evranch @ evranch @lemmy.ca

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465

Joined

2 yr. ago

I wouldn't try parametric models in freecad

I would clarify that you're talking about a specific usage case, that OpenSCAD does indeed do better at. However for most CAD tasks I find OpenSCAD is overkill and less intuitive.

"Parametric design" usually refers to the workflow used in the Part Design workbench, as well as SolidWorks etc. where geometry is defined by constraints.

The Part Design workbench does work well and despite the topological naming issue is sufficient for most hobbyist and many light industrial tasks. If I need to draw up an arbitrary bracket or bushing or similar, I don't even bother using a workflow that guards against the issue, I just use it casually like I would SolidWorks. Only if the part is complex or if I know it will need to be tweaked do I bother doing everything on datum planes etc. because it's a lot slower and more hassle.

That's very good news that the topological naming issue is being solved, though. #1 issue with FreeCAD IMO and the one that holds it back from serious industry use.

To me, it’s as useful as a toy is.

This used to be my opinion, then I started using local models to help me write code. It's very useful for that, to automate rote work like writing header files, function descriptions etc. or even to spit out algorithms so that I don't have to look them up.

However there are indeed many applications that AI is completely useless for, or is simply the wrong tool.

While a diagnostic AI onboard in my car would be "useful", what is more useful is a well-documented industry standard protocol like OBD-II, and even better would be displaying the fault right on the dashboard instead of requiring a scan tool.

Conveniently none of these require a GPU in the car.

In the case of an LLM-type AI though, the bars can be swapped in a sense. LLMs are strange, because they can talk but not feel.

You can't argue that a series of tensor calculations are sentient (def. able to perceive or feel) - capable of experiencing life from the "inside". A dog is sentient by most definitions, it could be argued to have a "soul". When you look at a dog, the dog looks back at you. An LLM does not. It is not conscious, not "alive".

However an LLM does put on a fair appearance of being sapient (def. intelligent; able to think) - they contain large stores of knowledge and aside from humans are now the only other thing on the planet that can talk. You can have a discussion with one, you can tell it that it was wrong and it can debate or clarify using its internal knowledge. It can "reason" and anyone who has worked with one writing code can attest to this as they've seen their capability to work around restrictions.

It doesn't have to be sentient to be able to do this sort of thing, even though we used to think that was practically a prerequisite. Thus the philosophical confusion around them.

Even if this is simply a clever trick of a glorified autocomplete algorithm, this is something the dog cannot do despite its sentience. Thus an LLM with a decent number of parameters is "smarter" than a dog, and arguably more sapient.

VPN and have them punch in to a cheap or free cloud instance that acts as a hub router.

You give them a config file and they feed it to their device or router, use a private subnet in the 10.0.0.0/8 range because everyone is on 192.168.1.0/24 and then they just hit it at 10.0.0.1 or whatever.

I like Wireguard but you might have to use something with layer 2 support if you want service discovery to work for true zero config.

A million tiny decisions can be just as damaging. In my limited experience with several different local and cloud models you have to review basically all output as it can confidently introduce small errors. Often code will compile and run, but it has small errors that can cause output to drift, or the aforementioned long-run overflow type errors.

Those are the errors that junior or lazy coders will never notice and walk away from, causing hard to diagnose failure down the road. And the code "looks fine" so reviewers would need to really go over it with a fine toothed comb, which only happens in critical industries.

I will only use AI to write comments and documentation blocks and to get jumping off points for algorithms I don't keep in my head. ("Write a function to sort this array") It's better than stack exchange for that IMO.

I tried using AI tools to do some cleanup and refactoring of some legacy embedded C code and was curious if it could do any optimization or knew any clever algorithms.

It's pretty good at figuring out the function of the code and adding comments, it did some decent refactoring of some sections to make them more readable.

It has no clue about how to work in a resource constrained environment or about the main concepts that separate embedded from everything else. Namely that it has to be able to run "forever", operate in realtime on a constant flow of sensor data, and that nobody else is taking care of your memory management.

It even explained to me that we could do input filtering by using big arrays to do simple averaging on a device with only 1kB RAM, or use a long long for a never-reset accumulator without worrying about what will happen because "it will be years before it overflows".

AI buddy, some of these units have run for decades without a power cycle. If lazy coders start dumping AI output into embedded systems the whole world is going to get a lot more glitchy.

Definitely small calibers have terminal performance issues. They lose energy fast at long range, barrel length and weight are critical, quality control is just plain not as good on cheap rimfire ammo. We had a guy in to butcher a batch of lambs for us awhile ago and his .22 misfired over 5 times...

That's why .22 is banned for hunting in most places because while it can easily be deadly, it's not reliably so.

When we do it ourselves I use .22 Magnum even on small animals like lambs because it's MUCH more deadly, it's never failed me.

Captive bolt would be just as lethal as a bullet, and less messy. They're designed not to make a mess ever since BSE, you don't want to get brains everywhere. Yes that sounds grisly but I run a ranch, it's something we have to talk about.

They could use a custom designed unit, but if the ones we use can drop a full grown bull, I suspect they would be adequate.

A small and fast bullet like .22 Magnum is also extremely effective and leaves no mark except a tiny clean hole, at least on livestock. But they have different skulls from humans. I'm sure those ballistic gel guys could come up with the optimum bullet and load.

That's the point of "humane". It's a sliding scale of "less cruel".

I raise and butcher livestock so I have hands on experience here. At the end of the day an animal is being turned into meat. Just like with an execution, that fact is already set, and "being humane" is about making it happen in the least cruel way possible.

Back in the bad old days the Halal slaughter method was actually the most humane available. You must cut both arteries with a sharp blade. The animal loses blood pressure immediately and is unconscious in seconds. When all you have are sharp objects this is really the best you can do.

However now that we have guns and captive bolt stunners, we consider shooting the animal in the head before making a cut to release the blood to be "more humane".

Part of being humane is also about the humans doing the killing. Do you want to feel like a psycho or like you did the best you could to avoid causing suffering? Most of us would choose the second option.

Bullet to the head is the best execution method I believe, because you can't hold your breath like this guy did and prolong it. There is no dying process, it's an instant transition to being dead.

We do it for pigs! Except we use CO2, because it's cheap and apparently we don't give a fuck about pigs.

I'm a rancher and meat lover and still the fact that the slaughterhouse industry chooses to gas animals with CO2 disgusts me. On my farm we dispatch with a rifle shot to the brain, the animal is dead immediately.

Honestly that's the choice I would take if I had to be executed. Though nitrogen gas is fine too, I used to do confined space work and have seen many examples about how you don't even know that you're dead.

I can't agree with this, everyone knows you're supposed to reuse before recycle. The murder cube will look way more badass with some chips and cracks in it

Unlike the Taliban, nobody cares about "defeating" the Houthis, though. Taking away their ability to harass shipping is all that matters, and that can be done by monitoring and bombing launch sites.

If the USA didn't care about the optics, they could just flatten the Houthi launch infrastructure tomorrow, then smack down anything that they tried to rebuild. Ballistic and cruise missiles are large and hard to hide, and they have to be imported from Iran.

It's not like Hamas with their homemade unguided rocket barrages into a populated area, ships are small and the ocean is huge. You need a decent missile to actually hit anything.

I use Keepass with Syncthing as the sync backend. Syncthing comes as a Docker container these days and sets up in seconds, I like how it doesn't rely on a central server and gives you some redundancy.

Also, Keepassxc is a rewrite with better integration, true cross platform support and more features, keepassxc.org

I think the point was that killing someone by injection doesn't have to be inhumane. If we have a protocol to kill a dog gently we could do the same to a human, we just choose not to.

Selection bias is huge too. You could argue that the current hits suck, and that the current hits have always sucked in every era. Lots of them do, they're disposable trash music.

The difference is that we don't remember half the garbage that hit the charts when we were young, only the good stuff survives. When I play classic bangers for my daughter, she thinks they're awesome. Some of those tracks are older than me, but with streaming services and huge libraries "hits" don't really matter that much when we can now listen to the best tracks picked out of a century of recorded music.

I'm nearly 40 and I like to blast some of the current hits, I like stuff from the 90s and I like classic rock, funk and some of the really old jazz and blues stuff. There's no reason to act like your age has to determine your musical taste.

I have no time for some of the modern rappers with no skill though, that stuff is objectively trash when we grew up with legends like Outkast, Eminem etc lol

I see someone else has been reading the sovereign citizen post on the front page.

I would double check your contract, though... There's this guy who's a competitor to Heaven Inc. and he's famous for being a stickler when it comes to contracts. Notably, he's not known to be their subsidiary or an affiliate, but he'd probably offer a sovereign soul a home.

For sure, Jones' right to free speech should have been curtailed long ago.

I'm more referring to the sticker poster's speech. I won't deny people the right to promote their ideology, but when that ideology is having fallen for a con man then it's not legitimate in any way. Same goes for Scientology or other exploitative crap.

This comes off as if you haven't actually read it. The Bible is more of a collection of old historical tales and legends. Many make sense in the context of the era, when people were generally cruel to each other. Usually it's God that does horrific shit to unsuspecting people, and indeed he usually doesn't seem like the kind of God you would follow out of anything but fear. However the book only tells the tales - it doesn't advocate for its followers to perform cruel acts.

Then you get to the New Testament which mostly encourages cooperation and compassion for your fellow man.

If you want a book that advocates for violence and hatred, the Koran is the one you're looking for, with passages that explicitly tell the reader what to do, such as

The Hour [resurrection] will not take place until the Muslims fight the Jews and the Muslims kill them, and the rock and the tree will say: "Oh, Muslim, servant of God, there is a Jew behind me, kill him!

Install a modchip, or as we used to call them a "remote starter" lol

I'm sure someone still makes a product that you can splice into the wiring harness. And if they don't... There's a market for it

In the case of rootkits, your "info" could include anything. Keylogging your passwords and financial data, compromising your machine as part of a botnet...

The worst part is that it doesn't even have to be the original installer. If this malware turns out to have an exploit, your computer could be botted and sold to the highest bidder.

The only person with kernel-level access to a computer should be the owner.