🌸🌹2ck 🌱🐇 @2ck@qoto.org

@soup_reviews sometimes, life's a drag, but it's better than the alternative, isn't it?

accidentally restarted my Android in safe mode and now my home screen widgets are gone, so that's shit

@cirnog hmm. maybe I'm being ignorant, but it doesn't sound like the proof is needed for that. If so, what good is the proof? is it purely an existence proof or does it also give error bounds or something? maybe there's a paper on it I should just look up... @jmw150

@cirnog heard about that, I think ( https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MiGx8xv6xjE at 2:10). they are aligning the mirror though, so what does it mean that there's no construction? just that they wouldn't necessarily find the solution in some cases, but still know there is one? @jmw150

watching these little buds unfold day by day is pretty magnificent #plants #spring #nature #naturephotography

https://www.nasa.gov/mediacast/small-steps-giant-leaps-episode-79-engineering-best-practices-part-2
That phrase, "normalization of deviance", resonates with me. I've seen cases where we're falling short in our organization, but where we don't necessarily take action to correct. I think some of it is cultural in our case, but some of it is likely to do with time management and priorities: we don't really praise those who find out inefficiencies, but we really should.

I just found out there's an #opensource RollerCoaster Tycoon reimplementation: https://openrct2.org/

It was never my game, but it's cool it exists.

transcript from the session https://stream-media.loc.gov/webcasts/captions/2022/220222cop0900.txt
#copyright #technicalmeasures #usa

@izaya is that really a translation of lyrics from the show?

https://video.kera.org/video/augmented-cinitc/
Pretty amazing stuff in this episode. I hadn't known that the science and engineering had got to that level already. When you think about it, there's not really a reason why you shouldn't be able to exercise fine motor control in a prosthesis, assuming there's no intervening nerve damage, so in a way it's a also surprising, that it's only in recent decades that things have gotten to this point.
The difficulty with the electrodes was fascinating. The difficulty I've always seen with prosthesis with real neural control is with any kind of implantation or penetration that persistently passes through skin, there's a high risk of infection and scaring, so I would have expected skin contact electrodes to be what they ultimately went with, but I think there's a middle way? We can, and do, implant devices in the body long-term: maybe there's utility in embedded devices that do signal transduction from nerves. These devices could be networked and given a standard interface, so then you have a platform for development of diverse prostheses without the need for custom fitting, and possibly with simplified (but still powerful) abstractions over the full range of limb movements so you don't have to be versed in the biomechanics to make something useful and intuitive.

(side note: I was a bit impatient for the science and engineering to start in this one, but ultimately, I appreciated the emotional tie in since it pays off at the end.)
#science #engineering #prosthesis #medicine #nova #documentary

@maltimore you didn't say "large scale" previously, and autonomous vehicles don't depend only on machine learning, but I would say we already tolerate errors in human driving. we aren't yet at the level of human performance with artificial drivers, but I don't see any reason to think we won't get there. once we do, dealing with the errors will become a question for public safety and insurance rather than an engineering question.

the cases I suggested in my previous post are distinguished by the fact that actuation isn't directly tied to machine prediction. naturally, this is at a scale that we *could* have a human in the loop.

@maltimore I don't see why that should be. what's wrong with artistic uses or recommendation engines or a number of other uses that also have human review?

the article on #supersymmetry from Nova is pretty good. I didn't really understand the appeal before
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/why-is-the-higgs-so-light/
#physics #particlephysics #science

I'm still reading this book, albeit slowly.

there are some rather poorly constructed arguments in here. like, in chapter 3 there's this claim that Facebook's news feed was a "highway system" to the web in an effort to explain "context collapse" and the dissolution of online communities through a "flood of newcomers". Facebook's platform is irrelevant to how open source software development evolved though. Even as an analogy to GitHub, it doesn't work because GitHub isn't like Facebook when it comes to how's communities use them.

#WorkingInPublicBook

People seem to have this idea about evolution that it makes sense to think about a population of platonic "random organisms" that are acted on by "selection pressures" over their lifespans where the organisms essentially just receive *the environment* rather than also affecting the other types of organisms around them, co-evolving and mutually creating their environments, and/or changing their environs through movement such that choices of other conspecifics (let alone other species) generations earlier can change developmental conditions, and thus the relative importance of gene products, even beyond the point at which the earlier migratory behavior is conserved. That sort of "world held constant" simplification only possibly makes sense in Petri dishes, but it's outlined in that fashion when describing how real life complex organisms came to be thanks to evolution, making it a wonder there aren't more intelligent design proponents.

Now, to be clear, I'm not an intelligent design proponent: my point is that the theory outlined in popular communication about evolution that I routinely see is so woefully lacking in explanatory power, that it's a wonder anyone is satisfied by it. (And I mean in popular television, movies, and panels sat by smart people who should know better: there are some books targeted at the general public that begin to dig into the complexity and do pretty well.) Also, I know that there are a lot of good scientists, some whose work I've read, and some of whom I know, that *know* about these complexities and have discussed them at length, but I wish their ideas permeated more into the broader culture. If they did, I think we could be having much more interesting conversations about the world we live in and how we could make it better.

#evolution #developmentalbiology #biology #developmentalsystems #science #sciencecommunication

I've really gone off swiffer mops. like they just change my floor from dirty to wet, somewhat less dirty, and flowery-smelling.

@kohn@chaos.social I found it: Mitsuboshi Colors