@statto@mas.to
@statto@mas.to avatar

statto

@statto@mas.to

Scientist, author, presenter, campaigner.

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statto, to random
@statto@mas.to avatar

Anyone using Facebook, sign in and check on this notification to stop them using your content to train their generative AI!

Click on that notification, and you’ll get a box about policy updates that looks like this. Click on the ‘right to object’ link.

That will take you to a form where you can send a message.

Write something like ‘I withdraw my consent for my data to be used to train generative AI under GDPR’ (if you live in the EU) or change GDPR to GDPR UK (if you live in the UK).

statto, to random
@statto@mas.to avatar

For any @GrapheneOS users trying to get the new app working: you need to go into the app’s settings, and tap on ‘0 verified links’ (which doesn’t have these checkboxes, it just looks greyed-out and unclickable), and then check all the boxes, and then it works!

Any nerds know if this is a Santander, or issue? Lots of apps self-register as link handlers so I’m tempted to assume Santander, but also the grey ‘0 verified links’ thing being tappable is very confusing UI!

statto, to random
@statto@mas.to avatar

Just turned our freezer up to −16°C (the highest it will go) on the basis of this!

We’ll probably save 10% on our energy bills anyway because I had turned our freezer down to −20°C to spite fahrenheit (−18°C = 0°F which I think is why freezers default to this temperature…)

https://www.businessgreen.com/news/4180055/study-freezer-temperatures-cut-energy-consumption-cent

statto, to random
@statto@mas.to avatar

Chocolate chemists really need to work on their acronyms

statto, to Astronomy
@statto@mas.to avatar

You may have seen in the news that, just over a week ago, an asteroid passed in front of Betelgeuse and could’ve made it briefly disappear.

Well, it actually only dimmed it, which is mind-bending—it means Betelgeuse looks bigger than a nearby asteroid! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dePmzxejd8

statto, to OpenAI
@statto@mas.to avatar

The ongoing drama at / seems pretty worrying for AI risk, right? If corporate governance is so hilariously fragile, who controls some amazingly powerful and potentially dangerous new model could be down to the whims of boardroom politics… :/

mattgrayyes, (edited ) to random
@mattgrayyes@chaos.social avatar

I'm back on my NAS bullshit.
I want it to be >=10TB, quick to write to, and have some redundancy. It'll be backed up to the cloud.
Currently considering a QNAP TS-932PX, with a bunch of SSDs in it in RAID 5

Any reason that this is a bad idea?

https://amzn.to/47vTuHm

[edit]
Thanks for the replies I don’t need any more :)

statto,
@statto@mas.to avatar

@mattgrayyes That’s a lot of SSDs! We live in the future. :)

I’ve been meaning to get a NAS to back up my, er, 20 TB or so of videos and photos… So given your similarly voluminous collection, what cloud storage do you use? (I’ve got BackBlaze which is unlimited but only on Windows!)

statto, to rainbow
@statto@mas.to avatar

Staggeringly bright sunset double in !

statto, to random
@statto@mas.to avatar

New video!

TEN AMAZING THINGS…you can’t do with ChatGPT

From all the tutorials online about using ChatGPT to summarise complex ideas and write things for you, you might think they’re infallible—but there are some hilarious ways the wheels can come off: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45ffs9s3DTc

statto,
@statto@mas.to avatar

@pinkbunnysoftware I agree, more people need to understand how they work so they can understand their limitations! And indeed how little we know about how they work… :)

statto,
@statto@mas.to avatar

@pinkbunnysoftware It’s difficult! I write books and videos for a living, and do my research by reading and watching other people’s content. Do I owe them a fee if they inspire me? But the scale and scope of the ingestion and profit is different here, and I’ve seen examples of eg image-generating AIs where you can ask it to draw a picture in the style of [still-living freelance illustrator] and it will—which is obviously hugely problematic!

statto,
@statto@mas.to avatar

@bornach @pinkbunnysoftware I think ‘inspired’ is a fair albeit anthropomorphic description. :) It’s clearly more than a lossy JPG or we’d have developed LLMs in the 90s! I think that analogy has some merit but it downplays the capabilities (and flaws, like making stuff up…a JPG can’t hallucinate!) of these models.

statto,
@statto@mas.to avatar

@bornach @pinkbunnysoftware ‘Inspired’ was not intended as a literal mathematical description either, and I’m happy with it :)

statto,
@statto@mas.to avatar

@bornach @pinkbunnysoftware I totally agree it’s going to be a divisive one. And my use of ‘inspire’ wasn’t meant to imply I come down on one side of this! As I said in the original toot, I can very much see why this is problematic and I’m not sure I’m cool with it, however one describes the process of imitation…

statto, to Health
@statto@mas.to avatar

Steps are good for you! And it doesn’t have to be in intimidating amounts, but this study suggests if you can get more, it’s better:

‘The analysis of more than 226,000 people around the world showed 4,000 was enough to start reducing the risk of dying prematurely of any cause. Every extra 1,000 steps beyond 4,000 reduced the risk of dying early by 15% up to 20,000 steps.’

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-66440424

statto,
@statto@mas.to avatar

Here’s the original study which sadly isn’t open-access so all I can show you is the ‘graphical abstract’, not the actual results graph I was hoping for.

https://academic.oup.com/eurjpc/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/eurjpc/zwad229/7226309

statto,
@statto@mas.to avatar

It’s also interesting to see the way the media covers this. It took a bit of searching because @BBCNewsUK didn’t link the actual study (sigh) and almost all the headlines kind-of imply 4000 STEPS IS QUITE ENOUGH NO NEED TO DO ANY MORE!

I get that we need to be gentle because 20,000 steps is intimidating (I rarely get that many!), but I’d be interested to know what the best messaging is here. I assume public health studies have looked into this for guidelines? Any followers know good ones?

statto,
@statto@mas.to avatar

And is step count the best target? It’s not a bad one, but if you want to optimise your health-based number tracking, have I got the video for you! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9H40yatCwo0

statto, to random
@statto@mas.to avatar

I just finished making and releasing ten of those short vertical videos the kids are all watching these days!

Check out my sixty secondses of science on nuclear fusion, continuous glucose monitors and the mathematically optimal PIN code here: https://www.youtube.com/@DrAndrewSteele/shorts

statto, to random
@statto@mas.to avatar

In a leaked document, Google says ‘we have no moat’ with AI—ie no technical or hardware reason that it’s hard for new entrants to get into the market.

Interesting from a business perspective…but also very worrying for AI risk if anyone can do it! https://www.semianalysis.com/p/google-we-have-no-moat-and-neither

statto, to photography
@statto@mas.to avatar

An evening in the Atacama desert.

We just got back from four weeks in South America! And here’s how the trip started: with a rainy stay in the driest place on Earth… These photos are from a sunset spent looking out over the Valle de la Luna, watching distant thundery downpours.

Looking in the other direction, the sinking sun illuminates clouds over a rugged desert landscape.
Similar to the first view but in different light: less contrasty but far richer detail in the foreground rocks, the faint rainbow persists, and a different distant lightning strike this time!
Distant desert lightning in the darkness…

statto,
@statto@mas.to avatar

El Valle de la Luna (aka Valley of the Moon).

This place doesn’t mess about: its landscape really is like the surface of another world, with strange, wrinkled geology, a gigantic and completely implausible sand dune (photographed here from several angles)…

An enormous sand dune behind some crazy rocks
Same enormous sand dune, slightly closer up
A panorama of the same enormous sand dune from the other side.

statto,
@statto@mas.to avatar

…and huge sections of landscape dusted in salt which looks a bit like snow and could almost be mistaken for it, but for the 25°C temperature difference, which feels even greater in the baking sun.

Five tiny figures walk along a rocky outcrop behind that massive dune (again!)
A huge rock in the sand
Some very salty ground, which really does look like snow

statto,
@statto@mas.to avatar

We took a tour from San Pedro de Atacama to Uyuni in , home of the world’s largest salt flats—and the first day of this was a strong contender for ‘best day of the holiday’.

Llamas, flamingos, a fox, implausibly coloured lakes, and thin 4000+-metre air.

Dust being kicked up in the distance by jeeps driving through the desert, reflected in a pale lagoon
A mountain reflected in the same pale lagoon, with yellowish grass in the foreground
A Chilean fox!!! with mountains in the background

statto,
@statto@mas.to avatar

After a rainy few days in the Atacama, my first (and only!) proper glimpse of the sky was on our first night in Bolivia, which we spent at 4500 m.

This is a single shot (modern cameras + darkness + high altitude = amazing) and contains many of the wonders of the southern sky.

For a guide to what you can see in this picture, check out my short! https://www.youtube.com/shorts/AjlI_s8YIgw

statto,
@statto@mas.to avatar

Sunrise from the sky.

We flew from Santiago to Punta Arenas VERY EARLY—which meant we got to watch sunrise over the Andes!

This is Glaciar Viedma flowing into the lake of the same name which (I didn’t realise at the time) is next to El Chaltén where we were travelling!

Same again, a minute later so a slightly different angle
Glowing clouds and glacier

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