thebestaquaman @ thebestaquaman @lemmy.world

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11

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602

Joined

2 yr. ago

Put a bloody pentagram on its forehead!

I can't help but point out that smartphones (with the apps typically found on them) are essentially on-demand dopamine devices. Pretty much any game or social media app you can install has as its primary goal to get you addicted. That's their business model.

Very little can hope to compete for a child's attention against such a device. In fact, I think even the fact that we are allowing children to be exposed to this when pretty much everyone agrees that they should be protected from drugs (alcohol, nicotine, etc. included) is kind of crazy.

This just illustrates the major limitation of ML: Access to reliable training data. A machine that has no concept of internal reasoning can never be truly trusted to solve novel problems, and novel problems, from minor issues to very complex ones, are solved in a bunch of professions every day. That's what drives our world forward. If we rely too heavily on AI to solve problems for us, the issue of obtaining reliable training data to train future AI's will only expand. That's why I currently don't think AI's will replace large swaths of the work force, but to a larger degree be used as a tool by the humans in the workforce.

Normally the mom cat would tell her kids to move out after a few months.

Exactly this, we had a cat that did this that I mentioned in another comment. It was quite brutal to watch, as we happily would have kept both mother and child, but cats don't work like that.

Kittens typically aren't given away before they are a couple months old, so they most probably met each other.

Either way: I've seen this in action. We had a cat that had kittens, and we were unable to give away one of them. When the kitten started growing up the mother started harassing it, eventually to the point of chasing it off. Luckily we found out that it moved in with some people a couple streets over that were very happy to have it. The point is: Cats aren't pack animals, and typically don't like sharing their territory with other cats, even if they are related.

I definitely agree that breaking best practices in a way that could lead to UB or hard-to-find bugs should give point deduction. The sole requirement shouldn't be "write standard compliant code".

However, a test does not simulate a real-world development environment, where you will have time to look through your code with fresh eyes the next day, and maybe even have someone review your code. The only thing a test reasonably simulates is your ability to solve the "thinking" part of the problem on your own. Thus, deducting points for trivial stuff that would 10/10 times be caught, either by the compiler, the developer or the reviewer, but isn't "strictly correct" just seems pedantic to me.

To be fair, other than the example by OP I have a hard time coming up with things that wouldn't be either caught by the compiler or are very bad practice (which should give point deduction).

I have to wonder why Ukraine wasn't sent more remote mine clearing equipment, all the reports I've read recently say that the major issue is massive mine fields. If there's one thing Leos, challengers, leclercs etc. can't handle much better than their Russian counterparts it's mines..

I have to admit it sounds stupid to deduct points for that anyway, a test should measure your ability to reason, not your ability to remember trivial formalities.

So we

I have a masters degree in materials chemistry and engineering. When people find that out they often say stuff like "I could never understand that" or similar.

I am of the firm belief that I could teach anyone everything I know given enough time and motivation. The thing is, I don't think there's anything special about me that makes me capable of doing what I do, other than thinking chemistry is extremely interesting. I don't have a more capable brain or anything. I'm just a bit of a nerd.

I absolutely agree that way too many people have the misconception that you have to be "special" to do a lot of the things many people find hard. It's all about being interested enough to spend time learning it.

What surprises me is that if there is a zero-day flaw in a system used by the Norwegian government, why haven't other entities been hacked? Is the system in question some system only used by the Norwegian government?

Maybe not your generic "discussions", but at c/askscience we can discuss interesting (and more or less absurd) scientific questions and hypotheticals, if you're into that kind of thing ;)

Great answer! I'm just commenting because I think this would be a question that would be nice to post on c/askscience where I regularly lurk and look for cool questions to answer, but where there aren't too many questions being asked yet :)

My worry is starting to become that the counter-offensive is moving slowly enough that no break-through is achieved before things bog down with rain/mud once autumn and early winter start arriving. If that happens, Russian forces could get some breathing room before the ground freezes up again in winter, which would reduce the effects of the pressure Ukraine has been putting on them the past couple months.

I'm impressed that you are able to see racism in that choice of words. If someone is "keen" I read that as them being positively interested and actively looking into possibilities of starting up, while if someone is "circling" I read that as them observing and considering, but in a more held-back manner.

Also: Nowhere did anyone say that this is a replacement for rail or better public transport. In fact, adequate access to a bunch of metals would make it much easier to build sustainable and efficient rail and public transport. It's possible to pursue several things at the same time...

We definitely need rare earth metals, I'm not only talking about batteries.

You want green hydrogen production? Good luck making it feasible without catalytic electrodes that require rare earth metals.

You want food? That requires fertiliser, which is much less energy intensive to produce with catalysers containing rare earth metals.

You want modern electronics (other than batteries)? You guessed it: Rare earth metals.

Reducing the use of rare earth metals, and getting better at recycling them is something a lot of people are spending a lot of time researching, but as of now we definitely need them.

I agree with almost everything you're writing here, but want to point out one thing:

If we would really care for the environment we would recycle (...)

Recycling alone isn't enough right now, because we are drastically changing the make-up of the things we build. If we want to increase the total battery capacity of the world, or the fraction of buildings made using aluminium, or whatever else, we need to extract more of it. Of course we need to recycle everything we extract, and at some point there may be enough of these materials in circulation that we can rely only on recycling. But at the moment, the amount in circulation is quite small, and the demand is huge, because we are in the middle of a turnover in what materials we need.

Also, for your first point: It's true that deep sea mining is not intended to replace mining on the surface, but it is also true that effective deep sea mining could make it unfeasible (not profitable) to mine a lot of places on the surface.

As I wrote: I am inherently sceptical to this, but I think it would be foolish to not investigate the opportunity, to see if we could actually do some good by engaging in it. (Edit:) Investigating these kind of opportunities is also a good way of determining what we should definitely avoid, this may be one of those things. Until we investigate, we can't be sure what the best course of action is.

I'm one of the people that thinks the world is probably going to shit (mass migration from uninhabitable land, wars over water / farmland etc.) but I don't use that as an excuse to not do anything. My reasoning is that even though I honestly think everything is going to shit, I might be wrong, so the best I can do is plan to go down fighting to make the world better. Either the world burns, and I can say with integrity that I tried my best, or we somehow pull through and prevent the worst prognosis from becoming reality. Either way, slacking is a bad idea.

I do what I can to prevent the worst case scenario, but when anyone asks how I think this is going to go, I always answer "I objectively think we are all going to burn and die, but I'm not going down without a fight." That's all it is. I don't think we are going to save the world, but I want to go down swinging.

I agree that the characters weren't the most engaging, but to me the engaging part of the story was the description of the society itself. The characters were only there to give the reader a perspective to view the world from.