zlatiah @ zlatiah @lemmy.world

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10 mo. ago

Conventional AI/ML: I... don't think so, unless they are models specially designed for playing games (with extreme examples being the likes of AlphaZero for chess/shogi/go). Actually I guess you could say that whatever DeepMind was doing was technically training/improving their models using video games? Case in point, their innovation on AlphaZero led to AlphaFold (which literally got a Nobel Prize) and the recent weather prediction tool

Generative AI: The field seems to have a major existential crisis due to running out of high-quality training data. So maybe there would be a way to use games to augment training data? I'm not an expert in Generative AI/LLM training so I'm not sure of the details

AGI: I'm certain an AGI model can be improved using video games but I don't think researchers even remotely have a concept of how to build an AGI model yet

Sadly nothing yet, maybe just a couple of T-shirts... Mainly because I had to move/relocate every 1-2 years for my entire adult life until now & had to sell/give/throw away anything I couldn't bring with me every time I move

I currently work as a postdoc in biomedical research, so my line of work was directly in the line of fire of recent Trump administration nonsense... Not great.

Beyond this though, I'm just impressed at how almost delusional my boss and some of my lab members has been. Lab PI/group leaders are responsible for bringing in grants, yet they don't seem to even care about the fact that almost all grant reviews are paused (and some of their grants are due early Feb!)... Not to mention they seem almost happy about RFK and Bhattacharya; I do not approve of such behavior as a researcher... Especially since another student in the lab is fucking suffering from long COVID-induced chronic fatigue. I don't understand how could some other ppl in the lab be so insensitive

To be fair, I've been essentially "fired" from the lab anyway. Not actually fired, but was on an 1-year contract and PI refused to renew (and it's more difficult to fire someone than not renewing contract in Illinois law anyway). Pretty shitty behavior but I guess I should have expected a newer PI to not know how to properly lead a lab... Partly due to that, I've started applying for jobs in Europe two months ago and have just recently started getting interviews. All of them are scheduled early morning for me, I'm not a morning person, and at least one or two have been somewhat disrespectful so... At least I'm hoping to get at least one offer I hope?

Also am worried about selling some large possessions (furniture, hobbyist items) since I'm probably leaving the US soon. So a bit stressed recently between work and personal matters

All in all, I'm... surprisingly calm for the amount of bullshit I need to deal with. No ideal why. Maybe it's just the power of video games lol

There are a few active discussions on Reddit/Bluesky... I think the short answer is none of us are really sure. However, I read comments saying that language from the memo seems to suggest that they would stop disbursement of funds, which would be the absolute worst case scenario (since that would straight up terminate a lot of ppl's jobs)

If there's any lawyer here who can parse/interpret the original memo I'd appreciate some insights...

It was just HHS a few days ago... Then it came for NSF... Then this happened

I know the official memo claims this is "temporary" but there is literally no way this would end well. Heck there was at least one clinical trial terminated because of the "temporary" HHS pause, and this burden is on the entire country now

I envisioned for the worst when Trump was elected... and somehow this administration has managed to exceed some of my wildest expectations

Technically my primary computer activities are gaming, but these days I game exclusively on the Steam Deck or the tablet (for mobile games)...

My most speced-out computer was actually purchased for work related reasons. I wanted a decent GPU because I thought I'd be working in deep learning. Well current job doesn't require training models and I was required to use a dedicated work laptop so... This high-spec one I mainly use for just about everything else other than gaming

Yeah no joke. The biomedical community is probably in collective ourage now, since NIH straight up cancelled most grant reviews and all types of outreach... which is unprecedented

The official NIH website banning specific words is just... cherry on the cake, I suppose. Hence only mildly infuriating

I guess if I am nit-picking, it's very hard for a statistician to claim anything as having a zero possibility... of course a statement like that helps no one. These are my actual thoughts:

non-zero possibility

It is technically possible that Musk's gesture was not a Nazi salute but rather something that looks similar. Fun fact, this is something that happened with S. Korea's Megalian hand gesture issue (for example see this case: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2621gzvkdo), where ppl found the gesture in a lot of unexpected places. However, the Megalian gesture is a pretty common hand movement, whereas the Nazi salute... I mean I guess it could happen due to a really bad out-of-context dance choreography?? But that clearly wasn't Musk's case

"But I am just wondering if everyone else sees this that way with no room for it being a result of autism and definitely that."

... I mean maybe?? I have weird Autistic intrusive thoughts sometimes but even then this is a bit... Honestly though, I don't know if I should put any respect to someone who willingly know what a Nazi salute is, and then choose to do it in front of one of the most important political events in the world, twice in a row nontheless. I find it hard to believe such an act to be a faux pass and non-intentional. Heck even if it is completely unintentional, this would be ground for job termination and put on a blacklist for life for most job positions I know

"Is this where we are? I feel more scared to be in America now."

Yeah I know... I seriously wonder why I am still in the US as well.

Well the bigger question is, would you buy it? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Jokes aside... Not attractive enough. Even if I'm attractive, OF creators are quite competitive as it's kind of a "winner takes all" market. So probably not worth it... Besides, for conventionally attractive people shouldn't there be easier ways to make money off looks? For example landing a modeling gig that has a more steady pay or something like that

Isn’t it the publisher’s job to promote their work

You are correct

What are the publishers even doing at this point?

I... honestly don't know. But with how the academic bureaucracy works, a lot of people will be stuck in the system for the time being as it's extremely difficult to have a grass-roots movement to move away from Springer Nature; academia is hard enough and there's no way junior academics would willingly sabotage their careers that way... So I have no clue.

🐈‍⬛ 🐈‍⬛ 🐈‍⬛

Unfortunately... Isn't there a saying like "the amount of effort to refute bullshit is much large than the amount needed to produce it" or something? So sadly the HCQ thing is just going to stay there for now; the journal taking 4.5 years to retract it didn't help either

My main social media app is Mastodon (technically Firefish which I will soon migrate to Iceshrimp... but those details are less relevant)

I consider Lemmy less so of a "social media" and more of a link aggregator/discussion forum... but yeah otherwise I try to use Lemmy a bit too. I still browse Reddit quite a lot, but only for individual communities that don't have equivalents on Lemmy, and I no longer post there

I never used much social media to begin with tbh... I feel pretty decent about the Fediverse. Despite all the drawbacks (blocklists, fedi drama, etc), I think people collectively managed to make an objectively better social media platforms compared to the previous corporation-dominated ones (at least by my personal metrics)

... which is why I never considered French press "inconvenient"... but from what I've heard from other coffee enthusiasts, they all found French press inconvenient precisely because they don't just pour the grounds down the drain & had to dispose it in the trash bin (and deal with the mess). Maybe I'm ill-informed somewhere, maybe something else... I'm not against just flushing the grounds though.

Currently live in a condo, I think every unit in the building came with one

The biggest advantage I could find is that they are insanely convenient for making French press coffee! French presses are otherwise a pain to clean (since there's no filter to aggegate the grounds), but having an in-sink disposal means I can just flush the coffee grounds directly into the sink. Besides this though I'm pretty indifferent to them

So this is a bit counter to the news article's point, and apologies for linking to Reddit... but there has been a fairly hot post on the subreddit r/USCIS. A practicing immigration attorney was sharing some thoughts on how feasible the promises are https://www.reddit.com/r/USCIS/comments/1glflxy/so_what_now_an_immigration_attorney_perspective/. Some quotes:

IMO, no-- the economy makes way too much money from DACA folks. I do believe that they will dangle it like a carrot to appease right-wing voters. Major corporations employ DACAmented folks. The SSN from work permits have allowed more tax revenue to come in. Too much is at stake. Legally, the legal arguments at the courts surrounding DACA involve constitutional rights, which themselves aren't going anywhere anytime soon. It's honestly just a topic that is often talked about, but hardly understood by many.

I want to put this into perspective. There are 11 million undocumented immigrants in the US. Currently, DHS has about 92,000 officers, and ICE has about 21,000 officers. It is asinine to try to achieve this.

Let's say it actually does begin and people are getting rounded up. Guess what? Not all undocumented folks are just undocumented-- many have TPS, pending asylum applications, pending T/U Visas, and work permits (see my point regarding #1). Unless a migrant has an expedited removal (not likely), DHS/ICE still needs to process each deportee, assign them A#s, and follow basic procedures. If they don't? That's a very easy way to reverse a deportation order. It's the equivalent of convicting someone of murder using a confession made under a very obvious 4/5th amendment violation. Slam dunk case.

Oh, and you know who has to handle all of these deportation cases? Federal DHS attorneys. They're already overworked, and they tend to exercise discretion. If no discretion, the overworked ones tend to gloss over cases and provide weak arguments. Only major attention is paid to serious crimes. You'd be surprised the amount of times DHS attorneys have gotten my clients' names wrong or made procedurally embarrassing typos.

... assuming the administration still follows basic social contracts, that is. If the Trump administration actually uses the military to forcefully enforce mass deportations, then I feel the US is going to be fucked on so many different more levels... and there would be way more to worry than just the deportations

Well neuroscience isn't a very old field... More seriously though, I think biomedical scientists know surprisingly little about something if NIH doesn't fund it... aaand that's how we understood so little about our own household companions (and a bit too much about cancer. Seriously why do we know so many weird things about cancer much of those don't even translate into therapeutics)

I... think this question is a bit more complicated for this community. Following are only my personal opinion

Prescribed medication? I think so, I'd rather be physically and mentally healthy rather than have the other alternative. And usually medication (even ones with noted negative effects) are meant do do more good than harm so...

Recreational drugs... the line between this and the above is surprisingly not as clear-cut as it seems. I believe there are active lines of study of using various psychedelic compounds to treat mental disorders or other conditions... Personally I would take medically prescribed psychedelics if I am 1) under medical supervision and 2) based on evidence it would help my mental health (maybe that's the answer to the question?)

Hard drugs: I don't see how they can make anyone a better person, and no

Reminds me of this post of the same community: https://lemmy.world/post/4492190

Probably in K-12? Like seriously everyone in my "friend" groups and half of my classes knew something about me was off, and I believe I was known as the eccentric genius throughout middle/high school (and my HS had a lot of smart students). But the broader culture I was in didn't believe in mental health so...

Other than that... there were two people I relate to very well on Mastodon (when I first joined), one of whom is very openly autistic; hence why I got tested. That's probably as obvious as it gets