jasonemiller

@jasonemiller@c.im

Mathematician in Southern California. Amateur Radio. Social Justice. Undergraduate research. Outdoors. Make.

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ai6yr, to random
@ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org avatar

OODA Loop reminder: you need to constantly re-evaluate the situation and READJUST your assessment of a situation to fit; if you make a decision at one point in time, that is not a "philosophy" but a decision point at that point in time.

jasonemiller,

@ai6yr Ugh! You are taking the Right Approach, Ben. I’ll follow your lead out of solidarity and out of caution.

I’ll also have the COVID conversation with my summer Calculus class. I forgot to do that when we met for the first time, yesterday.

Do you know of any source of public data that will allow us to track the impact of COVID on our community this summer? Back in the Day, when COVID was novel and respected, the County tracked infections and published that data. Do you know of anything comparable happening now?

jasonemiller, to random

Call out to anyone who writes technical docs for the web (e.g., for students) -- what are the benefits of book down relative to pretex? I've written up a big doc in pretex, but its syntax is a PITA. Can I do about the same thing with book down?

ai6yr, to hamradio
@ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org avatar

New course at the University. Hope @jasonemiller gets some students interested!

jasonemiller,

@ai6yr Thanks for boosting, Ben. This will be a research-based course where students will take and pass the FCC Tech test and carry out a research project that they design. Meanwhile, we’ll have lots of hands-on radio experience and survey the applications of radio.

ai6yr, (edited ) to random
@ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org avatar

Hmm, contractor's quote to insurance prices carpet at $4.82 per square foot (not including labor costs). They're showing me carpet which is $2.40 per square foot. Emailed the insurance adjuster to ask what's up. 🤔 (contractor claims the $4.82 per SF includes installation, LOL. Well, it's the insurance company's money, will let them figure that out).

jasonemiller,

@ai6yr If the carpet was double-sided, that might explain the difference.

ai6yr, to random
@ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org avatar

Hmm... tempting, and fashionable (especially if you repaint it), but VERY heavy

jasonemiller,

@ai6yr I have something like that, but in wood. Heavy. My dad calls it a ‘Railroad Desk’. The wood made it easy to do some mods (e.g., for monitor arms) that will make the desk unattractive for the next potential owner.

jasonemiller, to hamradio

Hey antenna hive mind, I need to immerse myself in some brainstorming for an antenna installation at my University. Here are the constraints:

(1) we’re mounting a UrbanBeam Yagi by SteppIR with its rotor, etc

(2) the antenna is on the roof of a building and we cannot drive bolts into the roof surface

(3) we will have guy lines

(4) we need to be able raise and lower the antenna from a minimum height of 8’ (which could be adjusted to be slightly higher) to 25’

(5) a solution gets bonus points if adjusting the height from max to min can happen without loosening the guy lines; partial extra credit if there’s an intermediate lower height than that can be reached without loosening the guy lines.

Can anyone suggest options for a base/platform and a mast/tower that will get our job done?

Thanks in advance for participating in this brainstorm session.

ai6yr, (edited ) to cycling
@ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org avatar

Success! Switch to a mountain bike for the cargo trailer was the correct move. More gears means moving a load uphill is now easy (albeit.... SLOW). Hauled some (full) plastic drawers one way, more (full) plastic drawers another way for a mile or so on hilly terrain, no problem.

jasonemiller,

@Intel_Earth @ai6yr If by "adventure" you mean dodging autos, I'll agree. Biking in SoCal is not for the faint of heart.

jasonemiller,

@ai6yr I grabbed a bike trailer at a neighborhood yard sale in the summer. It was a kiddo-side-by-side thing, probably mid-range in cost and quality. I took the kiddo seat out and its associated straps, and I want o turn it into a cargo trailer for either/both my MTB and/or my commuter. I cart enough crap to work, after all!

And a cargo trailer can haul radio gear if I'm riding sweeper for a marathon or something!

The trailer doesn't have much in the way of floor support, so I need to figure out what to do about that ... run wood slats like yours has? aluminum crossbars and a light solid wooden platform? Gotta keep it light an useful.

jasonemiller,

@ai6yr @Intel_Earth Yeah, routing is key. Down here in Camarillo, that's a bit harder. But I'm 100% with you on the hurts-the-eyes bright clothing.

Also, lights. Tail lights and head lights. A couple years ago, I was surprised to learn that blinking taillights are bad in that they can mesmerize drivers and so they lead to more collisions with bicyclers. Myth?

jasonemiller,

@ai6yr @Intel_Earth I'll try to remember to send you a reference on the book. It seems like a good book on riding.

jasonemiller,

@ai6yr @Intel_Earth This is the book. Just_Ride by Grant Peterson.

jasonemiller,

@ai6yr @Intel_Earth

ai6yr, to random
@ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org avatar

I was just asked: "Did you put the fish in your fountain or did they just develop naturally?" 😬

jasonemiller,

@ai6yr And these are people you regularly invite into your home?

jasonemiller,

@ai6yr Ah, that makes some sense. Did you give them a lesson on the birds and the bees? (Not sure their managers would be concerned about that; garbage on the site would get them more excited.)

jasonemiller,

@ai6yr What are mosquito fish?

ai6yr, to climate
@ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org avatar

NBC News: The more scientists study Greenland, the worse its ice melt looks. A new study found that the loss of ice has been understimated, adding to a recent string of research that have drawn attention to rapid change in Greenland. https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/scientists-study-greenland-worse-ice-melt-looks-rcna134261

jasonemiller,

@ai6yr I thought this was going to go another direction for a moment: "scientist attention is causing Greenland to melt".

ai6yr, to random
@ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org avatar

Craigslist tip: always, always reverse image search grand pianos. There's some kind of grand piano scam going around.

jasonemiller,

@ai6yr I've gotten SO MANY email scams about a beautiful grand piano, I can't tell you. Now, whenever I get an email to my work address that involves a grand piano, I forward it to the Information Security people on campus.

It's always a scam.

jasonemiller,

@MsMerope @ai6yr No, they're just phishers. They lure you in to a conversation about the beautiful big grand piano that's essentially free.

It's a siren song for many, me included. Somehow, I resisted.

jasonemiller, to random

question for my peeps. I have a Lamy CP1, which is supposed to be a 'fine pen' (for a mid-priced pen) but it's giving me some trouble. Specifically, the (generic) instructions say it can take a Lamy converter (the converter with the red twist handle). However, when I place a Lamy converter on this pen, I have very very little faith that it will be held in place.

The stem in the nib assembly appears to fit fine in the converter ink channel, but there are no other friction fittings to hold the converter in place. If I used the converter+nib assembly to fill the pen with ink as pictured in the instructions, the nib assembly would fall into my ink well.

Amy I missing something? Should I limit my use of this pen to cartridges, only?

Thanks for any advice/experience you can share.

18+ ai6yr, to ai
@ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org avatar

IEEE Spectrum: Generative AI Has a Visual Plagiarism Problem

Experiments with Midjourney and DALL-E 3 show a copyright minefield (Image: AI generated)

" Recent empirical work has shown that LLMs are in some instances capable of reproducing, or reproducing with minor changes, substantial chunks of text that appear in their training sets. "

https://spectrum.ieee.org/midjourney-copyright

jasonemiller,

@ai6yr That's the kind of stuff that makes me concerned about copyright, though Jeff Jarvis @jeffjarvis pointed out in his comments to the Senate that copyright was meant to protect INDIVIDUAL creators, not corporate creators. From that perspective, the output you shared would be an example of Fair Use.

jasonemiller,

@ai6yr Now that I've written that (and after thanking you for giving me the chance to think about this through writing), it occurs to me that the principle of 'copyright for creators' gets complicated in academic publishing.

Say I publish a paper in a journal. As part of the contract I sign with the journal, I give my copyright to them for the paper. Now, my creative work is somewhere between 'individual content' and 'corporate asset'. Jeff Jarvis @jeffjarvis would say that using my paper to train a LLM would be Fair Use. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

On the other hand, this example of his provocative idea about 'creditright' starts making more sense. The journal can hold my copyright, but I continue to retain my 'creditright' in perpetuity.

(Note to self: find more information on this 'creditright' idea.)

glennf, to random
@glennf@twit.social avatar

Alaska and United are going to have to pay people to sit in the rows around the door plug from now on.

jasonemiller,

@glennf Maybe those costs can be offset by elevated prices for seats proximate to the “surprise-exit” seats as “expedited deplaning” seating?

kegill, to random
@kegill@mastodon.social avatar

Congratulations to @pluralistic
🎉🎉🎉

Cory coined the 2023 word of the year, enshittification, on 21 Jan 2023.

“Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.

“I call this .”


https://americandialect.org/2023-word-of-the-year-is-enshittification/

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

jasonemiller,

@kegill @pluralistic No, Cory did not coin the term "enshittification". The term was used long before Cory flexed it so well in 2023. Someone on the Bad Place did a deep dive and found multiple uses by various people since 2013.

With that said, Cory does deserve credit for his quality flex and bringing the term to the attention of many.

jasonemiller,

@pluralistic @kegill Like the Calculus.

aral, to random
@aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar

Here’s an idea: let’s call people “people” on the fediverse instead of “users” whenever we can.

Compare:

“There are 42 users on this instance.”

vs

“There are 42 people on this instance.”

Which acknowledges our humanity more?

Language matters. We don’t need to perpetuate mainstream technology’s othering/colonial framing of “us” – designers/developers/other “clever folks” – and “them” – the users (usually one step removed from “dumb user” and usually the ones who get used).

jasonemiller,

@aral Setting the 'bot' problem aside, there is another problem with your plea. The word 'people' has a special meaning, implying distinct units. The word 'users' includes the possibility that one person could have multiple accounts. For this reason, it will always be the case that >=.

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