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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • At this point we’re not even sure if fully autonomous vehicles are possible.

    Yes that one guy has been saying it’ll be ready next year for the passed 10 years, but no self driving company has been able to get an autonomous car from point A to point B in all road conditions that a competent human can manage.

    Even aircraft autopilot is not as autonomous as what people want out of self driving cars. Pilots are still required to be at their seats the entire flight in case something unexpected happens. And there are a lot more unexpected things on a road than in the middle of the sky. Even discounting human drivers being in the way, a self driving car needs to be able to recognize everything a human can and react to it better than a human would. I’m not sure that’s possible, even with “AI”. The human brain is insanely good at pattern matching, and it took millions of years of trial and error evolution to luck our way into that. How can someone guarantee an AI is going to be better?







  • There is plenty of useful data to be gathered from a dying brain.

    Knowing what parts of the brain shutdown first seems like it would be useful for easing pain or discomfort. And since dying can be an extended process for the elderly or terminally ill, being able to more accurately predict when a person will die can potentially ease the suffering of loved ones.

    As someone who stayed with a loved one for 14 hours straight while she passed, it would have been nice if someone had been able to tell me if she had 2 or 12 hours left. I still would have stayed the whole time, of course, but knowing she had less or more time might have changed what a wanted to say and would have put my mind at ease about her suffering.

    Understanding the process of dying is good research. You’re right that science can’t reach beyond death and shouldn’t try to, but gathering data on the process does have applications.


  • You’re giving me flashbacks to the online training my work makes me do every year.

    I almost failed the first of 7 courses because I made the mistake of trying to do actual work while listening to the training, and didn’t realize there was a 5 minute timer for inactivity on the video player. And no, there was no additional time provided to complete the training. It was mandatory but essentially had to be done on your own time.


  • Probably because the craft that were just in orbit could be considered “in flight” for their entire duration.

    Aircraft in flight are considered under the jurisdiction of the country they took off from. So if the spacecraft started in Florida, landed in international waters, and was recovered by a US vehicle, then the astronauts never technically left the jurisdiction of the United States.

    But because Apollo 11 did land somewhere, it could be argued they ended the first flight and began a second one when they took off. Due to this, they had left US jurisdiction as they landed and left the vehicle. This means they left the country, and need to go through immigration.

    It’s also a piece of the official paper trail that helps to prove to other nations that the US did land on the moon, and that placing the flag in the moon was symbolic and not an attempt to annex the moon. If Apollo 11 had claimed the moon as US territory, then they wouldn’t have needed to fill out immigration papers.






  • It’s the same argument of why some Christians are terrified of atheists.

    To them, the only thing that stops someone from raping, murdering, and stealing their way through life is the book they had shoved down their throat in Sunday school. They can’t envision a world where people just have morals all on their own, it has to come from an external source like religion. So someone without that external moral compass must be deranged and dangerous in their eyes.

    Of course, to a normal person, this view itself is utterly deranged, and speaks more about the religious person’s complete lack of inherent morals. If the only thing stopping you from raping, murdering, and pillaging your way through life is some old book and some stories about a cool dude, then you’re not really a good or trustworthy person. Especially since that same book says you can do all those terrible things, and as long as you go “sorry teehee” right before you kick the bucket, you get to go to the McDonald playplace in the sky anyway.


  • Microsoft has a terrible track record with hardware.

    About the only hardware they’ve ever sold that didn’t crap the bed was the Xbox, Xbox one, and Xbox series whatever the fuck.

    The 360 would cook itself, instead of fixing it, they added red LEDs to tell you it was fucked. The windows phones were unresponsive and unimpressive garbage, and every tablet they’ve made has been mired in various hardware and screen issues.

    It’s almost like a software company that has a business model that depends on selling people regular updates, can’t get its head around the idea that hardware should just work for the task it’s designed to do. They want you to buy a new tablet every year or two, because it makes them money. They don’t really care if the battery is going to cook itself in 5 years, when the plan is you’ll buy a new device in 2 years, because you really need to edit PowerPoint™ presentations while on the train and with a touchscreen.