Recent submissions

Comment · 1 year ago
The Asian Financial Crisis in 1997: deregulated capital flows allowed speculators to rapidly pull money out of countries like Thailand, causing their currencies to collapse. The IMF stepped in, but their 'rescue' packages demanded strict conditions- forced privatization, and further deregulation, which often made things worse. And let's not forget Black Wednesday, when speculators broke the Bank of England. This was called "a textbook case of a speculative attack enabled by capital mobility" which is a core neoliberal policy. Just like all politics: never trust the meaning or identity of something derived from it's headline, title, name, or label- those are always the first lies we are told.
Comment · 1 year ago
I've only had great luck with the LLMs(chatgpt 3o) generated Perl code. It was able to synthesize code for a GTK2/3 application fairly consistently, without generating any syntax errors. Most of the code worked as described, and it seemed to make more mistakes misunderstand my descriptions of features rather than when implementing them. My colleagues suggested it was because Perl's popularity had fallen significantly before 2016, and the training data set might've had much less noise.
Comment · 1 year ago
Definitely Andrew Ng's courses, especially for concrete explanations.
Comment · 2 years ago
I think it might be a moot point since the transformer run times scale very poorly and the algorithm has a symmetric run time.
Comment · 2 years ago
I noticed that as well. Is there actually any reason he might've pissed off bunch of rustbros or are these just more baseless accusations?

Also, everyone should know if you have some type of online exposure or receive threats you should be able to contact you local law enforcement, inform them of the situation, and warn them someone might try to have you SWAT'd. I couldn't guarantee all police would respect a heads-up call but I've heard it has worked for many in the past.

Comment · 2 years ago
Comment · 2 years ago
It seems to me that any technologically advanced civilization that is capable of completely annihilating another at such distances would likely be equally capable of avoiding detection, thereby reducing the potential threat level posed by the less advanced civilization. Avoidance would seem to be the best strategy unless the civilization posed a direct and imminent threat. Otherwise, the more advanced beings risk exposing themselves (by deploying a weapon) and declaring to the universe that they are both hostile and aggressive to others.
Comment · 2 years ago
While I can appreciate some of the intent to make certain healthcare more accessible, it is never a good idea to have anyone inexperienced attempt to perform some of the reactions required to synthesize medicines. This should always be done by experienced individuals with quality reagents and the proper lab equipment. While it might be easy to substitute a mason jar for a proper glass reaction vessel it is not so simple to find a substitute for a gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer in the back of your pantry.

IMO, The test equipment required to analyze the results of the reactions is generally most cost prohibitive aspect of this type of 'research'. And this is where I have a problem with these guys: I don't see any plans available for building any of that. Building many of these devices is not out of reach for a skilled individual, and it makes more sense to me that this equipment should more readily accessible than a glorified Keurig machine for drugs. This kind of arrogance and lack of respect for the discipline required in organic chemistry is going to result is someone getting hurt.

Comment · 2 years ago
Russia is not formally at war with NATO, and the indictment specifies crimes committed against 26 other member nations.
Comment · 2 years ago
For a while it seemed like they might have it out in a cage match, can we just do that instead?
Comment · 2 years ago
With the type of work the NSA does, I can't imagine many of the didn't know who Grace Hopper was. I expect they did it out of respect for her, rather than for the benefit of the general public.
Comment · 2 years ago
I just paid $5.3k in the US for four 350mg doses of Albendazole (antiparasitic). This medication is something like $2 or less anywhere else in the world. This is not simply a problem with new drugs, but lack of pricing regulations from the federal government enabling pharma companies to fleece patients and insurance providers.
Comment · 2 years ago
This is exceedingly bad advice as there are several spongy mushrooms which are toxic in the US: Bolete Huronensis, Sutorius Eximius, Boletus Sensibilis to name a few. There are a few in genus Leccinum as well.
Comment · 2 years ago
Some of the arguments about Perl and bad engineering practice are not entirely without merit. Neglecting 'use strict;' or 'use warnings;' in your script typically makes this more apparent. The language itself however does not attempt to constrain developers in the same way modern languages do, instead the burden of responsible engineering is placed on the developer. The result is people that deal with badly engineered Perl typically become sour to the language itself.

I reserved my criticisms of Perl for things like signal handling and it's implementation OOP(to name a few), but overall it's a good language.

Comment · 2 years ago
Necessity is the mother of all invention. This could just be related to socioeconomic factors.

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