ShaunaTheDead @ ShaunaTheDead @fedia.io

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I do find that everything related to Python is especially badly documented and/or maintained. Maybe I'm just not looking the in right place though? I don't generally use Python as my primary language.

Usually API docs are tucked away inside a "developer dashboard" or whatever they decided to call it. So I think you can assume at least moderate API and web development knowlege and programming skills.

That North and South Korea maintain a fax line between their countries... which they use almost exclusively to send threats and insults to each other.

Also related to North Korea, the hilarious fact that Dennis Rodman, former NBA player, is so well liked by the Kim family that he's basically a diplomat to North Korea, or at least the one they turn to when things really start going badly.

Proof: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/12/20/north-and-south-korea-exchange-faxes-threatening-to-attack-each-other/ https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/north-korea-sends-fax-threatening-strike-south-korea-without-notice-flna2d11781034 https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-KRTB-4721

Reminds me of an early application of AI where scientists were training an AI to tell the difference between a wolf and a dog. It got really good at it in the training data, but it wasn't working correctly in actual application. So they got the AI to give them a heatmap of which pixels it was using more than any other to determine if a canine is a dog or a wolf and they discovered that the AI wasn't even looking at the animal, it was looking at the surrounding environment. If there was snow on the ground, it said "wolf", otherwise it said "dog".

I really think that consciousness is just a combination of Narrow AI -- that is, AI that is only good at a very specialized task. For example, we have a part of our brains specifically to process the raw data from our eyes, that's a Narrow AI designed for that express purpose. When you combine all of the AIs that would be necessary for sight, smell, taste, touch, etc, as well as maintaining bodily functions, immune system, and other autonomic systems, you've essentially got an AI that can run a body.

However, at the point, that body would rely purely on instinct and only react to it's environment. Add one more layer of Narrow AI whose purpose is to extrapolate the given information and make educated guesses and you've got the potential for intelligence. Because now you're not just reacting to the environment but you're actively thinking of how you can use all of those other Narrow AI that control your body to shape your environment, which is the basis of intelligence.

Wow. I actually agree with Elon Musk about something for once, what a shock!

Tom Scott has a very good video explaining why electronic voting is terrible all around and it will probably never be secure.

Tom Scott's video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkH2r-sNjQs Tom Scott's video via the Computerphile channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI&t=1s

Vf = Vi + at

Means final velocity equals initial velocity plus the product of acceleration and time of acceleration.

F = m(ΔV / ΔT) or F = ma

The second equation is much simpler and means force is equal to the product of mass and acceleration.

This can basically be broken down to be "it's not the speed that kills you, it's the sudden deceleration" which is usually attributed to Eddie Rickenbacker who was an American WWI pilot.

"It's not the speed that kills you, it's the sudden stop" - Eddie Rickenbacker

It was also famously paraphrased by Jeremy Clarkson:

“Speed has never killed anyone. Suddenly becoming stationary, that's what gets you.” - Jeremy Clarkson, Top Gear

Reminds me, I drive a school bus part-time and my bus has a malfunctioning sensor in the transmission and so on the screen on the dashboard it says "CHECK TRANS". So every morning I'm like looks down at crotch "yup, still trans!"

lol holy shit that was really funny!

Star Trek really has 2 different genres, there's action/adventure and there's real hard sci-fi where philosophy is at the forefront. Voyager generally appeals more to the action/adventure fans, whereas the previous iterations appeared like the entire series was heading in a more philosophical direction with TOS to TNG to DS9 increasing in their thoughtfulness. VOY was seen as a huge backslide to people who were tuning in largely for the philosophical aspect of the show.

Considering there was and still are very few popular philosophical and thought provoking shows that challenge the viewer's world view and biases, I think it's fair to be upset that the new direction of the show is to dumb down everything and focus more on the action.

Of course, that's not to say that Voyager was completely devoid of any philosophical debate, but I don't think anyone can make the case that it's equally as intelligent as TNG and DS9.

I think sarcasm usually has more of a negative tone to it. Like "oh yeah, sure, uh huh /s" whereas light hearted is more like "omg stop picking on me! /lh" conveying that they understand that the other people are also interacting with them in jest.

Apparently it means "light hearted" to indicate that she's in on the joke and isn't being entirely serious

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=%2Flh

"Matt" paste? Isn't it "matte" or am I taking crazy pills again?

Edit: What the fuck... It's spelled differently in the UK, the US, and Canada (where I'm from). It's matte in Canada, mat in US, and matt in the UK.

From the Government of Canada website: https://www.noslangues-ourlanguages.gc.ca/en/writing-tips-plus/matte-mat-matt

You should read up on what's called "rubber ducky" debugging

Here's a link to a comic that summarizes the idea succinctly: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/the-rubber-duck-method Wikipedia article here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging

In those kinds of situations you need to remember to try to break the problem down into simpler sections to identify where the problem lies. One of the first steps would be to run SELECT * FROM mainWorkSpace WHERE user_id = @user_id and see if that returns anything.

It's been a long road...

If God had a CLI then techies might be more religious.

God --pray "I know I've run my program twice now and it's crashed both times and I've changed nothing in the code, but PLEASE let it work!"

What is /A/? You mean like the letter A?

This is craaaazy astronomical news if true! I'll try to summarize from my limited understanding as I'm not a professional.

First of all, this article is about Dark Energy, at it's basics Dark Energy is an unknown force which is why it's called "dark" and it was named after scientists couldn't explain why the universe (or spacetime specifically) was expanding as quickly as it is. This paper is the first piece of observational evidence that might "shed some light" on where Dark Energy comes from. From what I can gather, it says that through observing lots of supermassive black holes at the center of loads of galaxies, they've determined two things if this observation is correct: black holes don't have a singularity at their cores, and that black holes gain mass by "cosmological coupling" as they put it.

First, a singularity means that math breaks down, it usually means that it tends toward infinity and the equation can't be solved. With black holes, it usually means that spacetime itself collapses down infinitely into a single dimension, which is pretty hard for us to understand and breaks a lot of physical laws like Einstein's equations.

Second, "cosmological coupling" they explain is that as the space expands, the black hole also expands. In very simple terms, lets say the black hole has a diameter 2 LY (light years) in space. If after say a million years space expands enough that 2 LY now is equivalent to 1 LY before then the size of the black hole is essentially 4 LY now when using the old universe's definition of what a LY is.

Edit: I forgot to mention that because the black hole is essentially "absorbing" spacetime it must gain energy because spacetime does have energy even though we consider it "empty".

Because of Einstein's famous equation e=mc^2 we can determine that energy is basically equivalent to mass, and since the black hole is getting extra energy from this "cosmological coupling", it's also gaining mass.

I think the most basic TL;DR I can give then is: black holes are sort of "absorbing" spacetime as it expands and gaining energy while doing so which in turn leads them to gaining mass. This extra mass has now been shown through observation to account for and completely explain the origins of Dark Energy.

With that said... THIS PAPER IS BRAND NEW AND HAS NOT BEEN PEER REVIEWED! This is not a discovery yet, it's way too early to say anything conclusive.

I read a review that said the show was "too woke". I haven't seen anything that's woke except that a non-binary character exists and is referred to as "them", and the shopkeepers in Filly seem to be lesbians but it's not explicitly stated. It's annoying seeing the word "woke" but it's also kind of nice that it's easy to spot the dipshits. Anyone using the word "woke" probably sucks big time.