[-] realChem@beehaw.org 9 points 1 year ago

Did the fix end up working in the end, or did restoring everything from backups mean that the fix didn't work out either? (I don't use Jerboa or any other lemmy apps, so mainly just curious.)

[-] realChem@beehaw.org 13 points 1 year ago

Sentient, spacefaring bees, according to the article! Not what I was expecting but still, sounds pretty intriguing!

[-] realChem@beehaw.org 10 points 1 year ago

Agreed. Strong (and effectively enforced) worker protections are just as important as tech-specific safety regulations. Nobody should feel like they need to put themselves into a risky situation to make work happen faster, regardless of whether their employer explicitly asks them to take that risk or (more likely) uses other means like unrealistic quotas to pressure them indirectly.

There are certainly ways to make working around robots safer, e.g. soft robots, machine vision to avoid unexpected obstacles in the path of travel, inherently limiting the force a robot can exert, etc... And I'm all for moving in the direction of better inherent safety, but we also need to make sure that safer systems don't become an excuse for employers to expose their workers to more risky situations (i.e. the paradox of safety).

52
The Oldest Living Shark (www.livescience.com)
submitted 1 year ago by realChem@beehaw.org to c/science@beehaw.org
[-] realChem@beehaw.org 14 points 1 year ago

Some pretty interesting ideas. I was unaware that anything was living in the Atacama salt deposits, which certainly lends some credence to the idea that something could be pulling moisture out of the air on Mars, thin as it is.

[-] realChem@beehaw.org 10 points 1 year ago

That's a real mood, yeah.

I just recently decided to stick with mine. I was having a lot of doubts: feeling like I wasn't making and progress, like I wouldn't actually be able to finish the projects I started, impostor syndrome shit, etc. I'm happy I decided to stick with it. I just cleared some big milestones and I'm in the middle of a nice long vacation now, and I'm feeling excited again about my work.

On the other side of things, I've got a friend who decided to leave his PhD program with a masters a few years ago. He's now heading up product development for a robotics startup, doing quite well for himself.

I don't think there're any wrong answers here. Do what will make you happiest. Maybe you just need a vacation, maybe you're ready to move on. And remember that education is never wasted: even if you decide not to finish out the PhD, you've still learned a lot and that's valuable with or without the piece of paper and title.

Best wishes, friend, whichever way you decide to go ♥

[-] realChem@beehaw.org 11 points 1 year ago

Report 'em too, if you're not already! It helps the mods and the admin team find them so that site-wide bans can be issued.

[-] realChem@beehaw.org 24 points 1 year ago

It seems like you're working under the core assumption that the trained model itself, rather than just the products thereof, cannot be infringing?

Generally if someone else wants to do something with your copyrighted work – for example your newspaper article – they need a license to do so. This isn't only the case for direct distribution, it includes things like the creation of electronic copies (which must have been made during training), adaptations, and derivative works. NYT did not grant OpenAI a license to adapt their articles into a training dataset for their models. To use a copyrighted work without a license, you need to be using it under fair use. That's why it's relevant: is it fair use to make electronic copies of a copyrighted work and adapt them into a training dataset for a LLM?

You also seem to be assuming that a generative AI model training on a dataset is legally the same as a human learning from those same works. If that's the case then the answer to my question in the last paragraph is definitely, "yes," since a human reading the newspaper and learning from it is something that, as you say, "any intelligent rational human being" would agree is fine. However, as far as I know there's not been any kind of ruling to support the idea that those things are legally equivalent at this point.

Now, if you'd like to start citing code or case law go ahead, I'm happy to be wrong. Who knows, this is the internet, maybe you're actually a lawyer specializing in copyright law and you'll point out some fundamental detail of one of these laws that makes my whole comment seem silly (and if so I'd honestly love to read it). I'm not trying to claim that NYT is definitely going to win or anything. My argument is just that this is not especially cut-and-dried, at least from the perspective of a non-expert.

[-] realChem@beehaw.org 17 points 1 year ago

Well I hear what you're saying, although I don't much appreciate being told what I should want the outcome to be.

My own wants notwithstanding, I know copyright law is notoriously thorny – fair use doubly so – and I'm no lawyer. I'd be a little bit surprised if NYT decides to raise this suit without consulting their own lawyers though, so it stands to reason that if they do indeed decide to sue then there are at least some copyright lawyers who think it'll have a chance. As I said, we'll see.

[-] realChem@beehaw.org 11 points 1 year ago

Yeah I've heard a lot of people talking about the copyright stuff with respect to image generation AIs, but as far as I can see there's no fundamental reason that text generating AIs wouldn't be subject to the same laws. We'll see how the lawsuit goes though I suppose.

[-] realChem@beehaw.org 22 points 1 year ago

Exciting stuff. I've long since vowed never to pre-order anything from Bethesda ever again though, so I'll be waiting to hear what the vibe is once other folks start playing it. Right now it very much seems like it could either be great or disappointing. We'll see in a couple weeks' time I s'pose

25
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by realChem@beehaw.org to c/science@beehaw.org

Not what I initially expected this article to be about, but I do love this kind of cross-cutting research that takes ideas from one field and applies them to a seemingly entirely different field. (Also makes me wish I'd been able to take a topology class at some point.)

186
Actual Progress (imgs.xkcd.com)

Alternate title: how my PhD project is currently going

[-] realChem@beehaw.org 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I've always heard that "organic" farming is really not especially different from conventional farming, including from some folks in agriculture. Like, they still use chemical pesticides and stuff, just different ones that are less effective and so sprayed more heavily.

I don't have anything to back that up with though, so there's a reasonable chance you have better info here. I'd be interested to know more if you've got standards and such you can share?

[-] realChem@beehaw.org 31 points 1 year ago

Flash games will work again? Moving away from NFTs? Well dang, I might just make a new neopets account! Lots of nostalgia there, it'd be cool to mess around with again after all these years.

2
Science Q&A (beehaw.org)
submitted 1 year ago by realChem@beehaw.org to c/science@beehaw.org

Hey folks! Here's a pinned post where you can ask science questions!

Here's a quick rundown of what this post is and isn't:

  • This is a place where you can ask science-related questions!
  • This is a place to provide science-based answers to others' questions!
  • This isn't reddit's askscience community. By this I mean we don't have the resources (or, really, desire) to vet users' credentials, and you shouldn't expect that whoever is answering your question is necessarily an expert. That said, this community does have a large share of professional scientists and engineers, and I'm hoping that those folks will be interested in sharing their expertise when they can.
  • This isn't a place to ask for medical advice – since we can't vet qualifications these kinds of questions won't be allowed here in the interest of preventing harm, and I'll remove any comments that ask personal medical questions. If you have a question about medicine that's not asking for advice, that is fine and allowed.
  • This isn't the only place on this community where you're allowed to ask questions! If you have a question related to another post, ask in the comments there. If you have a question not related to another post, I'd like it if you tried asking here first (to help this thread gain some traction), but you're also free to ask in a separate post if you'd prefer (or both).

I'm going to post this inaugural thread with no set expiration date. I'm currently thinking a new thread maybe every 2–4 weeks, but I'd like to see what the volume of comments here ends up being like before deciding for sure.

9
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by realChem@beehaw.org to c/science@beehaw.org

Edit: Alright, it's been more than 48 hours! We got lots more feedback this time, and most of it has been in support of the idea! I'm going to give this a try, and see if it gets any traction. If not many people end up using it I can always just unpin and let the post fall down the sorting list.

@wjs018@beehaw.org made an interesting point about pinned comments being less visible to folks browsing from feed other than /c/science itself, but I'm hoping that having the pinned post might let some folks realize that asking questions is even allowed on this community in the first place! I'll make it clear that asking questions as a separate post is also allowed (at least for now, may change if the feed ends up being flooded by them but that's the opposite of the current situation so I'm not too worried).

Original text of this post below:

So it turns out if you set a language on your post, anyone who hasn't explicitly picked any languages in their profile can't see it. So I'm gonna repost this with no language selected and see if we get a little more feedback this time.

There were a couple of Q&A posts here ~~yesterday~~ the other day that got some pretty good engagement, and I was wondering if folks would be interested in a weekly/biweekly pinned Q&A post?

I don't think it makes sense at this point to do anything like reddit's /r/AskScience does in terms of organizing themed panels or vetting people's credentials, nor is that something that's really supported by lemmy as a platform at the moment. It seems, though, that we do have a fair number of users around who are working scientists and engineers in a pretty wide variety of fields.

So: if a pinned Q&A post existed, would you ask questions? Likewise, would you contribute answers? If you wouldn't use it, I'd love to know that too! Do you think it would be better to leave things as they are and just ask questions in post form? Let me know here in the comments, and also of course feel free to raise any additional thoughts or concerns you might have. If it seems like enough folks are interested I can set up a thread to try the idea out.

1
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by realChem@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org
1
submitted 1 year ago by realChem@beehaw.org to c/sports@beehaw.org

It's not sports news or anything, but I'm pretty excited! Finished my open water yesterday, got my card today! Really looking forward to getting some more dives in (I can tell I'll need a bunch more practice).

Anyone else here scuba dive?

1
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by realChem@beehaw.org to c/food@beehaw.org

EDIT: Now with image!

The mochi cake I used is from a mix (I like the one that Trader Joe's sells), but it you wanted to make your own I don't think it's too complicated. I like a thinner cake, so I usually only use half a box of the mix. Doing that also means it cooks very quickly!

What takes it to the next level, in my opinion, is to get some freeze-dried strawberries or other freeze-dried fruit (Trader Joe's also sells this, and freeze dried fruits of all kinds are common in most supermarkets, usually in a snack aisle), grind them up, and dust them over top like you would with powdered sugar, but in a thicker layer. I like to grind mine with a mortar and pestle, but a (blade-style) coffer grinder or anything like that works too.

It's honestly the simplest desert recipe I know, and one of my favorites!

1
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by realChem@beehaw.org to c/music@beehaw.org

Back in 2014 I got to see Rise Against play at the House of Blues in Boston, which was amazing, and just recently I went to see grandson and K. Flay perform together.

I think these are my two favorite concerts I've been to, and the key factor seems to be the energy between the crowd and the band. It's a thing that's kinda hard to express in words, but for me that's definitely what makes a concert go from good to great. It doesn't need to be a high-energy thing necessarily, either: one of the best moments from grandson's set was actually a really somber, lower energy song that he came down onto the floor to perform, and you could just tell that everyone was really invested in that moment.

What about you all? What takes a concert to the next level for you?

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realChem

joined 1 year ago