anthropy

anthropy, 6 months ago to random

I see a lot of people saying things like AI being a nuclear threat to humanity.

I honestly think that's incredibly overblown, I'm genuinely trying to imagine a realistic scenario where AI does more damage to humanity, than humanity itself, and I genuinely can't think of one- even if humanity were to perfectly wield it against humanity (and by the way they really suck at that).

Like what do people imagine, cybersecurity attacks? How? Magically making up exploits we're constantly trying to find?

anthropy, 6 months ago to random

For everyone in the EU currently being spammed with black friday sales:
Check if they hiked the price to fake the sale

If they did, they're violating an EU mandate that started this year, that the "before price" HAS to be the lowest of the last 30 days. Fines can go up into the millions, so you really don't want to mess this up :>

Feel free to send them a gentle reminder if they do. I have zero sympathy for the practice or the companies doing it. Stop leaning on psychological warfare for sales

anthropy, 1 year ago (edited 11 months ago) to random

I'm wondering, how many of you have already made the jump to linux? And do you game on it too?

Has it been an improvement for you too?
I've been using basically exclusively linux ever since 2012 ish, it was rough back then, but even rougher back in 2005 ish when I started, and nowadays I feel like it's basically beating windows in almost every way except some specific proprietary software, often due to DRM giving windows a sort of console-esque feel to me, but maybe I'm wrong and people like it

anthropy, 9 months ago to random

I can't describe the amount of rage I have for people that willfully decide to use Discord as documentation host.

Let's list the problems:

1. You need a discord account
2. You depend on discord to stay up
3. Discord's search function is the only thing known to man to be MORE useless than screaming into the void
4. CHAT services are not DOCUMENTATION and NEVER WILL BE
5. HOW DO YOU EVEN FIT A WIKI PAGE INTO A MESSAGE?
6. WHAT VERSION DOES THIS MESSAGE EVEN RELATE TO??
7. HOW DO YOU BACK IT UP 🤯

anthropy, 1 month ago to random

that moment when you turn on your server and walk upstairs with some tea and some snacks and get all cozy and you try to SSH to it and it's not there and you nmap the entire network and it's not there and you realize you have to get back up and go downstairs from your cozy position and this upsets you so deeply that you feel the immediate need to first post to fedi about it :pensive_blob:

anthropy, 4 months ago to random

https://research.google/pubs/an-augmented-reality-microscope-with-real-time-artificial-intelligence-integration-for-cancer-diagnosis/

https://github.com/Google-Health/ar-microscope

Google released a paper and full accompanying sourcecode to use image recognition/AI to help doctors identify cancer more easily and more accurately.

anthropy, 7 months ago to random

Hoooly 🥞 I had not expected them to have this much success just grafting metal into bones. The bone actually grew around it, does not seem infected, and the bone mount is actually so strong the bionic hand can just be attached to it. Look at these x-rays, this is like right out of a movie, if we can replicate this to other people it's going to change prosthetics/augmentation forever.

Revolutionary Bionic Hand Fuses With Woman's Bones, Muscles, And Nerves : ScienceAlert
https://www.sciencealert.com/revolutionary-bionic-hand-fuses-with-womans-bones-muscles-and-nerves

anthropy, 5 months ago (edited 5 months ago) to random

IMHO, #SystemD is pretty good, but I'm not a fan of using dbus and I think a lot of people aren't either, and if they'd just make that one aspect of systemd more unix-like, i.e, create files in /dev/ and /sys/ etc to actually control the state of systemd rather than forcing everything to use some IPC API, then I think basically every complaint about systemd magically goes away

DBus is a fine idea, but just not very POSIX-y, more along the lines of how Windows and Mac work. Which is not Linux-y🤷

anthropy, 5 months ago to random

Considering buying 20L of bio ethanol to see if I can make my car run on pure ethanol, or how close to pure you can get before you start seeing issues.

I don't mind electric cars, but they're prohibitively expensive to buy as long as the only way to feed them is giant slabs of lithium, and I also very much hate the modern """""""infotainment"""""" backdoor as a service that's in every modern car. But experimenting to see if I can make my gas car climate neutral would be kind of neat I guess? 🤔

anthropy, 6 months ago to random

stolen from twixr. idk why this commercial has such detailed anthro animal models but I'm not even mad

video/mp4

anthropy, 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago) to random

Alright since this is getting a lot of debate and is actually asked on some official tests:

Which form of electricity is more dangerous (assuming the same voltage/amps)?

anthropy, 1 year ago to random

The radiator for my cooling project arrived! This is the radiator you'd normally put in a Daihatsu Cuore, but will be combined with a generic radiator fan to push cooled air through indoors, with water coming from the dishwasher "cooling tower" outside, which will have a spraynozzle and fan to cool the water by evaporation

Green hose, black fans, and a central heating pump, among with other parts, in a box
Dishwasher on its back half filled with water outside, a black shoe is showing at the bottom

anthropy, 27 days ago to random

wouldn't it be neat if at least some percentage of people who are going to migrate away from telegram, migrate to open decentralized protocols like matrix?

like honestly I know some people like to hate on matrix's end to end encryption and it being too easy to lose your key, but I think it's honestly one of the if not the best solution to the problem, and it also allows you to keep in touch with your friends on other networks through 'bridges'; technically you only need one protocol for all IMs

anthropy, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago) to random

RE: Zenhammer (see eg https://comsec.ethz.ch/research/dram/zenhammer/ ) rowhammer attacks on AMD

not to be weird about this but isn't anything pre-ddr5 vulnerable to this? hell even DDR5 despite having a full PSU onboard might still have this issue if you try hard enough. DRAM is just kinda inherently like that I guess, being essentially a field of lossy capacitors that quickly drain if you don't refresh their state enough times per second

anthropy, 2 months ago to random

I predict hydrogen is going to take off soon.

Why?

• exhaust is water vapor
• can be made from salt and fresh water
• hundreds of years worth natural hydrogen in the ground that can be used without causing environmental effects (even less so than green hydrogen)
• modern fuel cells are as efficient as batteries or even more
• carries energy further than powerlines
• infra exists

Things to watch out for:

• oil based hydrogen (blue hydrogen) can still have emissions
• catalysts can be expensive

anthropy, 6 months ago to random

I see a lot of doubt in Hydrogen economy: I don't understand why people predict it as all or nothing, it'll likely have some speedbumps, but

• 99% of the infrastructure is already there, there are a lot of different sources
• it is without a doubt a far better way to transport energy over long distances than cables
• fuel cell efficiency combined with TEGs has shown to be BETTER than that of batteries
• hydrogen can be generated directly from sunlight without electrolysis

It'll come, just wait

anthropy, 1 month ago to random

I have a desk lamp that I got for free, it works just fine, gives plenty of light, easy to physically adjust to where I need light, etc

but the base near the on/off switch, gets smouldering hot, like easily 80C+. No idea why, it's far away from the actual light too. A short perhaps?

Now, if this were a 240v AC lamp I'd have gotten rid of it immediately, but, it's a 12v lamp with a 6 amp fuse. so it.. should be fine even if it breaks. And throwing it out feels like a waste.

What would you do?

anthropy, 5 months ago to random

I'm still indecisive on how to view the whole Threads federating debacle.

• classic embrace, extend, extinguish tactic
• god knows what they'll do with data they scrape from other servers
• people on Threads and alike platforms could just get a fediverse account anywhere else and actually be free

But:

• people who want maximum reach (like small business owners), will still use these platforms
• including them in the fediverse can also bring them over here
• growing the open web is a good thing

anthropy, 4 months ago to random

I'm still waiting for the day phones integrate a proper spectrometer, both as means to calibrate the camera, as well as being able to tell the approximate composition of anything.

You would be able to do so many things with it, ranging from telling if avocados or other fruits are ripe or diseased, to testing if e.g something is actually turmeric or actually contains something like lead-chromate

anthropy, 4 months ago to random

https://www.tax-the-rich.eu/
a EU citizen's initiative to tax the rich more so that we can take more action against global warming and social inequalities.

It currently has 100k+ total votes, but we need a lot more to make it work. France already has 130% of the needed votes (76k out of 55k), but e.g the netherlands only 2% (400 out of 20k).

I just voted as dutch citizen, but if you know anyone that would also be interested in this, please do refer them to the website!

anthropy, 6 months ago to random

U.S. Energy Information Administration says solar power will surpass hydropower by 14% next year – pv magazine USA
https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2023/11/22/u-s-energy-information-administration-says-solar-power-will-surpass-hydropower-by-14-next-year/

I have nothing against hydropower, but some people seem to think you can magically run everything on purely hydropower, which is not feasible simply because you can't put hydropower everywhere. Solar power can be applied basically anywhere the light from the sky touches, showing clearly in this case.
And I always wondered why you couldn't simply have both 🤔

anthropy, 4 months ago to random

If AI/ML isn't a person, why do people keep personifying and attacking it, rather than the people that actually use the software 🤔

anthropy, 1 year ago to random

By the way, for anyone still on twitter: The new privacy policy allows Elon to train AI on anything you post there, including text AND pictures.

So if I were an artist I'd get the hell off there, because legally you don't have a leg to stand on.

anthropy, 7 months ago to random

this might stir up some debate but, I always wondered, I see a lot of people being pro anarchy and all that lately, and I mean sure I don't blame anyone for being upset with local management but as far as I can tell, if anything, anarchy will make the wealthy wealthier, the powerful more powerful, and the poor more impoverished right?

You don't have rights in anarchy; you just have freedom, ultimate freedom, which also means the freedom to be killed and abused by those already in power?

anthropy, 7 months ago to random

What is (self) awareness?

When can you call something aware? When it senses something? Does that mean a doorbell is aware?

What is the point where a response to a sensory input becomes a form of awareness? What is the difference between a non-aware sensor and an aware sensor? When it is intelligent perhaps? Does that mean a doorbell with a child safety lock is aware?

We need to answer that question if we want to define whether an AI can be (self)aware. And how the spectrum of awareness looks.