feel it every day, but gravity as a force is significantly weaker (a trillion billion times weaker than strong nuclear force, in fact) than other forces found in nature, and we have no good explanation as to why. There are some theories, amendments to the standard model, and all sorts of wacky explanations ranging from extra dimensions to it being stronger at very small distances.
For a far narrower question with an easier answer, what happened in Tunguska in 1908, arguably the "largest impact event in recorded human history" whilst having "no impact crater". It's rife with interesting theories, and the most commonly accepted one is that a large asteroid exploded in mid air, 5 to 10 km above the ground.
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Comment on What is a misconception you are passionate about and would like to clarify? in ~talk
disk (edited )LinkI don't know where this myth originated, but particle accelerators (colliders in particular) are not capable of creating black holes in any scale which presents any sort of meaningful risk to...I don't know where this myth originated, but particle accelerators (colliders in particular) are not capable of creating black holes in any scale which presents any sort of meaningful risk to matter even in its nearest vicinity.
I say this because some theorised models present the possibility of extra dimensions, which would theoretically allow miniature, tiny, insignificant black holes to exist (in theory), and also explain gravity being so weak (which explains why black holes aren't feasible in the energies produced by the LHC).
- We get hit with cosmic rays with much more energy than those present at the LHC, many orders of magnitude in fact, and we're here, still!
- Black holes don't "swallow" matter (they don't work like people think, but that's a topic for a different day, so I'll just way "swallow" to make things simpler) in the blink of an eye - even if we had a black hole at our disposal, it would take many times the lifetime of the Earth for it to "present a risk"
- Hawking radiation would mean that the tiny black holes we created would lose mass/energy, and "decay" to basically nothing in less than 10^-83 of a second!
Additionally, not all particle accelerators are colliders! For a lot of people, particle accelerators conjure images of two particles being smashed into each other, but that is not always true! Some are, like the LHC, but there are many types of particle accelerators, like:
- Synchrotrons (a lot of them ultimately generate photons to study atomic structures)
- Cyclotrons (who helped us "transmute" elements into heavier elements for things like nuclear bombs)
- LINACs for radiation therapy (for destroying tumours in non-invasive surgery)
- Cathode ray tube television sets! You may have a particle accelerator in your own home!
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Comment on What are the best niche software tools you're using? in ~tech
disk Link ParentJust personal stuff - trying to make a fridge door open alarm with as few active components as possible, some things for measuring current/voltage phase difference, designing all sorts of basic...Just personal stuff - trying to make a fridge door open alarm with as few active components as possible, some things for measuring current/voltage phase difference, designing all sorts of basic circuits (like op amp integrators, oscillators, RL circuits) with the components I have for larger projects (Teletext signal insertion, clocks)
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Comment on What are the best niche software tools you're using? in ~tech
disk LinkI've been using LTspice for circuit simulation, and despite how old-school it looks, it works absolutely flawlessly. Works on Linux (through Wine), has a pretty robust set of components, can't...I've been using LTspice for circuit simulation, and despite how old-school it looks, it works absolutely flawlessly. Works on Linux (through Wine), has a pretty robust set of components, can't complain at all.
I'm also using CoreCtrl to manage my GPU/CPU fan curves, since for some reason, the ones I set on BIOS don't stick, and my stock GPU curve is horrendous. Simple to use, requires very little set up.
For music, Strawberry is a fairly feature-complete player, stable, and really lightweight. It picks up album art automatically, and worked flawlessly with my music collection.
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Comment on Inside a radioactive 'health' mine in ~health
disk LinkThat's a good read! Even outside radon mines, there has been a pique in interest with regards to radiation hormesis as of recently. Although I don't fully agree with the linear no-threshold model,...That's a good read! Even outside radon mines, there has been a pique in interest with regards to radiation hormesis as of recently. Although I don't fully agree with the linear no-threshold model, I can't say I often entertain the thought of low doses of radiation being potentially beneficial.
It's worth exploring though, even if to find out it does not have any positive effects. There's some literature claiming it's better than a placebo but the results aren't exactly conclusive.
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Comment on What are you reading these days? in ~books
disk LinkAntimatter by Frank Close. It's an excellent book, albeit a bit short, and surprisingly easy to read. It's mainly focused on annihilation, the history of antimatter, and the working principles...Antimatter by Frank Close. It's an excellent book, albeit a bit short, and surprisingly easy to read. It's mainly focused on annihilation, the history of antimatter, and the working principles behind it all. It's rife with metaphors, and much like Elusive, which was also written by Frank, it's an amazing read even if you have some experience with physics.
Additionally, I was reading Concorde on the Haynes Icons manual series. It's also very short, and mostly illustrations, but all technical information is conveyed superbly, and there's very little missing if you're interested in Concorde. Special note to the few pages on transfer tanks, and how fuel was transferred to confer specific flight characteristics at different moments in flight.
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Comment on AI chatbots are people, too. (Except they’re not.) in ~tech
disk (edited )LinkI read the original article (https://academic.oup.com/nc/article/2024/1/niae013/7644104) and I feel it is important to note something from the methodology and results. Consciousness was attributed...I read the original article (https://academic.oup.com/nc/article/2024/1/niae013/7644104) and I feel it is important to note something from the methodology and results. Consciousness was attributed on a sliding scale (0 to 100), based on a definition from a previous study:
As we all know, each of us as conscious human beings have an ‘inner life.’ We are aware of things going on around us and inside our minds. In other words, there is something it is like to be each of us at any given moment: the sum total of what we are sensing, thinking, feeling, etc. We are experiencers.
On the other hand, things like thermostats, burglar alarms, and bread machines do not have an inner life: there is not anything it is like to be these objects, despite the fact that they can monitor conditions around them and make appropriate things happen at appropriate times. They are not experiencers.
Which means that 1 could essentially be a thermostat, and 100 a human (as per examples provided in the study). According to the study's own conclusion:
Overall, our results reveal that a substantial proportion (67%) of people attribute some possibility of phenomenal consciousness to ChatGPT [those who considered ChatGPT to be an experiencer, even if slightly so]
Which does not necessarily equate emotional depth or understanding, but rather the narrow definition of experiencer mentioned above, and even so, to a very limited degree.
The median "experiencer" score was 25, which is still very much under the value attributed to humans (100). However, a couple of respondents gave ChatGPT an experiencer score of 100.
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Comment on Philosopher Slavoj Žižek on 'soft' fascism, AI and the effects of shamelessness in public life in ~humanities
disk (edited )Link ParentMy notion of it is that excess openness is not necessarily complete honesty - you can be "open" and avoid lies whilst still reserving some space to backtrack/manoeuvre around a certain topic....My notion of it is that excess openness is not necessarily complete honesty - you can be "open" and avoid lies whilst still reserving some space to backtrack/manoeuvre around a certain topic. Political hypocrisy was often times a tactic to avoid (well deserved) pushback on ideas which didn't float well with the public, and although undesirable, it demonstrated that politicians were ashamed of what they were doing to some degree, and were ultimately limited on how openly/quickly/strongly they could pursue their goals.
Nowadays, it seems like such pushback has abated, or faulty behaviour is otherwise excused in the name of "well, at least he's being honest about it". A lot of times, overly prosaic straight-to-the-point and open language fails to leave avenues for further communication, and strains political collaboration in the future. Furthermore, it means that politicians are no longer afraid of the ramifications of their actions, and will openly declare them because no system is in place to keep them in check.
For instance, if you're part of a certain party, and you have a long term goal of vanquishing a rival party/demography, you wouldn't be expected to say this out loud. When you say this, you polarise the situation further, your supporters are fired up by your statements, and no meaningful work can be done to attain a compromise. Saying this out loud basically says "we will not leave us any space to backtrack on this, we're making ourselves clear, and we will spare no effort to obtain our goals. Dialogue is now impossible". Although this is part symptom/part indirect cause of our current political situation, this is in no means desirable, at least in my view.
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Comment on How does one learn how to learn? in ~life
disk LinkRepetition is it, mostly! This is how I handle memorising bits of information I can't rationalise my way around. For instance, for citizenship tests, driving tests, or highly theoretical law tests...Repetition is it, mostly! This is how I handle memorising bits of information I can't rationalise my way around. For instance, for citizenship tests, driving tests, or highly theoretical law tests in uni, I would take mock tests over and over, and I'd find that I would be able to remember some oddly specific details.
Same goes for things such as flash cards, I try to catch a glimpse of it, and see how much of it I can memorise in one go. Then I keep going over the same weak spots until I can quickly memorise the most crucial bits, and deduce the other ones from that.
Mnemonics also help, you will probably have to come up with your own, but that's how I do it with languages. Like little songs to remember the sine/cos/tan of 30/45/60 degrees.
The more you're able to "deduce" without memorising it, the better. Once again, sine of 90 degrees is 1, because sine is opposite over hypotenuse, and a 90 degree angle makes a square, so that's 1/1. You're not as quick to get to the result, but it's way easier to remember, and you have a fuller grasp of what you're trying to learn.
Best of luck, though! Sure you'll smash it
I have a job that allows me to see the direct results of what I do in society at large. We're involved in cutting-edge research, and I love to give out tours of the facility, because kids and adults alike are fascinated at how we're able to do the things we do.
My job is also detached from the pressures of private companies, so we're "insulated" from the bad parts of the AI hype, we only apply things which make technical sense. I don't have to worry about putting effort towards something which will make the world a worse place, or further enrich some reality-detached billionaire.
It is frustrating at times, especially when bureaucracy doesn't let me do my job to the best of my abilities, but most times, I'm happy to see how the work I do enables the discovery of new vaccines, cancer treatments, battery technologies and metal alloys.