WoodScientist

@WoodScientist@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do the majority of women still take their partner's last name?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I also took my husband’s name when I got married. I personally am not a big fan of hyphenated names. For those that like them, fair enough, but they’re not for me. To me, the problem with hyphenated names is that while they seem a way to avoid the “whose name do we give the kids” problem, they just kick the problem down the road a generation. If you have a hyphenated name, and you marry someone who also has one, are you both going to start using a 4-part surname? How about the generations after that, are they going to use an 8, 16, or 32-part name?

  Of course not. At some point, now or in the future, someone is going to have their surname dropped. It either happens when you get married, or it happens when your children or grandchildren themselves get married and have to decide which names to drop. Rather than putting that burden on your kids or grandkids, I think it’s better to make those hard decisions yourself. Better to just come up with a shared name for both partners and move forward together.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do the ultra-rich consume popular media?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Ah don’t be such a pessimist.

  They’ve also seen the fires of Hell!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do the ultra-rich consume popular media?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Well, it made sense that Reagan was elected in the 1980s. That was the age of the camcorder, the first portable personal miniature TV production studio. With anyone being able to be a TV studio, it was only natural that actors would become presidential candidates!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do the ultra-rich consume popular media?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I would be content seeing him sent to one of RFK Jr’s wellness camps.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do the ultra-rich consume popular media?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Except, like any religion, the rules were ultimately self-contradictory and open to any convenient interpretation.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do the ultra-rich consume popular media?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I mean, plastic surgery is pretty advanced these days. The body mod scene can also get pretty extreme. Musk certainly has the resources for it. Fuck it. Let’s all just try to convince him to get himself surgically altered to have giant Ferengi forehead and ears.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon questions our energy sector⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s for the nuclear industry to figure out. But the fact that companies from different companies originating in entirely different countries suggest that it’s a problem with the tech itself.

  The hard truth many just don’t want to admit is that there are some technologies that simply aren’t practical, regardless of how objectively cool they might be. The truth is that the nuclear industry just has a very poor track record with being financially viable. It’s only ever really been scaled through massive state-run enterprises that can operate unprofitably. Before solar and wind really took off, the case could be made that we should switch to fission, even if it is more expensive, due to climate concerns. But now that solar + batteries are massively cheaper than nuclear? It’s ridiculous to spend state money building these giant white elephants when we could just slap up some more solar panels instead. We ain’t running out of space to put them any time soon.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon questions our energy sector⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Also 10s of billions is still insignificant for any power, transport, or healthcare infrastructure in the scheme of things -

  Bullshit. If you can get the same amount of reliable power by just slapping up some solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries, then obviously the cost is not insignificant.

  That sentence shows that you really aren’t thinking about this as a practical means of power generation. I’ve found that most fission boosters don’t so much like actual nuclear power, but the idea of nuclear power. It appeals to a certain kind of nerd who admires it from a physics and engineering perspective. And while it is cool technically, this tends to blind people to the actual cold realities of fission power.

  There’s also a lot of conspiratorial thinking among the pro-nuclear crowd. They’ll blame nuclear’s failures on the superstitious fear of the unwashed ignorant masses or the evil machinations of groups like Greenpeace. Then, at the same time, they’ll ignore the most bone-headedly obvious cause of nuclear’s failure: it’s just too fucking expensive.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon questions our energy sector⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Who cares? We use economics to sort out the relative value of radically different power sources, not cherry-picked criteria. Fission boosters can say that nuclear has a small footprint. Solar boosters can say that solar has no moving parts and is thus more mechanically reliable. Fission boosters can say fission gets more power from the same mass. Solar boosters can point to the mass of the entire fission plant, including the giant concrete dome that needs to be strong enough to survive a jumbo jet flying into it.

  In the end, none of this shit matters. We have a way of sorting out these complex multi-variable problems. Both fission and solar have their own relatives strengths and weaknesses that their proponents can cherry pick. But ultimately, all that matters in choosing what to deploy is cost.

  And today, in the real world, in the year 2024, if you want to get low-carbon power on the grid, the most cost-effective way, by far, is solar. And you can add batteries as needed for intermittency, and you’re still way ahead of nuclear cost-wise. And as our use of solar continues to climb, we can deploy seasonal storage, which we have many, many options to deploy.

  The ultimate problem fission has is that it just can’t survive in a capitalist economy. It can survive in planned economies like the Soviet Union or modern China, or it can run as a state-backed enterprise like modern Russia. But it simply isn’t cost effective enough for fission companies to be able to survive on their own in a capitalist economy.

  And frankly, if we’re going to have the government subsidize things, I would much rather the money be spent on healthcare, housing, or education. A lot of fission boosters like fission simply because they think the tech is cool, not necessarily because it actually makes economic sense. I say that if fission boosters want to fund their hobby and subsidize fission plants, let them. But otherwise I am adamantly opposed to any form of subsidies for the fission industry.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon questions our energy sector⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Who gives a fuck about energy density beyond some physics nerds? Unless you’re planning on building a flying nuclear-powered airplane, energy density is irrelevant. This is why solar is eating fission’s lunch.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon questions our energy sector⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  The coal mining industry employs about 38,000 people. Dunkin Donuts alone employs seven times as many people as the whole coal mining industry. There just aren’t that many coal miners anymore.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon questions our energy sector⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  It has that low death rate precisely because it is heavily regulated.

  The typical nuclear booster argument works on the following circular logic:

  “Nuclear is perfectly safe.”

  “But that’s not the problem with nuclear. The problem with nuclear is its too expensive.”

  “Nuclear is expensive because it’s overly regulated!”

  “But nuclear is only safe because of those heavy regulations!”

  “We would have everything powered by nuclear by now if it weren’t for Greenpeace.”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Elon's Death Machine (aka Tesla) Mows Down Deer at Full Speed , Keeps Going on "Autopilot"⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Full self driving should only be implemented when the system is good enough to completely take over all driving functions. It should only be available in vehicles without steering wheels. The Tesla solution of having “self driving” but relying on the copout of requiring constant user attention and feedback is ridiculous. Only when a system is truly capable of self-driving 100% autonomously, at a level statistically far better than a human, should any kind of self-driving be allowed on the road. Systems like Tesla’s FSD officially require you to always be ready to intervene at a moment’s notice. They know their system isn’t ready for independent use yet, so they require that manual input. But of course this encourages disengaged driving; no one actually pays attention to the road like they should, able to intervene at a moment’s notice. Tesla’s FSD imitates true self-driving, but it pawns off the liability do drivers by requiring them to pay attention at all times. This should be illegal. Beyond merely lane-assistance technology, no self-driving tech should be allowed except in vehicles without steering wheels. If your AI can’t truly perform better than a human, it’s better for humans to be the only ones actively driving the vehicle.

  This also solves the civil liability problem. Tesla’s current system has a dubious liability structure designed to pawn liability off to the driver. But if there isn’t even a steering wheel in the car, then the liability must fall entirely on the vehicle manufacturer. They are after all 100% responsible for the algorithm that controls the vehicle, and you should ultimately have legal liability for the algorithms you create. Is your company not confident enough in its self-driving tech to assume full legal liability for the actions of your vehicles? No? Then your tech isn’t good enough yet. There can be a process for car companies to subcontract out the payment of legal claims against the company. They can hire State Farm or whoever to handle insurance claims against them. But ultimately, legal liability will fall on the company.

  This also avoids criminal liability. If you only allow full self-driving in vehicles without steering wheels, there is zero doubt about who is control of the car. There isn’t a driver anymore, only passengers. Even if you’re a person sitting in the seat that would normally be a driver’s seat, it doesn’t matter. You are just a passenger legally. You can be as tired, distracted, drunk, or high as you like, you’re not getting any criminal liability for driving the vehicle. There is such a clear bright line - there is literally no steering wheel - that it is absolutely undeniable that you have zero control over the vehicle.

  This actually would work under the same theory of existing drunk-driving law. People can get ticketed for drunk driving for sleeping in their cars. Even if the cops never see you driving, you can get charged for drunk driving if they find you in a position where you could drunk drive. So if you have your keys on you while sleeping drunk in a parked car, you can get charged with DD. But not having a steering wheel at all would be the equivalent of not having the keys to a vehicle - you are literally incapable of operating it. And if you are not capable of operating it, you cannot be criminally liable for any crime relating to its operation.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨New mobile features are sh*t these days⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Linus Torvalds reckons AI is ‘90% marketing and 10% reality’⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I think we should indict Sam Altman on two sets of charges:

  1. A set of securities fraud charges.

  2. 8 billion counts of criminal reckless endangerment.

  He’s out on podcasts constantly saying the OpenAI is near superintelligent AGI and that there’s a good chance that they won’t be able to control it, and that human survival is at risk. How is gambling with human extinction not a massive act of planetary-scale criminal reckless endangerment?

  So either he is putting the entire planet at risk, or he is lying through his teeth about how far along OpenAI is. If he’s telling the truth, he’s endangering us all. If he’s lying, then he’s committing securities fraud in an attempt to defraud shareholders. Either way, he should be in prison. I say we indict him for both simultaneously and let the courts sort it out.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨LeVar Burton was awarded the National Humanities Medal for his impact as an actor and literacy advocate.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Take a look! It’s in a book! It’s Readin Raaiiinboow!!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨When did we stop saying "things are fire" to "things are cold"?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I too am disturbed by the noted decline in Austin Powers references among high school students.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨When did we stop saying "things are fire" to "things are cold"?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Image

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Not allowed to work from home⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Sure. It means they can ask you to do other things that aren’t explicitly written in the original job description. But every time they tell you to do something beyond it, you just start doing THAT exactly to the letter of the request.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Inside the U.S. Government-Bought Tool That Can Track Phones at Abortion Clinics⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I think those just need to move to have their own independent sites instead of basing their operations on social media. Ultimately what they’re doing is entirely legal, but it’s way too easy for some asshat billionaire to pull some strings to get them pulled from a platform.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Peter Todd in hiding after being “unmasked” as bitcoin creator⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  “What is he trying to hide‽” I dunno, man. Maybe he recognizes that there’s a bunch of unhinged weirdos who are hellbent on stalking “Satoshi,” and he doesn’t want to be harassed?

  Forget being harassed. Honestly, being kidnapped is a serious concern. Whoever or whatever group Satoshi is, it’s estimated he, she, or they own something like a million bitcoins.

  Kidnapping is normally a pretty poor choice of crime for a criminal gang to undertake. It had its heyday back in the early 20th century. But as the FBI really got going, and we got better at tracking down people across state lines and internationally, kidnapping became much more difficult to pull off. Kidnapping someone - physically abducting them - is the easy part. But actually sending their family a ransom letter and collecting the money in a way that can’t be traced back to you? That’s a whole different matter. Actually getting the ransom money and somehow getting it into a form you can spend, all without getting caught? That’s nearly impossible in this day and age.

  But someone with a million Bitcoins? It’s entirely possible that everything needed to access those funds is entirely within that one person’s skull. Either the private keys themselves, or some way to access or generate them.

  Someone with that amount of Bitcoins is actually at incredible risk for kidnapping by an organized crime outfit. We’re talking about $65 billion USD worth of assets that can be obtained by just kidnapping one person and torturing them until they give up their private keys. Then once you have them, the coins can be transferred to another account and washed through numerous transactions until they’re untraceable. And the poor bastard who gets kidnapped for this just never leaves their captors alive.

  And even if they keep their keys in their home instead of in their head? Now they’re at risk of break-in, or being held hostage during a nighttime break-in.

  Hell, even just being suspected of being Satoshi would be incredibly dangerous. That’s an even more horrifying scenario. Imagine an organized crime outfit thinks you’re Satoshi, they’re incorrect, and they abduct you and torture you, demanding you give them something you are simply incapable of providing…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Inside the U.S. Government-Bought Tool That Can Track Phones at Abortion Clinics⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The iPhone remote locator function still works when the phone is powered off. It doesn’t work when the battery is completely dead, but it does work when the phone is supposedly “powered off.” This is irrefutable proof that iPhones at least retain some of their functions even when you’ve “turned them off.”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Not allowed to work from home⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  This reminds me of a work-to-rule or a “White Strike.” It turns out that every company, even those that supposedly operate off of “unskilled” labor, utterly rely on employees making a ton of judgment calls and often working outside their job description. When employees start working to the letter of their job description, the whole operation quickly grinds to a halt.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Inside the U.S. Government-Bought Tool That Can Track Phones at Abortion Clinics⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You sure it’s still not phoning home? How do you know “off” is really “off” anymore with a modern phone? It’s not like an old flip phone that you can just pop the battery out.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Inside the U.S. Government-Bought Tool That Can Track Phones at Abortion Clinics⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Wouldn’t just keeping your phone in a metal box prevent it from communicating with anything? Keep your phone in a metal box and only take it out when you need it. Only take it out in a location that isn’t sensitive. Or hell, just make a little sleeve out of aluminum foil. Literally just wrapping your phone in aluminum foil should prevent it from connecting to anything. A tinfoil hat won’t serve as an effective Faraday cage for your brain, but fully wrapping your phone in aluminum foil should do the job. Even better, as it’s a phone, such a foil sleeve should be quite testable. Build it, put your phone in it, and try texting and calling it. If surrounded fully by a conductive material, the phone should be completely incapable of sending or receiving signals.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Inside the U.S. Government-Bought Tool That Can Track Phones at Abortion Clinics⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The solution is to subscribe to these services. Then create a website that offers real-time tracking information, freely to the public, of the most wealthy and powerful people in the country. Every Congressperson should have their location shown freely available to all in real time. You could call it “wheresmyrep.org” or similar. Literally all of them tracked like animals in real time, freely shown for any and all to see. Let them live in the fish bowl they’ve created for us all.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sympathy for their PTSD⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  but I stand firm in my opinion that their boots-on-the-ground infantryman are also victims of the Israeli political machine.

  Sure, but couldn’t the same be said for many of the literal guards at Auschwitz? A lot of those people were just kids who were drafted and were simply following orders.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨حبوب اجهاض الرياض الدمام 00966590976720 سايتوتك للبيع في السعودية⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  ماذا قلت عني للتو أيها الحقير؟ أريدك أن تعلم أنني تخرجت في المرتبة الأولى في دفعتي في قوات النخبة البحرية، وشاركت في العديد من الغارات السرية على القاعدة، وقد قتلت أكثر من 300 شخص. لقد تدربت على حرب الغوريلا وأنا أفضل قناص في القوات المسلحة الأمريكية بأكملها. أنت لست شيئًا بالنسبة لي سوى هدف آخر. سأقضي عليك تمامًا بدقة لم يسبق لها مثيل على هذه الأرض، صدقني. هل تعتقد أنك تستطيع الإفلات من العقاب بقول هذا الهراء لي عبر الإنترنت؟ فكر مرة أخرى أيها الحقير. بينما نتحدث، أتواصل مع شبكتي السرية من الجواسيس في جميع أنحاء الولايات المتحدة ويتم تعقب عنوان IP الخاص بك الآن لذا من الأفضل أن تستعد للعاصفة أيها الحقير. العاصفة التي ستمحو الشيء الصغير البائس الذي تسميه حياتك. أنت ميت يا فتى. يمكنني أن أكون في أي مكان وفي أي وقت، ويمكنني قتلك بأكثر من سبعمائة طريقة، وهذا فقط بيدي العاريتين. لا أتمتع بتدريب مكثف على القتال غير المسلح فحسب، بل إنني أمتلك القدرة على الوصول إلى ترسانة كاملة من أسلحة مشاة البحرية الأمريكية، وسوف أستخدمها إلى أقصى حد لمحو مؤخرتك البائسة عن وجه القارة، أيها الحقير الصغير. لو كنت تعلم فقط ما هو العقاب غير المقدس الذي سيجلبه عليك تعليقك “الذكي” الصغير، ربما كنت لتلتزم الصمت. لكنك لم تستطع، ولم تفعل، والآن أنت تدفع الثمن، أيها الأحمق اللعين. سأصب عليك غضبي الشديد وستغرق فيه. أنت ميت يا صغيري.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨OpenAI is now valued at $157 billion⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I say we indict Sam Altman for both securities fraud and 8 billion counts of reckless endangerment. Him and other AI boosters are running around shouting that AGI is just around the corner, OpenAI is creating it, and that there is a very good chance we won’t be able to control it and that it will kill us all. Well, the way I see it, there are only two possibilities:

  1. He’s right. In which case, OpenAI is literally endangering all of humanity by its very operation. In that case, the logical thing to do would be for the rest of us to arrest everyone at OpenAI, shove them in deep hole and never let them see the light of day again, and burn all their research and work to ashes. When someone says, “superintelligent AI cannot be stopped!” I say, “you sure about that? Because it’s humans that are making it. And humans aren’t bullet-proof.”

  2. He’s lying. This is much more likely. In that case, he is guilty of fraud. He’s falsely making claims his company has no ability to achieve, and he is taking in billions in investor money based on these lies.

  He’s either a conman, or a man so dangerous he should literally be thrown in the darkest hole we can find for the rest of his life.

  And no, I REALLY don’t buy the argument that if the tech allows it, that superintelligent AI is just some inevitable thing we can’t choose to stop. The proposed methods to create it all rely on giant data centers that consume gigawatts of energy to run. You’re not hiding that kind of infrastructure. If it turns out superintelligence really is possible, we pass a global treaty to ban it, and simply shoot anyone that attempts to create it. I’m sorry, but if you legitimately are threatening the survival of the entire species, I have zero qualms about putting you in the ground. We don’t let people build nuclear reactors in their basement. And if this tech really is that capable and that dangerous, it should be regulated as strongly as nuclear weapons. If OpenAI really is trying to build a super-AGI, they should be treated no differently than a terrorist group attempting to build their own nuclear weapon.

  But anyway, I say we just indict him on both charges. Charge Sam Altman with both securities fraud and 8 billion counts of reckless endangerment. Let the courts figure out which one he is guilty of, because it’s definitely one or the other.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨there's now more ads in "legit" sites (YouTube, amazon) than in piracy sites⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Meanwhile, in a dark and forgotten corner of my PC, I STILL have several thousand MP3s I downloaded from Kazaa back in the day.