andrewrgross
@andrewrgross@slrpnk.net
- Comment on Amazon’s killing a feature that let you download and backup Kindle books 1 week ago:
Yep. Not to gloat, but I never touched Amazon’s ebook marketplace.
My current e-reader is a second-hand Kindle that has a permanent message asking if I would just please connect to a WiFi network just one time just for a moment PLEEEEEASE.
I get my books from libgen, Gutenberg, or Kobo, and keep them on my computer. They’re organized in Calibre, and I transfer them over on a USB cable.
- Comment on Poll: What's the cross-over between fans of Trek and solarpunk? 2 weeks ago:
Oh, you’re right. On my desktop it shows up, but I originally replied on mobile. That explains it.
- Comment on Poll: What's the cross-over between fans of Trek and solarpunk? 2 weeks ago:
I generally agree, although the use of replicators is a point of departure.
Solarpunk typically emphasizes degrowth and an end to scarcity that comes from a move away from endless consumption.
It’s not a criticism. Just an artistic difference responding to the 60s vs the new century.
- Comment on Poll: What's the cross-over between fans of Trek and solarpunk? 2 weeks ago:
I would also say that in general, Star Trek seems to steer slightly around discussing the actions needed to proactively achieve their society. It’s an end point, and you can find some info here and there about how they got there, but it’s really treated as the result of a magical tech breakthrough that resolved class conflict with the wave of a hand.
Anyway, solarpunk and Trek are definitely fellow travelers. But their tones aren’t identical.
- Comment on Poll: What's the cross-over between fans of Trek and solarpunk? 3 weeks ago:
Oh. They’re different servers! That’s actually a very clever joke. I’m sorry I didn’t pay close enough attention to appreciate it.
That got a chuckle out of me. Heh.
- Comment on Poll: What's the cross-over between fans of Trek and solarpunk? 3 weeks ago:
I think you replied to yourself…
It’s not quite: a key feature of solarpunk is nature, and our relationship to it. Trek is definitely aligned in concept, but aside from specific episodes, our relationship with nature is not a central theme.
- Submitted 3 weeks ago to startrek@startrek.website | 17 comments
- Comment on ‘Lower Decks’ Series Finale “The New Next Generation” Review, Plus Mike McMahan Interview 1 month ago:
I largely reject the notion of “canon”.
Others can enjoy canon if they like, but stories don’t need it, and plenty of great ones have well known, obvious paradoxes.
I’ll just add the famous Dwayne McDuffie piece on this, “Six degrees of St. Elsewhere”. RIP McDuffie.
- Comment on If we're living in a simulation, why would the simulation creators allow the sims to ponder and speculate whether or not they live in a simulation? 2 months ago:
I like this observation a lot. Because I was going to say that if we couldn’t conceive of a simulation, we’d probably just speculate about the closest thing we could imagine.
- Comment on Technology Connections' thoughts on Mastodon 2 months ago:
I’m sorry he hasn’t liked it, but critique is how we get better. Hope Mastodon keeps growing.
- Comment on Linus Torvalds affirms expulsion of Russian maintainers 3 months ago:
Honestly, that’s the main thing I was thinking.
- Comment on 3D Printable Subaru Impreza 22B 3 months ago:
Damn, that’s rad as fuck
- Comment on NYCC exclusive new Lower Decks clip 3 months ago:
I’m sure whatever it is it’ll be very fun and funny. I’m looking forward to this.
- Comment on New "Lower Decks" poster 4 months ago:
This is very stupid in the best possible way
- Comment on New "Lower Decks" poster 4 months ago:
Hell yeah baby
- Comment on Why didn't the Discovery show-runners believe in the Federation? 4 months ago:
I think that as someone else pointed out, this is just a reflection of their tastes.
In a long running series like this, it’s not surprising that when every show is trying to find new conceptual territory, someone would go this way.
- Comment on Phonebooks 4 months ago:
Oh! Apologies, I just saw that someone else said something relevant and decided to post my comment as a reply to them instead of a top level comment. Sorry for the confusion!
- Comment on Phonebooks 4 months ago:
I’m from Pittsburgh. I think we ran a cross country meet in Hershey once.
The amusement park and factory tour are all quite charming. It’s hard to recommend one make a dedicated trip, but if anyone is ever on a road trip nearby, it’s worth the detour to stop by for a day.
Then again, my recommendation is 20 years old. It could be either better or worse now.
- Comment on Phonebooks 4 months ago:
They were starting by putting a finger in zero and then dragging to the number. And for zero they were dragging all the way to the stop.
You’re supposed to dial by putting a finger in each number hole and then dragging to the stop. So they dialed zero correctly, but only zero.
- Comment on Phonebooks 4 months ago:
I had one in my room! Such a good feel to it. Same with picking up and hanging up!
This was in the early 2000s, btw. They were already a relics, but landlines were still commonly used when I was in high school, so and it had such a handsome look to it and felt great to use. I have long thought that a product that would do incredibly well would be a cell phone charging dock where you put your phone in and while it’s charging it just acts like a landline rotary phone. The user experience is very, very gratifying, and if you’ve ever tried to hold a call while your phone is plugged into the wall you know how much better a solid headset with a coil wire would feel than that.
- Comment on Phonebooks 4 months ago:
I’m 38. I remember a few times when I was a kid needed to call a classmate urgently. Like, maybe i needed to know what math problems we were assigned as homework. For folks I knew well, I might have their number written down in a book in a desk drawer, but for anyone else I would have to look up their last name in the white pages and read down a list trying to find the right number.
Was their dad’s name Prescott? No, that’s not an ethnic match. Here’s a David. That sounds right. Oh! And it’s on Beacon! That’s the right neighborhood! That’s got to be it!
I think about it all the time. You could find your teacher’s house and just go drop off a fruit basket or something if you wanted. It was crazy! It was just assumed that if someone wanted to find your house it was probably for a sensible reason. Why otherwise? If you’re paranoid or a public figure then maybe you’d choose to be unlisted, but for anyone else there’s no point in it.
Simpler times, for sure. I’d still like to go back. I think it was worth it. The alternative doesn’t seem to work. We’re all getting constantly harassed with robo calls and stalked on line. At this point, the only people who don’t know where we live are the ones who might drop off a casserole. We’ve gained nothing.
- Comment on Stem cells reverse woman’s diabetes — a world first 4 months ago:
This is so exciting. I worked in a lab where we were trying to do this, and so I was very aware what a gold rush we were in. I’m so glad to see that it’s actually happening.
This is truly a watershed moment in science. This is going to mark a major turning point in cellular medicine from theory to commonplace. Eventually, this will end the pharma industry’s insulin cash cow.
But it’s even bigger than that. Because once we can engineer cells that produce a natural product, the next step is to engineer cells that produce synthetic medicines. Antidepressants, birth control, hormones, weight loss drugs, boner pills… The frontier is huge, lucrative, financially disruptive for pharma companies and life changing for patients. This is a big moment in history, and we all need to be fighting harder than ever to end for-profit healthcare. Otherwise we’re going to end up with subscription licenses to our own bodies.
- Comment on UK's first 'teacherless' AI classroom set to open in London 5 months ago:
This article doesn’t really answer most of my questions.
What subjects does the AI cover? Do they do all their learning independently? Does AI compose the entire lesson plan? What is the software platform? Who developed it? Is this just an LLM or is there more to it? How are students assessed? How long has the school been around, and what is their reputation? What is the fundamental goal of their approach?
Overall, this sounds quite dumb. Just incredibly and transparently stupid. Like, if they insisted that all learning would be done on the blockchain. I’m very open minded, but I don’t understand what the student’s experience will be. Maybe they’ll learn in the same way one could learn by browsing Wikipedia for 7 hours a day. But will they enjoy it? Will it help them find career fulfillment, or build confidence or learn social skills? It just sounds so much like that Willie Wonka experience scam but applied to an expensive private school instead of a pop-up attraction.
- Comment on Silicon Valley’s Very Online Ideologues are in Model Collapse 5 months ago:
I was trying to explain what AI alignment is to my mom, and I ended up using the behavior of companies like OpenAI, and how they’re distorted by profit motive as an example of a misaligned decision making system. And I realized that late stage capitalism is basically the paperclip maximizer made real.
This is a very good article. I think AI models have more to teach us about epistemology than people want to believe right now.
- Comment on A Prominent Accessibility Advocate Worked With Studios and Inspired Change. But She Never Actually Existed. 5 months ago:
Hard to really say, but I would venture that the best way to tell was from what he did with the attention.
I doubt it’s as simple as ‘He did it for the money’ or ‘He did it for the clicks’ etc. I’m guessing he did it for all the attention/money/influence it got him. I think as we confront a world where AI can be used to fabricate people with incredible ease, the lesson is that people need to occasionally meet in person if we want to guarantee that they have a physical personhood.
- Comment on Morphing spray-on gel gives buildings long-lasting wildfire protection 5 months ago:
That sounds like some very cool engineering. I hope it sees as little use as possible, but I’m glad you’re prepared.
- Comment on Morphing spray-on gel gives buildings long-lasting wildfire protection 5 months ago:
I’m concerned that this would require a continuous supply of water at a flow rate that might not be realistic.
- Comment on Lemmy votes ARE public, should they be anonymous? 5 months ago:
I will also add that I think in the long run, as we try to figure out how to differentiate between humans and machines, the only real reliably solution I see is to focus on elevating the individual. Having people with long histories validate their reality by living and documenting it.
I don’t upvote something that I’d be ashamed for someone to see I upvote. I might make an exception for pornographic content, but even with that, if it’s pseudononymous in that it’s not attached to my personal public life, I don’t mind if someone can trace through and see what a specific account I use for those purposes has liked and disliked.
- Comment on OpenAI warns people might become emotionally reliant on its ChatGPT voice mode 6 months ago:
I don’t think it’s secret. A lot of OpenAI’s business strategy is to warn of the danger of their own project as a means of hyping it.
OpenAI, despite having produced a pretty novel product, doesn’t really have a sound business model. LLMs are actually expensive to run. The energy and processing is not cheap, and it’s really not clear that they produce something of value. It’s a cool party trick, but a lot of the use cases just aren’t cost effective at this point. That makes their innovation hard to commercialize. So OpenAI promotes itself like online clickbait games.
You know the ones that are like, ‘WARNING: This game is so sexy it is ADDICTIVE! Do NOT play our game if you don’t want to CUM TOO HARD!’
That’s OpenAI’s marketing strategy.
- Comment on Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe says too many carmakers are copying Tesla 6 months ago:
They start at $70k. And they are actually still losing money on each sale.