@2ck@qoto.org
@2ck@qoto.org avatar

2ck

@2ck@qoto.org

A capable software engineer and aspirating (sic) cook. Also posting about space stuff (mostly NASA) occasionally

pronouns: he, him

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2ck, to random
@2ck@qoto.org avatar

A level of epistemic humility seems to me to be a baseline requirement for long-term success in science and engineering. I would also contend that it's a useful quality socially, but primarily when it's shared between interacting parties. If one party believes that perfect knowledge/memory is possible and regularly held by themselves, while the other believes they're both fallible, the clash between these worldviews can easily lead to conflicts in which one believes with certainty that the other said something they probably didn't say and certainly don't remember saying.

anyway, I'm arguing with my girlfriend. it's a pain

lupyuen, to random
@lupyuen@qoto.org avatar

What to say in Code Reviews

https://read.highgrowthengineer.com/p/exactly-what-to-say-in-code-reviews

2ck,
@2ck@qoto.org avatar

@lupyuen These are pretty good recs, but may not work if you don't have an underlying relationship of trust and respect with your team so they know the difference in tone is sincere

ZachWeinersmith, to random
@ZachWeinersmith@mastodon.social avatar

Weird question:

So, one possible nearterm use for AI is as a concierge for purchases, e.g. "find me the best place(s) to buy the following 14 spices online; my budget is 60 dollars" How does this affect advertising? Meaning, part of why advertising works is individual people don't have the time or expertise to do a careful analysis about quality and cost, so brands try to capture attention and then to display quality/desirability.

2ck,
@2ck@qoto.org avatar

@ZachWeinersmith I think the difficulty is that qualities I care about aren't captured well in text. make me a robot that can travel around tasting things with my taste preferences wired in, or a robot that can test drive cars and tell me if they handle similarly enough to my current car to not annoy me.

maybe if you can design an AI that will tell me what combination of computer parts will let me play game X at the lowest price point, that would be good

2ck, to random
@2ck@qoto.org avatar

I've really soured on the online courses I'm taking. The lack of engagement from my instructors is extremely annoying. At least in a physical school, I could stalk outside their office until they respond to me.

2ck,
@2ck@qoto.org avatar

what I really hate though is how quizzes and test markings are locked after the first viewing or after a day. it's idiotic and inconvenient

2ck, to random
@2ck@qoto.org avatar

@izaya do you let other folks on your minetest server? I want to try it and maybe play with a friend

2ck,
@2ck@qoto.org avatar

@izaya yes! that would be great. Please let me know what I need to do

2ck,
@2ck@qoto.org avatar

@izaya I'll give it a shot. thank you

2ck,
@2ck@qoto.org avatar

@izaya I got disconnected when I tried to punch some kind of plant up on top of a mountain or whatever.

Is there any goal to the game or is it just open world exploration + try not to die?

2ck,
@2ck@qoto.org avatar

@izaya cool. I was wondering how I interact with other players on the server? Should I see other avatars or is it single-player for everyone?

2ck, to random
@2ck@qoto.org avatar

“This disorder, which was eventually called encephalitis lethargica or von Economo’s sleeping sickness, swept through Europe and North America during the second decade of the twentieth century; by the end of the following decade it had apparently disappeared, as only sporadic and unconvincing reports have appeared since. […] the virus that caused it was never identified”

2ck, to science
@2ck@qoto.org avatar

There was a passage in one of the Foundation novels where an armchair scientist described his doing science in terms of comparing the writings of various authors, and Salvor Hardin (I think) appraised the man's perspective on science negatively. I've always remembered that, and took on Hardin's attitude, but since I've actually had to do research...honestly, that's actually a lot of it. There is, perhaps, more effort that must go into systematizing one's own knowledge in parsing the various studies rather than just comparing the relative "authority" of the authors of different studies as I believe the armchair scientist was doing, but, significantly, it's not all just observation and experiment: there's theorizing that has to happen too, which depends on close reading and critically comparing results.

I'm not sure if I'm really arguing against anyone's actual perspective on how science is done here (I barely remember the passage from the novel in the first place.), but I just wanted to make a record of this way of thinking that I suppose has caused me a measure of embarrassment in years past about not being more hands-on in my research.

Nancy_A, to random

After DART Smashed Into Dimorphos, What Happened to the Larger Asteroid Didymos? @asrivkin tells me about new observations using JWST to see how the parent asteroid is doing, post-DART impact. https://www.universetoday.com/163895/after-dart-smashed-into-dimorphous-what-happened-to-the-larger-asteroid-didymos/

2ck,
@2ck@qoto.org avatar

@Nancy_A @asrivkin
> That’s the class of stony meteorites which account for over 80% of total meteorite falls on Earth. This means DART’s test was an extremely good proxy for the type of asteroids that might pose a threat one day.

the S type may be most of the ones we know impact earth, but is that necessarily the ones we should worry about, or could there be other types that, while less frequently encountered, would be larger when they reach us, don't break up as much in atmosphere, or be harder to redirect, so that they pose a greater risk overall?

Private
2ck,
@2ck@qoto.org avatar

@DejahEntendu @bookstodon the new one in the series is available for pre-order. release Nov 14

2ck, to space
@2ck@qoto.org avatar

I'm always struck by how uncanny the images from space missions can look: the precision of the movements and the flatness of some textures
https://www.asteroidmission.org/?attachment_id=26458#main

shauna, to random
@shauna@social.coop avatar

Hey Python friends, I've got a packaging/dependency question.

A project I co-maintain has a dependency that a significant % of users require, so we'd like to include it by default. However it also causes the vast majority of all our installation problems. So we'd like to have a flag you can pass to the "pip install x" command, or an env variable the user can set, that skips that dependency.

It's okay if the workaround is finicky, debugging this dependency is 100x more finicky.

Any ideas?

2ck,
@2ck@qoto.org avatar

@shauna not knowing what kind of problems that package is causing, it's hard to say, but I'd try to work with the maintainers of that package so it's more well-behaved.

If the maintainers aren't interested in that, you could consider forking...but that has a whole other set of problems. I've done it for small libraries, but the nature of your initial problem makes me think that's not your case.

2ck, to Neuroscience
@2ck@qoto.org avatar

Really fascinating article
https://fivebooks.com/best-books/clinical-neuroscience-frederick-lepore/

2ck, to random
@2ck@qoto.org avatar

I think part of the reason I favor integrative models in biology is that the way I've learned to understand complex things is through syntactically complex linked structures like program code that, in a (somewhat loose) sense, recapitulate the structure of what they describe. The way I've learned biology up to this point is by linking together, in my head, a variety of narrative descriptions and figures that I have to integrate in a loosely structured manner. An integrated, multi-level model (a schema, perhaps) seems like an effective alternative, though it may ultimately only be legible to the person who creates it.

est, to random
@est@emily.news avatar

Discovery: Claude Shannon came up with the juggling theorem that underpins modern site-swap juggling notation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascade_(juggling)#Shannon's_theorem#Shannon's_theorem)

2ck,
@2ck@qoto.org avatar

@est why you puttin' rabbit holes in my path, dude?

Sheril, to random
@Sheril@mastodon.social avatar

With the new vaccine approved, a reminder that we’re all indebted to the ancient & wondrous horseshoe crab.

Their blue blood contains Limulus Amebocyte Lysate (LAL) which clumps at contact with bacterial toxins. They are caught for their blood to test sterility of medical equipment & injections.

Unfortunately the harvest is unsustainable & populations are in decline. An effective synthetic substitute has been around for 2 decades & we just need the biomedical industry to switch.

2ck,
@2ck@qoto.org avatar

@Sheril It's unsustainable because their population is in decline, not because the practice significantly contributes to that decline, correct? My understanding is that typically the animals recover from the bloodletting and are released afterwards.

2ck,
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@Sheril

for those interested, here's where I first heard about this: https://maximumfun.org/episodes/sawbones/how-horseshoe-crabs-probably-saved-your-life/

2ck, to microsoft
@2ck@qoto.org avatar

I hate how actively coddles its users. They even redirect away from features explicitly asked for. It's so stupide.

2ck,
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this is now my hate-thread. welcome in.

2ck,
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> "Searching for a solution" to kill a process

Windows. You're the f*cking OS. You just do it, babe

2ck, to random Norwegian
@2ck@qoto.org avatar

12 Sept Date announced for Blender Studio's short film:
https://studio.blender.org/blog/wing-it-premiere-date/?utm_medium=homepage

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