AnarchistArtificer
@AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net
- Comment on Wave Particle Duality 1 week ago:
I have a friend whose research requires a thorough understanding of quantum mechanics. She told me that she feels like she understands quantum mechanics, until she stops and thinks about it in a way that isn’t limited to the equations and data that she’s used to manipulating. Then, it blows her mind so much that she feels like she has to sort of “reboot” her brain and tell herself “it’s okay, just don’t think about it too much bro”. I find this hilarious, and quite relatable (even though I know relatively little of quantum mechanics)
- Comment on Our bffs 1 week ago:
As a biochemist who is better at stats than the average biochemist (which is concerning, because I’m not that great), I greatly appreciate statisticians telling us off when we’re fools.
- Comment on Come on, science! 1 week ago:
I’m annoyed that smartphones are so much more powerful nowadays but they don’t especially feel like it. It’s like the average bloat level of websites and software increased alongside processor speed, so actual improvements are barely noticeable.
- Comment on Come on, science! 1 week ago:
I’d like for there to be phones with keyboards available for the people who want them though, even if I personally share your opinion. I feel like the overall array of smartphones are all very bland and samey, and I wish that the people with weird, idiosyncratic preferences could live their best life.
- Comment on Come on, science! 1 week ago:
I miss my notification LED. My first android phone was a Nexus 6, and I loved that big old thing. I rooted it and made it link up to my medication tracker so it would be a different colour when I had taken medication Vs when I was due (alarms work for medication you take on a schedule, but less so for PRN meds like painkillers)
- Submitted 1 week ago to askelectronics@discuss.tchncs.de | 8 comments
- Comment on Mola the Fucktress 1 week ago:
That’s great, I love it.
- Comment on I like this text. In which Lemmy community can I best share it ? Thanks. 1 week ago:
I think it’s more about what we mean by “failure”. That probably sounds silly so I’ll lean into the coffee shop example. Imagine if a coffee shop was successful, but then something beyond the control of the owner happened to make it no longer profitable. In this world, the business may have failed, but it may not be accurate to say the business owner has failed. Or maybe the business becoming less profitable is directly because of the owner, who may be taking less time being active in managing things, perhaps because of other things in their life taking their attention. Again, there’s a sense in which they’re a failure here, but in practice, it may just be that their life circumstances and priorities have changed. It might be failure with respect to the coffee shop, but I don’t think that’s failure with respect to their life. Even if the reason the coffee shop shut was because they didn’t anticipate how stressful it would be and they regret ever attempting this endeavour, I think that considering this a failure risks not acknowledging the growth and learning involved.
I liked the marriage example because I used to be engaged to someone who I spent the first chunk of my adult life with. We broke up because we had grown into people who were no longer compatible, and it was a moderately messy breakup because we didn’t want to acknowledge that fact. I think that in this, and many other relationships I’ve seen, people’s aversion to “failure” causes them to stick it out for far too long in bad relationships, which ironically leads to messier breakups and a situation which is much more clearly a failure.
I think the big problem that OP attempts to highlight is an overly binary view of success. Like with the coffee shop thing, I posed personal and commercial as two different axes of success, and I think there could be more. It encourages us to attempt to gauge the “objective” value of things that are incompatible with that kind of quantification — the bit of your comment about longer lasting friendships is something I actively disagree with you on. Some of my most cherished friendships are ones that belong to the past and it wasn’t because of lack of importance why they stopped because active: most of the time, it was just that we had become different people, in different circumstances, such that our lives were no longer compatible. There is still great love and care that exists between us, but as active friends, things have changed. In a way, these friendships feel like they were actively successful, because of how instrumental they were in helping me grow to the person I am now. I don’t think failure is a useful lens to view outgrowing something
- Comment on Beansitive 1 week ago:
I used to do tutoring when I was in school and this pun was actually great for helping students remember. They all hated it, and that’s why they remembered it.
(Cat-ions are paw-sitive)
- Comment on Academic job talks 1 week ago:
I guess that’s what the people who are suing are alleging. Like if we imagine they did severely fuck up, and it led to a defendant losing the case, then suing is probably the only way you’d be able to get formal acknowledgement of that fuck up.
I think it sucks from that angle too, because as someone who has had to litigate against an organisation, it really sucks to have to do, especially when you know you’re in the right.
- Comment on Blanket physics is harder to understand than Calabi-Yau Manifolds 3 weeks ago:
My brother once got so tangled in a duvet cover, we had to cut him free.
- Comment on Uncle brian... I get you now 3 weeks ago:
Auntie Dawn, I realise you’re probably more like me than I realised. Especially because my family probably call me a bitch who’s ashamed of her working class background now too.
- Comment on E A Rth! E A Rth! 3 weeks ago:
Man, now I want to play Kerbal Space Program again!
- Comment on FOSS scanner app surpasses Microsoft for usability 4 weeks ago:
“analyse your scan for content to suggest a file name”
That’s a ‘Yikes’ from me
- Comment on Carers threatened with prosecution over minor breaches of UK benefit rules 4 weeks ago:
Yeah, I’ve always thought that. I had an assessment for a disability benefit a few years ago that went badly; the guy doing it awarded me zero points in every category — i.e. saying I was not disabled at all— overriding years of medical evidence from specialist doctors. After a lengthy appeal process, the decision was overturned, but the most traumatising part of it all, in hindsight, was how nice the assessor guy seemed; as part of the appeal, we requested a copy of the report he had submitted and we were astounded at how brazenly he had lied.
I’ve spent a lot of time wondering what kind of person could be so outwardly supportive while potentially destroying people’s lives, especially for a job that doesn’t pay much at all. I wonder what pressures would make someone do this, and perhaps whether he had conditioned himself to see people like me as fakers or “benefit scroungers”. I’ll never know.
- Comment on Google Podcasts is shutting down soon, users urged to move to YouTube Music 5 weeks ago:
I don’t listen to podcasts often, so I’m still using Pocketcasts, but your comment may prompt me to switch. Thanks for the suggestion
- Comment on Jails banned visits in “quid pro quo” with prison phone companies, lawsuits say 5 weeks ago:
Bad cop, no doughnut.
- Comment on legs to die for 1 month ago:
That’s a great joke. The millipede’s enthusiasm is oddly endearing
- Comment on legs to die for 1 month ago:
This sentence took me multiple attempts to parse.
- Comment on degree in bamf 1 month ago:
I think you’re right that only a tiny minority are directly responsible for the negative interactions, but as someone within academic science, there’s also a much larger chunk of people who don’t challenge the assholes or the systemic fuckery when they see it.
Minorities who face oppression are much more likely to be ignored if they report inappropriate or offensive behaviour; I directly know people who have been made to feel like they are the problem for highlighting a problem. This is especially common if it’s an established and respected academic who makes the iffy comments, because there’s a tendency to them like a senile grandparent at Christmas. If they’re a professor emeritus, there’s a sense of them not really being relevant anymore, even if they’re still respected, but it can feel tremendously isolating to see no-one step in to challenge the comments, either at an individual or institutional level.
It’s understandable to not want to rock the boat, but abstaining is easier for some than others.
- Comment on Scientific Journals Are Publishing Papers With AI-Generated Text 1 month ago:
Yeah, that’s my sense too, as someone within low-level academia. Bibliometrics and other attempts to quantify research output have been big in the last few decades, but I think that they have made the problem worse if anything.
It’s especially messy when we consider the kind of progress and contribution that Nobel prizes can’t account for, like education and outreach. I really like how Dr Fatima explores this in her video How Science Pretends to be Meritocratic(duration: 37:04)
- Comment on Oh, Zot! Nomadic Identity is Coming to ActivityPub 1 month ago:
Ha, I didn’t get it, but now I do. That is quite a funny joke now you’ve explained it. Comedy is indeed hard
- Comment on I'm loose bottom, tag yourself 1 month ago:
- Comment on Do straight lines and flat planes exist in nature? 1 month ago:
That’s very cool, I see why you like it
- Comment on "How to help someone use a computer.", a guide from 1996 1 month ago:
I agree, this is great. I really liked:
“Most user interfaces are terrible. When people make mistakes it’s usually the fault of the interface. You’ve forgotten how many ways you’ve learned to adapt to bad interfaces.”
and
"Whenever they start to blame themselves, respond by blaming the computer. Then keep on blaming the computer, no matter how many times it takes, in a calm, authoritative tone of voice. If you need to show off, show off your ability to criticize bad design. "
- Comment on Reddit's new paid ads look exactly like user posts 1 month ago:
I honestly find it impressive how Reddit continues to find new ways to enshittify the platform
- Comment on Are there any genuine benefits to AI? 2 months ago:
An interesting point that I saw about a trail on one of the small, London Tube stations:
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most of the features involved a human who could come and assist or review the footage. The AI being able to flag wheelchair users was good because the station doesn’t have wheelchair access with assistance.
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when they tried to make a heuristic for automatically flagging aggressing people, they found that people with the arms up tend to be aggressive. This flagging system led to the unexpected feature that if a Transport For London (TFL) staff member needed assistance (i.e. if medical assistance was necessary, or if someone was being aggressive towards them, the TFL staff member could put their arms up to bring the attention onto them.
That last one especially seems neat. It seems like the kind of use case where AI has the most power when it’s used as a tool to augment human systems, rather than taking humans out of stuff.
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- Comment on Thanks to OpenAI, it's never been clearer that Sundar Pichai is Google's Steve Ballmer 2 months ago:
Using Google products is starting to feel like watching season 1 of a Netflix produced show - I don’t want to invest energy into something that’ll just get cancelled.
- Comment on Question/Help with Pokémon type generator 2 months ago:
I’m not quite sure what you’re asking. What is the main thing you’re trying to generate? Like if I, a human, was being your placeholder generator, what instructions would you give me?
- Comment on Court To Elon: No You Can’t Just Ignore The SEC’s Investigation Into Your Failure To Comply With The Law 2 months ago:
I appreciate people drawing my attention to rarely used phrases