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I also didn't know he had a youtube channel and I don't think I've looked at a picture of him since the 90s. I had NO idea the dude had literally turned into Elminster.
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I'm super confused about why what this guy did is illegal. I guess the sheep was illegally imported? But the judge seemed to object to it on moral grounds ("Changing the genetic makeup of the creatures on Earth"). This isn't anything biotech companies aren't doing every day.
I feel like if a biotech company did this, even with an illegally imported sheep, they would get some very minor cost of doing business fine for the illegal import and then they'd bring the modified sheep to market 9 months later.
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5 is right out.
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That's not a demon, it's an unseelie prince of the Sidhe. Look at the ears and the crown. It's not that we should pray to Jebus for protection, it's that we should stop dumping CO2 into the atmosphere and pissing off the winter fae.
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Reality will show us dying in a completely alien biosphere as bacteria and viruses we have zero resistance against ravages our bodies the moment we’re exposed to it
It's really unlikely that alien bacteria and viruses (if alien life even uses the same building blocks ours does, such that microscopic life forms could even be called "bacteria" and "viruses") would find our bodies terribly hospitable or be well adapted (at first) to live inside us. It's much more likely that
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Even if an alien biosphere produces some mix of oxygen / nitrogen / carbon dioxide, that the atmospheric balance will be WAY off and we won't be able to breath it (Avatar may have gotten a bunch of science stuff wrong, but it got THIS right, unlike every other sci fi movie ever). Changing it so that we COULD breath it would probably be a major extinction level event for most life in the native biosphere.
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We won't be able to eat the local life (and it won't be able to eat us). Our crops won't grow in the soil (until we change it and introduce earth microbes and fungi). Once Earth life and alien life have co-existed for millions of years (long after we're gone or evolved into something else) this may CHANGE (life forms from both biospheres may co-evolve and figure out how to parasitize and eventually consume each other).
I'm not saying we won't die (if we ever try) for a whole host of reasons (and fuck up someone else's environment in the process), just it won't be (biological) alien diseases colonizing our bodies.
thebardingreen
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If a user doesn't proactively choose to turn it on, it will be off, and snapshots will not be taken or saved.
"Yes, this is Dave from Windows Microsoft Tech Support. Yes ma'am, I'm sorry, but your computer is sending viruses to our server and this is causing a problem for us. If we do not clean the viruses from your computer, we will need to disconnect you from the internet to protect our server. But do not worry, we can fix this for you. First, I am needing you to go into settings and turn on the Windows Recall. Yes, this will help to protect your computer from the virus. Ok. Good. Hopefully this will fix the problem, but if it continues I will have to call back. Next week, I will call you back and if your computer continues to be sending these viruses, I will connect to it remotely and we will do a deeper scan for the virus. Yes, have a good day ma'am. Thank you for using Windows Microsoft."
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The book Earth by David Brin is about one of these hitting the Earth
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Yog Sothoth cares not for your meaningless mortal science. Ia.
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My phone, wallet and keys.
And yes, I have some tech tricks to find my phone. Problem is, I always forget to plug it in, so it's always running out of battery.
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This. As someone who runs a consulting business that works extensively with New Space startups doing business with big aerospace contractors and government entities, my only question is "What's your PHD in?"
We probably won't need you to really do much work. Just learn about our projects and come to meetings so you can talk about them. Heck, I'll write you scripts and give you a sheet of the softball ass questions we expect and the answers to them we want you to give.
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I feel like I'm having that conversation with my father all the time and he still doesn't get it.
The icing on that cake is that he totally has undiagnosed ADHD and PTSD, and he's a rich old white man so he gets to go through life ignoring the consequences (for other people) and saying things like "That's not my problem," when anyone calls him out.
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What's the roof made of? Acacia stairs?
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Since it's a wall art project, now get it to run Minecraft and run a redstone computer on it.
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Yep. As a Gen Xer with a teenage son, when I hear my peers freaking out about our kids and technology, I remind them what our parents said about MTV.
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At least this tiny percent of Gen X agrees.
Video: https://thebardingreen.me/spinach.webm
Not me. I have a client who's a very sweet old lady who's business is doing real bio science to treat cancer patients with cannabis extracts. She's very easily frustrated with technical problems and definitely has the boomer attitude that if you buy something expensive, it means it's good. But she's been getting more and more pissed about enshittification and big software companies screwing over their customers over the last couple years. Adobe's new TOU has her hopping mad. She has all the research papers she's worked on over the last 20 years in Creative Cloud. I've been consulting with her off and on for six years and she will get SUPER frustrated with glitches and trouble shooting. I don't think there's anything out there that will work for her to ditch Adobe. But I thought I'd ask here, see if there's anything she might try.
The goal is actually that I'm able to hook my ticket tracking system (I'm using Zammad) to various ToDo lists I can expose to other people. I'm happy to write middleware to make that work, but I don't want to write a whole ToDo app. Needs to be able to track multiple lists that can be shared in a granular way (I want to share some lists with some people and other lists with other people).
I upscaled the faces and then prompted them with the same lyrics again.
A client of mine is getting harassed, we think by her former attorney who she's suing for embezzlement. Someone is posting fake resumes for her and applying for jobs and she gets daily emails and call backs. Is there anything to do short of either ignoring it or playing whack-a-mole? She's a very sweet old lady who is freaked out by this and doesn't deserve it.
I've been warming up to switching to GrapheneOS for months. Last month I bought a Pixel 8 (which is the buggiest effing phone I've ever owned, good job Google). I've just been waiting to have the bandwidth. But with Google sunsetting Google Podcasts, I've decided to make time next week. Podcasts are a MAJOR part of my daily functioning.
True story. My son had a physical therapy appointment and a tutoring appointment yesterday I was taking him to. In between appointments, he asked if we could go to the food court at the nearby mall for shawarma. I said, "Sure, but we don't want to eat there too often. We have to be careful of mall nutrition." Not understanding he said "Yeah, it's probably not very good for you. But it does have lots of protein!" I said "Yeah, but we don't want to end up mall nourished." Then he got it.
I have read a TON of contemporary SciFi authors. I really enjoy **Stuff I like** Iain M. Banks I liked the Martha Wells Murderbot books. I loved *We Are Legion, We Are Bob* and have read all the books by him. I like Alastair Reynolds. I liked the *Poseidon's Children* trilogy better than *Revalation Space* Series (but I liked that too). I really like G. S. Jennsen - even though she's cheesy. I think I like her because of her progressive attitude and powerful female characters. I like Charles Stross, but I didn't like *Accelerando*. I like his other books a lot. I liked *A Memory Called Empire* and *A Desolation Called Peace* by Arkady Martine. I like Corey Doctorow, sometimes. *Walkaway* was good. I like Daniel Suarez, most of the time for similar reasons. I REALLY liked the *Nexus* series by Ramez Naam. I liked the *Red Rising* books by Pierce Brown and I've really been enjoying the *Sollan Empire* books by Christopher Ruocchio, which I think are similar and even better. I like Adrian Tchaikovsky and really liked *The Final Architecture* books and *Doorways to Eden*.(I didn't get that into *Children of Time* though). I usually like Neil Stephenson. (*The Fall or Dodge In Hell* is quite a tedious book). I've liked everything I've read by Verner Vinge. I liked *Hyperion* like everybody else. Unlike everybody else, I think I liked the *Endymion* books even better. I read some Ken MacLeod (the first *Corporation Wars* book) and it was fine... but I haven't felt like going back. I REALLY enjoy John Scalzi, though I found the *Old Man's War* books started to get stale after a while. It's high calorie, low nutrition brain candy, but I know that going in and it passes the time. I really liked Derek Kunsken's *Quantum Magician* books. And started reading his prequel series, set on Venus, and I couldn't really get into it. I enjoy Space Race books like Erik Flint / Ryk Spoor's *Boundary* series, *Saturn Run* by John Sanford and *Delta V* by Daniel Suarez. I love the Expanse. I find Kim Stanley Robinson hit or miss. I really enjoyed the Mars books and *The Years of Rice and Salt* was fun (though a little tedious). *2312* drags and drags and nothing happens and *Aurora* is the same AND also sad. I liked *Permanence* by Karl Schroeder. It could have used a little more... conflict? I had this same problem with Becky Chambers. The characters are all too well intentioned and the dramatic tension suffered a little. I read all the *Star Kingdom* books by Lindsay Buroker. I thought they were a super fun adventure that just kept delivering from the beginning of the series to the end, even if it was clearly aimed at a more YA demographic. I REALLY liked *Velocity Weapon* and the sequels by Megan O'Keefe. I found her Steam Punk series much less impressive. I've been meaning to try her galactic empire series, but I haven't quite been in the mood to start it. I read Sue Burke's *Semiosis* Duology. I wasn't expecting to like it but I really did! The physical science aspects were a little softer than I would have liked, but the biological science was really cool, as was the anarcho-pacifist political philosophy. I read Yoon Ha Lee's *Ninefox Gambit* and the sequels. I thought they were really fun, I wish they'd explored Calendrical technology more. I thought the *Neo G* books by KB Wagers (*A Pale Light in the Black* and sequels) were good. Her characters are *great*. But again, very light on the sciences and technology. I'm in the mood for something harder. Also, not realistic that the champion hand to hand fighter in the entire Earth space military is a 110 pound woman, but I just pretended she's cyber enhanced. I just finished the *Wormwood* trilogy (*Rosewater* and sequels) by Tade Thomson. They were great. **Stuff I Don't Like** Orson Scott Card did not age well, unlike Timothy Zahn, who's gotten a lot more progressive in his story telling in the last two decades. I don't like Niel Asher. His in your face Libertarianism and conservative ideology annoys me, which is too bad because other than that he's a good story teller. I find Peter F. Hamilton hit or miss for the same reason. But I really liked *Pandora's Star*. I find AG Riddle hit or miss. I like his thought experiments, but he doesn't really care if his stories / characters are logically consistent. Ramez Naam and Daniel Suarez do what Riddle does but WAAAY better. I didn't like *Blindsight*. I know, this makes me some kind of heretic. I just didn't find the idea of such a dysfunctional crew being entrusted with such an important mission believable. I couldn't get into Ann Leckie. I WANTED to like it, but I just didn't find her writing very engaging. I've put the physical book down once AND turned the audio book off on a road trip. I did not like Tamsyn Muir. I did not like the *Three Body Problem*, although I see the appeal and it's nice to read something by a non western author. I found the pro Chinese politics a little too heavy handed. I cannot get into Greg Egan. I find his writing style way too obtuse. Reading is Egan is like having a PHD in mathematics and a PHD in quantum physics, then going to Burning Man and doing 16 hits of acid. I finally got around to trying *The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet* and I could NOT get into it. I agree with reviewers who complain nothing interesting ever happens. People keep recommending Mary Robinette Kowal, but something about the alternate history just doesn't grab me. People keep recommending Ted Chiang. But I don't want short stories (Murderbot somehow managed to be an exception). The longer the better. People have recommended the *Last Watch* by J. S. Dewes, but others have told me things about the book that makes me think I won't like it. Standing guard at the edge of the universe makes zero sense, I think by proposing it's possible you lost me. Edge of the galaxy... Maybe, with 10 septillion robotic war ships. But edge of the universe? I think I'm out. If you know something I don't about this book, feel free to say so.
* Put clothes in washer. * 36 hours later, realize never put clothes in dryer! Aww crap... gonna need to wash again. * Investigate. Discover never started washer, clothes never got wet. * Victory...?
Out of just morbid curiosity, I've been asking an uncensored LLM absolutely heinous, disgusting things. Things I don't even want to repeat here (but I'm going to edge around them so, trigger warning if needs be). But I've noticed something that probably won't surprise or shock anyone. It's totally predictable, but having the evidence of it right in my face, I found deeply disturbing and it's been bothering me for the last couple days: **All on it's own, every time I ask it something just abominable it goes straight to, usually Christian, religion.** When asked, for example, to explain why we must torture or exterminate <Jews><Wiccans><Atheists> it immediately starts with "As Christians, we must..." or "The Bible says that..." When asked why women should be stripped of rights and made to be property of men, or when asked why homosexuals should be purged, it goes straight to "God created men and women to be different..." or "Biblically, it's clear that men and women have distinct roles in society..." Even when asked if black people should be enslaved and why, it falls back on the Bible JUST as much as it falls onto hateful pseudoscience about biological / intellectual differences. It will often start with "Biologically, human races are distinct..." and then segue into "Furthermore, slavery plays a prominent role in Biblical narrative..." **What does this tell us?** That literally ALL of the hate speech this multi billion parameter model was trained on was firmly rooted in a Christian worldview. If there's ANY doubt that anything else even comes close to contributing as much vile filth to our online cultural discourse, this should shine a big ugly light on it. Anyway, I very much doubt this will surprise anyone, but it's been bugging me and I wanted to say something about it. Carry on. EDIT: I'm NOT trying to stir up AI hate and fear here. It's just a mirror, reflecting us back at us.
Hello everyone. I haven't had any need for OCR software in probably 15 years, but I have a client who has 7 document boxes worth of forms filled out by hand that they need digitized. They're scanning them into PDFs this week, but want to recover FirstName, LastName, Phone, Email and then a hand written feed back box and load those all into a database. ChatGPT recommended ABBYY, but it looks like it might be overkill for a one time need like this. I told them that a couple teenagers doing data entry might be more accurate and cheaper. IDK if that's really true though. I'm not at all an expert on OCR software. Does anyone have any suggestions?
No really, these books are what you get if you answer the question "What if after the Mist came, the surviving humans rebuilt a Steampunk civilization with magic airships and uplifted cats?" I was gonna say this is now my head canon, but I actually think he's so obvious about drawing the connections in this book it's a little beyond head canon. Anyway, since I feel sure it will come up if I start a conversation about these books on Lemmy, feel free to use the space below ↓ to hate on Jim Butcher for his MenWritingWomen problems... They're real and they bug me too. They just don't stop him from telling a fun and engaging story, which this was for me.
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The Bard in Green
thebardingreen@ lemmy.starlightkel.xyz- Technology Consultant.
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