FaceDeer
@FaceDeer@kbin.social
Basically a deer with a human face. Despite probably being some sort of magical nature spirit, he has a broad range of interests in technology and politics and science fiction.
Spent many years on Reddit, is now exploring new vistas in social media.
- Comment on What do you personally use AI for? 3 weeks ago:
I find a ton of uses for quick Python scripts hammered out with Bing Chat to get random stuff done.
- Comment on Is there a more politically and ideologically diverse alternative for Lemmy? 4 weeks ago:
I think there's a significant difference between "neutral" and "diverse".
For example, Reddit is big enough that if you find yourself holding an unpopular opinion in some particular subreddit and you're getting battered with downvotes, you can probably find some other similar subreddit that's more friendly to whatever view you've got that's drawing ire. People speak derisively of "bubbles" and "echo chambers", but really, why should I stick around and try to engage with people who just don't want you around? Communities naturally tend to segregate themselves along ideological lines like this.
Here on the Fediverse the population's too small to support quite so many diverse communities yet, unfortunately. So if you've got an unpopular minority view you can end up stuck with either routinely finding yourself serving as a punching bag or just not posting. That's no fun.
- Comment on Amidst Blizzard 3 months ago:
I'm betting on the bear.
- Comment on Why has the world gone to shit? 3 months ago:
The question "Why has the world gone to shit in the past 5 to 10 years" has routinely been asked every five to ten years throughout history. It's largely due to the perceptual biases of the human mind.
- Comment on Would magically turning all trans people into the gender they want to be be unethical? 3 months ago:
The lack of permission issue is muddy because you specify that it's what they "want", which implies some kind of magical hypothetical permission happened somehow. I won't address it.
A concern I haven't seen raised is the people who live in cultures where transgender issues or even just being a particular gender could be life-threatening. I would be worried about the people "outed" unexpectedly. Some trans people might decide to forego transitioning due to other concerns in their lives weighing higher, and I would want them to be able to weigh in on that.
- Comment on Why We Might Be Alone 3 months ago:
We don't need to be the only one period in order to be "alone", we just need to be the only one within a particular large region. If the probability of intelligence arising is low enough then that's not unreasonable.
- Comment on [deleted] 4 months ago:
My POV: nursing is not a calling but a job.
Well, if you think of it that way and your bosses are telling you to do a certain thing, you should do that thing. If you're not doing the thing your bosses are telling you to do then maybe you're not doing your job.
Sorry if that's not what you wanted to hear, but I don't see what other reasonable interpretation there is here.
- Comment on What's the best way to protect outdoor faucets in the winter? 4 months ago:
Depending on the relative elevations and arrangement of stuff, you may not need a fancy spigot on the outside. My house has secondary valves inside the basement that can be used to shut off the water to the outside spigots in fall, along with a bleed cap I can open to let the water drain out of the pipe between the interior of the basement and the exterior spigot. There's no need for an air compressor since if you leave the outside spigot open when you open the bleed cap gravity does all the work.
- Comment on OpenAI says it’s “impossible” to create useful AI models without copyrighted material 4 months ago:
I have used it as a collaborator when doing creative work. It's a great brainstorming buddy, and I use it to generate rough drafts of stuff. Usually I use it while developing roleplaying scenarios for TTRPGs I run for my friends. Generative AI is great for illustrating those scenarios, too.
- Comment on OpenAI says it’s “impossible” to create useful AI models without copyrighted material 4 months ago:
It's actually the other way around, Bing does websearches based on what you've asked it and then the answer it generates can incorporate information that was returned by the websearching. This is why you can ask it about current events that weren't in its training data, for example - it looks the information up, puts it into its context, and then generates the response that you see. Sort of like if I asked you to write a paragraph about something that you didn't know about, you'd go look the information up first.
but humans also can differentiate between copyrighted and public works
Not really. Here's a short paragraph about sailboats. Is it copyrighted?
Sailboats, those graceful dancers of the open seas, epitomize the harmonious marriage of nature and human ingenuity. Their billowing sails, like ethereal wings, catch the breath of the wind, propelling them across the endless expanse of the ocean. Each vessel bears the scars of countless journeys, a testament to the resilience of both sailor and ship.
- Comment on OpenAI says it’s “impossible” to create useful AI models without copyrighted material 4 months ago:
You said:
Substantial reproduction of the original work, you can get back substantial portions of the original work from an AI model’s output.
If an AI is trained on a huge number of NYT articles and you're only able to get it to regurgitate one of them, that's not a "substantial portion of the original work." That's a minuscule portion of the original work.
- Comment on Why do some websites have a "Continue Reading" button? 4 months ago:
My guess is that this gives them data they can analyze on how many people actually read the page that far.
- Comment on OpenAI says it’s “impossible” to create useful AI models without copyrighted material 4 months ago:
How dare people have different priorities than you.
- Comment on OpenAI says it’s “impossible” to create useful AI models without copyrighted material 4 months ago:
Then it's not a threat to professional creatives, is it?
- Comment on Can you use an oil lantern inside of a wood stove for all night heat? 4 months ago:
I did a little websearching and found some tent heaters that could probably do fine in a truck camper as well. They're mostly propane-powered but there's a kerosene one on the list with a run time of 8 to 12 hours that's beefy enough to do a whole cabin. Some of the ones listed include oxygen sensors to automatically shut off if they detect poor ventilation, probably a good idea if you're leaving it run overnight.
I suspect that the best approach if you're trying to "improvise" and are worried about poor ventilation would be to not bother keeping the whole space heated overnight and just invest in a really good sleeping bag or some really good blankets. You won't care if the rest of the camper is cold while you're unconscious, only keeping yourself warm matters and with enough insulation your own body heat will suffice for that. I keep a rolled up set of wool blankets in my car just in case I end up skidding off the road in a snowstorm and need to spend a while waiting for help to come, for example. Wool blankets can be quite surprisingly good at keeping you toasty in a cold environment and can be used when you're just sitting around during a frosty day, too.
- Comment on OpenAI says it’s “impossible” to create useful AI models without copyrighted material 4 months ago:
Anyone who enjoys creative things, since they now have access to a lot more of it a lot more easily.
- Comment on OpenAI says it’s “impossible” to create useful AI models without copyrighted material 4 months ago:
It's like the classic "objection!" "On what grounds?" "It's devastating to my case!" Scenario.
Throughout history technology has repeatedly been developed that lets people do things faster than the people currently doing it. That's usually the point of technological progress. Of course the people left behind by that will complain, but that alone is no reason to limit the rest of us who would benefit from the advance.
- Comment on SAG-AFTRA and Replica Studios Introduce Groundbreaking AI Voice Agreement at CES 4 months ago:
As I've been expecting all along, the competition is not going to be between humans and AIs. It'll be between humans that use AIs and those that don't, and the ones that don't will be at a big disadvantage. SAG-AFTRA saw the writing on the wall and wanted to keep its monopoly on what voices are "allowed."
- Comment on TrekMovie.com: Patrick Stewart Reveals New Star Trek Movie Script Featuring Jean-Luc Picard Is In The Works 4 months ago:
I think it might be self-inflicted. Patrick Stewart is big enough that he can make it so with regard to the scripts. He's the one that insisted there be a dune buggy chase scene in Nemesis, for example. And he's pushed for more action and romance in the movies. I suspect that this is another case of a good actor or writer who works best when tempered by outside control.
- Comment on Teslas Have a Minor Issue Where the Wheels Fly Off While Driving, Documents Show 4 months ago:
The booster was never intended to go above the Karman line. Calling that a "failure" is ludicrous.
Also, the orbiter was destroyed by its flight termination package triggering, which is the very definition of an intentional action. The reason it triggered was apparently an oxygen leak that led to the upper stage running out of oxidizer just a few seconds short of achieving orbit, which wasn't according to the flight plan, but this was a test flight so the plan was always "see what happens and fix whatever problems come to light" so that's still not exactly a failure. They got farther than they did on IFT-1.
You are perhaps more used to the NASA way of "testing", which is to exhaustively perfect the rocket before it ever launches and then expect everything to go smoothly during a single shakedown flight before payloads start going up with flight #2. That's not how SpaceX does things.
My prediction for 3 is that again at least part of the craft will blow up below the Karman line.
Given that the booster is never going to cross the Karman line (booster separation happens at 64km), and that the intention is to deliberately ditch the booster in the ocean rather than recover it, you've got quite a conservative prediction there. I honestly can't think of any possible way that this wouldn't happen.
- Comment on Teslas Have a Minor Issue Where the Wheels Fly Off While Driving, Documents Show 4 months ago:
Starship's ITF-2 launch already got well above the Karman line.
- Comment on Do people who are in late stage dementia still aware of the concept of death? 4 months ago:
Thanks, don't worry about the wording. I have enough distance from it at this point that I can discuss it in a largely clinical manner. I'm just hoping that the info has proven useful to others.
- Comment on Do people who are in late stage dementia still aware of the concept of death? 4 months ago:
Very sorry to hear that. It's a fast and certain variety, not easy to treat yet. Here's hoping we'll find its weak spot someday soon.
- Comment on Do people who are in late stage dementia still aware of the concept of death? 4 months ago:
It's okay, it's been a few years and I'm good at being able to treat these things dispassionately. I'm glad to hear that you're just curious, I'm happy to offer what insights I can to help people going through something like this but I'm even happier knowing that people aren't actually going through it. :)
- Comment on Do people who are in late stage dementia still aware of the concept of death? 4 months ago:
Yeah, I knew he was probably "lucky" with the particular ways in which his brain was being destroyed by the cancer - he was obviously falling apart from my perspective as an outside observer, but from his perspective he wasn't really noticing most of the stuff that was going wrong. He knew something was amiss, of course, but the only thing that really seemed to be bothering him was his inability to use his left arm correctly (another area of his brain that was failing due to the combination of surgeries and tumor and radiotherapy). He was very fastidious about doing physiotherapy exercises for it, which gave him a sense of "fighting back" I guess. He didn't seem to comprehend the futility of it and we certainly weren't going to try explaining it to him.
In the end, I'm satisfied that I was able to ensure that his final months went by in comfortable and familiar surroundings, with his family members around him providing security. He seemed to recognize us right up to the last days. There are a lot of worse ways to go.
- Comment on Do people who are in late stage dementia still aware of the concept of death? 4 months ago:
Indeed, the brain is very good at "filling in" holes in its senses. But in this case even after it was pointed out to him that he was missing part of his vision he didn't seem to be capable of acknowledging or adapting to it, so it was a bit more than it just not being obvious. He seemed to be unable to comprehend that losing that part of his vision was something that was even possible. I suppose his brain was "filling in" more than just the hole in the vision itself. Since the damage was to the visual center of his brain rather than the eyes themselves this seemed like an understandable manifestation.
"Fortunately" by the time that happened he'd already become unable to walk on his own, so he didn't end up crashing into stuff or otherwise having accidents. We just had to make sure to put the things that we brought to him over to his right side, where he could see them and interact with them more easily.
- Comment on Do people who are in late stage dementia still aware of the concept of death? 4 months ago:
I'm sure it varies from person to person and disease to disease.
About three years ago my brother died of brain cancer and I was there helping him through the whole process of decline and death. He was definitely aware he was dying earlier on, of course, when the tumor's effects were mild. But in his final days he just kind of shut down bit by bit. He seemed to be unaware of some of the degradation that was happening to his mind - he would lose specific words, for example, substituting random words in their place, but he was unaware this was happening even when we told him about it. One of the surgeries ended up taking out a quarter of his visual field but we only knew that because they explicitly checked - he didn't seem to be aware that he couldn't see stuff in that quadrant any more. So I suppose in his case the progression was fairly "merciful."
If you're dealing with a specific situation here, I'd recommend asking one of the doctors involved. I'm sure they'll have some knowledge more specific to it.
- Comment on [deleted] 5 months ago:
Ah yes, I recall reading about these features. The yellow ones increase your RAM, the purple ones cloak your IP address, and the black ones reduce your chances of hardware failures ('cuz a black LED never burns out).
- Comment on 55 Years Later, Star Trek Finally Fixed Its Weirdest Canon Quirk 7 months ago:
It was a good article, it's just the presentation. Unlike on Reddit you can include text with a link so perhaps a snippet of explanation like what I wrote would have helped.
- Comment on 55 Years Later, Star Trek Finally Fixed Its Weirdest Canon Quirk 7 months ago:
Indeed, I don't see why people clickbait on the Fediverse where there isn't even any advertising to be had. There's no benefit.
For those who want to know what's beyond the headline, this is about how in previous Star Trek shows we keep seeing humans defeat AIs by talking them down with their "human emotions" or "human element" always winning the day. But in the most recent episode of Lower Decks there's a bunch of "evil AIs" who are immune to that and instead sort their own shit out for themselves.