Posts by stevenaleach@sigmoid.social
(DIR) Post #AxB86BQSOak8ffnmM4 by stevenaleach@sigmoid.social
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@georgetakei I hereby nominate #2547 as the #hashtag successor to #8647 if it isn't already thus.
(DIR) Post #AxZeoAKrfceiMIEyo4 by stevenaleach@sigmoid.social
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@fesshole Mastodon wants pictures.
(DIR) Post #Axly9o57Jw5cjgQW9Y by stevenaleach@sigmoid.social
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@cstross @MzAprilDaniels @geeksam I've been a bit amused playing with various Ollama and HuggingFace models released in the last year or so. *All* were trained on data with a cutoff around 2022. Inconvenient for coding, I suppose (no knowledge of recent versions of languages and libraries), but it's kinda nice that they were all trained on a pre-MAGA, pre-Trump II world.
(DIR) Post #Axo6ucu1tA5RcozrIO by stevenaleach@sigmoid.social
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@georgetakei I wonder if there's a shift going on with gold in decor?I guess I always associated it with a Las-Vegas kinda obnoxious tackiness. But most people think of it as pretty or "fancy".Now though, any time I see *anything* in gold colored bling it triggers an immediate "yuck" reaction - anything in gold bling just looks vulgar and intentionally in your face ugly to me now.Wonder if we'll see a lot less use of gold accents and gold paint outside of MAGA land?
(DIR) Post #AyY5vcxryv0LQLrZJo by stevenaleach@sigmoid.social
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@NanoRaptorIn actual regular use: a pair of Hamilton Buhl "Schoolmate" headphones from perhaps the early 1980's? Crystal clear perfect sound quality -- modern speakers/headphones are too bassy and muddy sounding.Not in use these days, but perfectly usable: three Beaugnier alto saxophones made between the early 50's and late 60's.And occasionally read: A 1949 printing of the book "Giant Brains, or Machines That Think" by Edmund C Berkeley.Honorable mention: Slide rule in a drawer.
(DIR) Post #Azbb7Syafc8Hm4ijk8 by stevenaleach@sigmoid.social
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@davidgerard Once again, a quantum system has been shown to be better at providing statistical information on a quantum system than a simulation of the same system... literally all "quantum supremacy" claims are just the system "modeling" itself (or a subset of itself).
(DIR) Post #AzdgyZUo36nDQgqoqW by stevenaleach@sigmoid.social
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@georgetakei He's on *quite* a crazy roll:
(DIR) Post #AzdhcwWRrALSQbryPQ by stevenaleach@sigmoid.social
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@georgetakei I'm waiting for a TV comic to do a segment just reading Trump's "Truth Social" posts to a live audience with a straight face.Just the host reading post after post with no added commentary, and letting the live TV audience react for post after post after post.
(DIR) Post #Aznm56IXRm58Fie23U by stevenaleach@sigmoid.social
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@cstross Okay - what about a group that takes as given that neither they nor their descendants will be alive aim to establish a foundation/group/club/whatever that can wants to *eventually* build an ark to reach Proxima Centauri at it's closest approach in about 26,000 years.The ideals, goals, ambition, institutional methods established by the "tree planting" generations just pitching designs and funding research, etc.Presumably non-nazis.Basically Long Now foundation + Centauri Dreams.
(DIR) Post #Aznn3AJhdNkU5jpXtI by stevenaleach@sigmoid.social
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@cstross Yes! And I doubt it could be solved but it's fun to think about. Say a group wants to build a plasma sail vessel -- solar wind speed, so over 4k years to A.C now, shorter leaving at some point closer to A.C's closest approach. For slow enough of a ship, there's some ideal departure date many thousands of years from now to minimize the trip time. And that's an epoch cool timescale to think about that puts the epoch scale of getting to the nearest star into perspective.
(DIR) Post #AznoTfiZbkvExofNwW by stevenaleach@sigmoid.social
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@cstross Then again, I don't think humans could ever colonize - but I'm horrified by the idea of *what if* there is no other life out there? What if we are "it"? Our sun's gone in a few billion years.I'm horrified by the idea that there could be trillions of years to the heat death of the universe and nothing to see it or experience it at all. So if we could get some microbes on probes to nearby red-dwarfs to infest any sterile warm wet rock, then all of human history was worth it.
(DIR) Post #B07cRbYmmb81CVXE8m by stevenaleach@sigmoid.social
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@georgetakei And he still hasn't deleted it -- the post is still up.
(DIR) Post #B0S02lurQTBe8okaTw by stevenaleach@sigmoid.social
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@arstechnica How TF did MS wind up with the copyrights to Zork?! Who did they buy?
(DIR) Post #B0UGq27hwZLqBBBtqK by stevenaleach@sigmoid.social
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@georgetakei Funny - I recall being taught *in basic training* that we were required to always refuse unlawful orders. So the drill sergeants were insurrectionists? Huh... I never knew.
(DIR) Post #B0fyxEp9ecMKJqJlrc by stevenaleach@sigmoid.social
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@georgetakei There's a lot of absurd stuff in there -- like the claim that networks have to be slowed down to allow for older devices.... WTF? No... nothing works that way.I *hope* this text was mostly written by an LLM 'cause there's a lot of hallucinations in there.
(DIR) Post #B0fzMyphjP78FiqkIi by stevenaleach@sigmoid.social
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@georgetakei I'm determined to buy *nothing* I don't absolutely need until 2029.I won't contribute to this economy under an administration that denies climate change and is pushing coal and oil production.And I want to have as much in savings as possible when we are actually planning for, investing in, and building a future again.Basically "Save Every Dime Until Twenty Twenty-Nine."My next laptop (already three years old) aught to be a nice upgrade ;-).
(DIR) Post #B1VFFtIH5mITQkLSt6 by stevenaleach@sigmoid.social
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Why is it that you sleep *in* bed, but *on* a couch? Someone can be "on" a bed as long as they aren't reclined (at which point they are "in" the bed). But if you're sleeping on a couch, you are never "in" couch... Also, pets are never "in" your bed, they're "on" your bed - which is also odd.
(DIR) Post #B1VFFuHxORdYW3Cj20 by stevenaleach@sigmoid.social
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Explanation: I just improvised a back rest for my single-width bed so it makes for a useful and presentable couch.Now that I should long ago have gone to bed, I'm not sure linguistically whether to get into or onto it.
(DIR) Post #B1VFFuqLKb8uEhIBd2 by stevenaleach@sigmoid.social
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If a futon is folded/unfolded while someone is asleep atop it, do they fall asleep on the couch and wake up in the bed or in the bed and wake up on the couch?Does the transition happen at the time of folding/unfolding, or only when an observation is made on waking -- Schrodinger's Sleeping Surface.
(DIR) Post #B1VGkfvUwRPSu4w0bQ by stevenaleach@sigmoid.social
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@capnthommo But that rule doesn't work if you're covered on the couch....Also: Bob falls asleep with a fountain pen in his pocket. It leaks and stains the bed.Now, the ink soaks deep into the fabric and literally into the interior of the mattress.Bob is, of course, laying on top of both mattress and ink stain.But Bob getting *into* the bed with that pen in his pocket left a stain *on* the bed.