dwd

Actually quite a lot in the last week, as it seems to frame the responses better.

I complimented ChatGPT yesterday for saying "I don't know".

It thanked me for observing that, before explaining in depth why that was the most appropriate response.

Does it actually appreciate it, absolutely not. It's not capable of that.

It has no desire to continue our conversation.

No regret if it ends.

It wont continue processing what was said after I stop.

There is no "what is it to be".

Its "memory" and the ability to go back to something related from earlier on or from a separate chat is an interesting and useful ability, but it can't ascribe any meaning to them beyond statistical significance.

yes, the early days when the web was mostly decentralised and members of a community had their own individual sites.

Since when has Palantir sold surveillance software? They sell data integration software and they don't store, transfer or share customer's data.

If surveillance software is your issue, then companies like Cisco or Huawei are provide the hardware and software. But like most technology, there is always potential to use it for things we disagree with politically or personally.

Absolutely.

Woodworking was part of my first 3 years of high school, but it was mainly about learning safety and tool usage and not planning, estimating, selecting or purchasing timber.

These days I only want to go to the lumberyard once for a project. Learnt the hard way on my first project that you need to take the time to carefully select the timber - checking straightness, matching grain and also colour before I started. Major hassle and waste of time to have to go back to swap boards.

Someone in ICE uses Microsoft Excel to maintain a list of people who they believe should be send to an internment camp. Therefore Microsoft is an accessory to that?

Where do you draw the line? Are we arguing there is a level of software capability that is simply too dangerous?

Maybe everyone should just stick to "I have my own biases, and I don't like Alex Karp's politics because they don't match my own. I'd rather this software was developed by someone from my side of politics - but still have the same capabilities".

Unless you have endless budget, many things can be one-shot. You can't do a test run first, or roll back a cut if the length is too short. You can patch misplaced nail holes, or re-dig a hole (messing up filling a hole with concrete is another matter) and hope you don't kill a tree transplanting it, but the end result isn't clean.

The best I could do with woodworking in the end to approximate programming was live with wasting some timber, leave a lot of margin on the main cuts and size all the pieces as a whole.

Shrapnel is an issue, and depends what it takes out.

Take this incident for example:

https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/a-matter-of-millimeters-...

It already is in a lot of jurisdictions for photo-shopping photos.

Doctoring a photo slightly to make an area look larger, or just using a wide-angle lens though it can cause visible distortion. Removing unsightly poles, signs, trees, neighbouring properties was also common.

Making the sky bluer and removing clouds is acceptable.

Had to laugh at the disabled contextmenu.

Site is built with Bootstrap 5 fwiw.

Same, sprained my wrist/forearm a while back and couldn't rotate it without pain or take any weight palm up. Couldn't even rotate a door knob.

It wasn't until I pushed through with weights, avoiding any underhand grips or rotation, that it started getting better. Doing bicep curls but keeping the thumb up strengthened the forearm to the point where I was back to the weights I was lifting and could then gradually add some rotation.

This...

Gemini will ask for the specific images it needs to see and show you examples of what each slice will look like.

But unlike the specialists who often come across as abrupt and rush you, Gemini will happily take you on a deep dive and continue to answer all you follow up questions indefinitely.

Maybe because Albanese stands for nothing, though deep down he does what the unions tell him to do, which makes him left-leaning rather than centrist. His centrist positioning is more to do with appeasing vocal boomers than anything else, and he'll flip to sucking up to whichever is the next best grouping as the boomers die out.

But basically, I would take Gemini over Albanese any day for rational governance decision-making.

Contact tracing is a valuable tool when eradication is an option. It probably should have been used early to manage the current H5N1 (bird flu) pandemic by tracing poultry and livestock movements. Can't do much about migratory wild birds, but we should be able to manage people spreading it.

Problem is vaccination doesn't necessarily prevent transmission for respiratory viruses. There's a general misconception that being vaccinated will prevent you catching it - like you have some invisible shield.

Vaccination should prevent it progressing from an upper respiratory illness to lower respiratory where you primarily develop pneumonia (Covid triggered all sorts of other immune inflammation responses and affected other organs). Most vaccine injuries were the same immune response, but could have been worse had the individual caught Covid.

What vaccines don't do is prevent you spreading a highly transmissible virus before your immune response kicks in and deals with it.

Yes, very much the same as both countries' laws evolved from Common Law, and have legislated for Human Rights in line with UNESCO.

The Covid vaccination should have only been given to those in the population that were most at risk: The elderly and those who were at risk due to comorbidities. 81% of deaths alone occurred in the over 65 population. [1]

There's the analogy, it was primarily beneficial for a small group yet for many, particularly Government workers and those in medical care it became a condition of employment that you were vaccinated. [2]

There was a lot of pointless policies despite knowing:

- Being vaccination did nothing to prevent transmitting Covid, it only gave the vaccinated individual better protection from mortality. [3]

- Herd immunity for Covid was known to be impossible once the infection rates got too high with Delta and Omnicron. So trying to vaccinate everyone including children was pointless. [4]

- There is Evidence that being vaccinated actually increases transmission of respiratory viruses. You were less likely to get seriously ill, while potentially increasing the risk of passing it on to your family. [5]

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/covid/risk-factors/index.html

[2] https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/1000-nsw-health-workers-...

[3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39283431/

[4] https://theconversation.com/herd-immunity-was-sold-as-the-pa...

[5] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1716561115

Crazy times

https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-10413211/Covid-19-Aus...

Depends where you lived. There were a few grocery stores in Australia that banned entry without proof of vaccination at the time.

It was also widely discussed.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-10-06/morrison-businesses-r...

https://www.news.com.au/world/coronavirus/australia/supermar...

The whole public buy-in is very much what is going on in Queensland, Australia right now that is attempting to eradicate fire ants. Even the funding fight to get the Commonwealth and neighbouring states to pitch in, as they have the potential to become endemic to the whole continent.

We also have a lot of "sovereign citizen" people pushing misinformation about the safety of the various chemicals used, attempting to deny inspectors onto properties, and general complaints about helicopter/drone dispersal in inaccessible areas and large farms/properties.

Jeff Attwood in his Coding Horror post about Rubber Duck Debugging mentioned that as well. I would think he wouldn't have considered it bad style.

https://blog.codinghorror.com/rubber-duck-problem-solving/

There has been many a time where the process of thinking through in my head how I was going to describe the problem to someone else on the way over to them, that a testable idea pops up.

Could probably have gone for a walk around the block instead, but the formulation of the problem to be able to explain it to someone else seems to be key.

That video gave me ESB Han Solo carbon freeze vibes. Not sure if that was the stylistic intent they were going for. I guess there's a good chance those who worked on the video weren't even born when it was released.

The rule in Australia for roundabouts is that you give way to anyone already on a roundabout.

From an advanced driving course I got to do years ago (for free), I learnt that the pedestrian island counts as part of the roundabout, so a pedestrian crossing or on the island should be given way to finish crossing when entering the roundabout [1].

Doesn't always happen in reality.

There is also this idea in Australia that you always give right of way to cars entering on your right (left for US) which is not an actual rule; as in if you are waiting at the line you count as being on the roundabout.

Unfortunately, you will often see cars on the major road blast through a small roundabout with no regard to anyone waiting to enter from the lesser road, making entering the roundabout from that side a stop rather than an equal give way.

[1] Edited for clarity

You might want to check the affiliations and funding/promotional channels of all the so-called intellectual dark web.

Grew up in windy Warrnambool. Guessing you are from my home town or Albury, WA.

Single-lane roundabouts are really straightforward

Like the Arc de Triomphe roundabout? :)

If it had lane marking there would apparently be 10 tracks around the circle.

What makes it seem crazy is cars entering have right of way.

The reason it works seems to be French attitude. Cars entering do their thing, and cars already going around do their thing (and just have to avoid anyone on their right).

Probably an instance where busses need their own level/ramps.

That is a very basic roundabout. I was expecting by "magic" that you would have to go round some part in reverse (clockwise for US left-hand driving). This is nothing compared to the original "magic" roundabout of Swindon, Wiltshire.

This interchange might have been better off using a diverging diamond interchange layout [1]. While not a roundabout they are "magic" and we should use them more often.

They just look confusing because at some point you are effectively driving on the wrong side of the road, but are extremely efficient. My daily commute includes one that cuts a few minutes off what it once took to negotiate the previous traditional interchange.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diverging_diamond_interchange

It's about leaving it in the state you would like to have found it. No rubbish, no abandoned equipment, no bouldering-style puzzles already solved because someone has stuck a bolt there.

I do wonder whether the boulderers find it annoying when a boulder is clearly already solved by the worn, chalk marked hand holds. Probably explains why many seek out new untouched sites to solve first.

There is the "Leave No Trace" principle where you do not leave anything behind.

This is why you see in trad climbing the lead will place cams and nuts, while the last in the group on that pitch retrieves them.

Used to watch the competitive wood chopping at my local agricultural show all the time.

The highlight was always the tree felling competition. Each competitor has an axe and four springer boards, and it's a race to basically chop the top off a standing telegraph pole.

That would make a better game.