What I'm getting from recent news is that Teslas are neither safe to be inside or be around.
Every other day there's a story about one exploding or changing lanes on a whim.
I'll own a self driving car a couple decades after we can successfully program a self checkout station
also, my hyundai has a 'collision detector' that will automatically brake my car. it's damn near killed me once and ran me off the road another time. both times I was the only car on the road and in zero danger of anything (well except driving a hyundai)
I don't 100% understand what I'm watching here, but having never really paid any attention to anything about AI I'm now having a bit of an existential crisis. Somebody say something reassuring.
Brovid Hasselsmof on
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MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
Fossilized footprints of multiple humans have been found at White Sands National Park in New Mexico, dated at least 21,000 years old, and possibly more than 23,000. Clovis First is basically a dead theory already but getting evidence from the same dang state that's 10,000 years older and not questionable is sticking a fork in it, too.
Id even go so far as to say blowing up corporate infrastructure wouldnt make you a terrorist but I have funny ideas about what terror means and what terrorism is
I'd go so far as to suggest blowing up pipes can be considered legitimate self-defense.
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Mr_Rose83 Blue Ridge Protects the HolyRegistered Userregular
edited September 2021
I’d suggest that blowing up pipes is a temporary setback the company can work to milk its insurance and the public teat, as well as an environmental disaster at the location of the break even if the stuff doesn’t catch fire. All the actually important and expensive gear is in the pumping stations and refineries and you don’t actually want or need explosions to shut those down catastrophically.
I’d suggest that blowing up pipes is a temporary setback the company can work to milk its insurance and the public teat, as well as an environmental disaster at the location of the break even if the stuff doesn’t catch fire. All the actually important and expensive gear is in the pumping stations and refineries and you don’t actually want or need explosions to shut those down catastrophically.
Reminds me of one of my favorite bits of storytelling in the opening level of FF7 Remake.
Avalanche wrecked the reactor's console with a localized bomb but otherwise left everything unharmed. Shinra is the one that exploded the rest of the reactor and then some to make it a spectacle they could pin on terrorism to justify tightening their authoritarian control.
I’d suggest that blowing up pipes is a temporary setback the company can work to milk its insurance and the public teat, as well as an environmental disaster at the location of the break even if the stuff doesn’t catch fire. All the actually important and expensive gear is in the pumping stations and refineries and you don’t actually want or need explosions to shut those down catastrophically.
Someone could also damage the pipeline when it is still empty
a professor at @SJSU
, elizabeth weiss (the widow of notorious 'scientific' racist & eugenicist j. philippe rushton) is here fighting to keep hold of the skeletal remains of native americans in the wake of a bill ordering their repatriation
Quote Tweet
Elizabeth Weiss @eweissunburied
· Aug 31
The skeletal collection I curate @SJSU is in danger of being reburied -- as are all California Native American collections! Here's my @mercnews & @eastbaytimes op-ed on this issue, championing science over religion. #NAGPRA #anthrotwitter @SJSUNewsroom
I was going to weigh up whether destroying pipes or assassinating employees would be more effective but ultimately both are just cogs in the machine and are easily replaced. Even the CEOs are replaceable, God knows they provide nothing of value. But the Company and its will to make more money lives on no matter how many ants die.
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PiptheFairFrequently not in boats.Registered Userregular
How dare the government try and take my almost assuredly illegally obtained skeletons!
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FishmanPut your goddamned hand in the goddamned Box of Pain.Registered Userregular
Scientists have discovered a massive 'mega-comet', possibly 160km, out past the orbit of Uranus. Originating in the Oort cloud, its trajectory will bring it in close to the orbit of Saturn before it starts moving out again, but it is already beginning to show signs of a tail and its extraordinary size make for one of the most interesting discoveries in the field of comets in years.
Scientists briefly estimated that Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein, as it's now known, was the largest such icy body identified to date, perhaps more than 100 miles (160 kilometers) across. Additional observations have cast that into doubt, but given the "megacomet" a new distinction: it sprouted a tail remarkably far from the sun, suggesting more revelations to come. All told, the object offers astronomers an unprecedented opportunity to watch the antics of a comet
FishmanPut your goddamned hand in the goddamned Box of Pain.Registered Userregular
More cool science!
NOAA has a small fleet of Saildrones - remotely piloted ocean vessels loaded with weather detection equipment. Anyway, it kitted up one of these remotes with an extra strong sail, put on some heavy weather equipment and...
The Saildrone Explorer SD 1045 was directed into the midst of Hurricane Sam, a category 4 hurricane, which is currently on a path that fortunately will miss the U.S. east coast. SD1045 is battling 50 foot waves and winds of over 120 mph to collect critical scientific data and, in the process, is giving us a completely new view of one of earth’s most destructive forces.
I just got to review a scientific paper! Unfortunately I couldn't recommend it for publication.
The authors of the manuscript I reviewed had discovered a splice site mutation in a particular gene (I'm being vague to preserve confidentiality). Now, properly defining the effects of a splice site mutation typically requires RNA from cells that express the affected gene. For some genes, that RNA is easy to get, but things get tricky when a gene is only expressed in very specific tissues, like the retina for example, since people tend to have strong feelings about being de-eyeballed for science. In these cases it's common to use a minigene assay instead: cut out a chunk of the gene with the mutation in it, put it into a reporter gene in some immortalised cells, let them grow for a while and see how they process it. It's fiddly and not 100% accurate, since you're chucking out all the contextual sequence surrounding your gene-chunk, but it's a pretty close approximation when done properly and certainly better than nothing. This is the approach the authors of the manuscript took.
Except... they didn't need to. Their gene is expressed in blood cells, and they already had blood from the patient. All they had to do was extract RNA from the blood sample! Provided you're already doing batch analyses of other samples, that amounts to a few minutes extra work for one person. Literally everyone who's ever worked on this gene has done it that way because of course they have, why would you do more work for worse results? I've simply got no idea what they were thinking.
Butler on
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3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
I just got to review a scientific paper! Unfortunately I couldn't recommend it for publication.
The authors of the manuscript I reviewed had discovered a splice site mutation in a particular gene (I'm being vague to preserve confidentiality). Now, properly defining the effects of a splice site mutation typically requires RNA from cells that express the affected gene. For some genes, that RNA is easy to get, but things get tricky when a gene is only expressed in very specific tissues, like the retina for example, since people tend to have strong feelings about being de-eyeballed for science. In these cases it's common to use a minigene assay instead: cut out a chunk of the gene with the mutation in it, put it into a reporter gene in some immortalised cells, let them grow for a while and see how they process it. It's fiddly and not 100% accurate, since you're chucking out all the contextual sequence surrounding your gene-chunk, but it's a pretty close approximation when done properly and certainly better than nothing. This is the approach the authors of the manuscript took.
Except... they didn't need to. Their gene is expressed in blood cells, and they already had blood from the patient. All they had to do was extract RNA from the blood sample! Provided you're already doing batch analyses of other samples, that amounts to a few minutes extra work for one person. Literally everyone who's ever worked on this gene has done it that way because of course they have, why would you do more work for worse results? I've simply got no idea what they were thinking.
I will bet actual real life dollars that using the primary tissue didn't give them the results they wanted so they tried the second method to try and get something out of it.
Can anyone explain constructor theory? Is anything to it? Does it make new testable theories about physics, or even offer more elegant explanations of what we already know?
Sounds like it's just a transformation of existing laws into a different mathematical form.
So it may not make new predictions or provide more insight, but if it's equivalent, it might make for more intuitive explanations of things we already know.
As far as I can tell, constructor theory is a way to describe things without worrying about the precise mathematics behind what you are describing. So in constructor theory, force isn't mass times acceleration, it's a body acting on another body with the expected outcome being object 1 doing X and object 2 doing Y.
It feels very much like an engineer's take on experimental physics
My take on it is that describing physics using constructor theory can help you figure out sensible approaches or a limited search space for testing things. The specific example in the video above is that if you can design an experiment showing that gravity can induce quantum entanglement, then you have shown that gravity must have quantum properties. It provides no particular insight on how to design such an experiment.
Breaking: "U.S. Space Command is aware of a debris-generating event in outer space. We are actively working to characterize the debris field and will continue to ensure all space-faring nations have the information necessary to maneuver satellites if impacted.” - US Space Command
More: The US is very concerned about a major Russian anti-satellite weapons test conducted over the weekend and the State Department is preparing to put out a statement on the matter today, two US officials tell me and my colleague @kylieatwood
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I'll own a self driving car a couple decades after we can successfully program a self checkout station
also, my hyundai has a 'collision detector' that will automatically brake my car. it's damn near killed me once and ran me off the road another time. both times I was the only car on the road and in zero danger of anything (well except driving a hyundai)
...
harumph
I don't 100% understand what I'm watching here, but having never really paid any attention to anything about AI I'm now having a bit of an existential crisis. Somebody say something reassuring.
New Yorker does have its moments
Blowing up pipes for less oil is terrorism.
Nintendo Network ID: AzraelRose
DropBox invite link - get 500MB extra free.
Reminds me of one of my favorite bits of storytelling in the opening level of FF7 Remake.
Someone could also damage the pipeline when it is still empty
Oh wait that will never happen because fossil fuels control our politicians with legal bribes
I mean you can just pretend it doesn't exist. Lots of people do that. Some of them die, but whatever.
ohhh goddamn she's doubling down on this shit! this absolute bullshit!
Phrenology exists under the broader umbrella of eugenics
Like the Cherry Coke to eugenics' Coke Classic
Can’t have your skull analyzed if you have a hat on
https://www.space.com/giant-comet-bernardinelli-bernstein-discovery-size-activity
NOAA has a small fleet of Saildrones - remotely piloted ocean vessels loaded with weather detection equipment. Anyway, it kitted up one of these remotes with an extra strong sail, put on some heavy weather equipment and...
That's footage of waves inside a Cat 4 hurricane.
https://www.noaa.gov/news-release/world-first-ocean-drone-captures-video-from-inside-hurricane
I guess we're suddenly way better at modelling proteins now! That's cool!
Except... they didn't need to. Their gene is expressed in blood cells, and they already had blood from the patient. All they had to do was extract RNA from the blood sample! Provided you're already doing batch analyses of other samples, that amounts to a few minutes extra work for one person. Literally everyone who's ever worked on this gene has done it that way because of course they have, why would you do more work for worse results? I've simply got no idea what they were thinking.
I will bet actual real life dollars that using the primary tissue didn't give them the results they wanted so they tried the second method to try and get something out of it.
So it may not make new predictions or provide more insight, but if it's equivalent, it might make for more intuitive explanations of things we already know.
It feels very much like an engineer's take on experimental physics
My take on it is that describing physics using constructor theory can help you figure out sensible approaches or a limited search space for testing things. The specific example in the video above is that if you can design an experiment showing that gravity can induce quantum entanglement, then you have shown that gravity must have quantum properties. It provides no particular insight on how to design such an experiment.
Source: Charles Ornstein, managing editor at ProPublica
Source: Erin Biba, freelance science journalist