• 2 Posts
  • 38 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 11th, 2023

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  • Maybe the problem is a lot of their marketing relies on the dominance of their search engine (ie sponsored search results, and ads based on user searches, as well as tracking user web usage via their search click throughs and other cookies). If open ai’s products become the go to for questions and basic searches, they will eventually be able to use that dominance to include marketing results in their answers. I think this threat is why they want to try to compete with them to be able to offer an alternative. Because it doesn’t actually have to be better than chat gpt. It just has to be similar enough for people to continue using Google rather than change their habits to use chatgpt, or Microsoft’s implementations of it. Especially with windows 11 where copilot (basically Microsoft rebrand of chatgpt) is built in and you can use it from the task bar. That ease of use may steadily decrease people’s reliance on Google search, which will eventually hurt their ability to sell targeted ads.



  • I have a question about rigid curriculums. This is mostly for high school. Many of my teachers had curriculums and syllabi that they had been using for years and kept them basically the same, and then there were the AP classes where the curriculum was determined by the AP exam. I felt that I learned really well in AP classes and we would get through much more advanced material in the AP classes than in others. And I also felt that the teachers who had developed somewhat fixed curriculums from experience taught much more efficiently than those who hadn’t. It never felt like the teachers were changing their curriculum for each class whether it was an AP class or not because most had their curriculums kind of figured out over the course of teaching for many years. And most of the teachers I had in high school were excellent. So my question is, why is it believed that rigid curriculums don’t work? Because in my schooling experience, whether the rigid curriculum was developed by the individual teacher or by an external organization (like AP), the class seemed to benefit from having fixed goals for the year.



  • Most programming (simple tasks, scripting data analysis, most common web apps, basic automation) is about as difficult as doing your own plumbing (which likely includes fixing a faucet or doing other minor tasks around the house). But just like in any profession, the “professionals” are able to handle the complex tasks that others can’t/don’t want to do. For plumbers that means building the whole home systems to maintain proper pressure/temperature at every outlet, suitable for whatever climate the home is built in, or in commercial settings where the systems are much larger and more complicated.

    Ask a professional plumber which they find more taxing: being bent into awkward spaces on their hands and knees all day, or sitting at a desk thinking hard about a problem someone has likely already solved.



  • Don’t know if it’s a low service state. They have pretty strong welfare programs, despite what Republicans will have you believe. Their public education is ranked pretty similarly to California for K-12, if not better depending on the specific list. Their public universities are among the best in the country. Their hospitals are the best in the country.

    The biggest drawback is that their legislators think they can practice medicine without having the relevant qualifications. But Californian medical laws and viewpoints have their own drawbacks. Let’s not forget, before covid, anti-vaxers were primarily associated with crunchy liberal moms refusing to vaccinate their children. California was among the first to have a resurgence of measles. CA is also a state trying to obfuscate medical roles by allowing advanced practitioners (NPs and PAs) to practice independently (without a surprising DO or MD), as well as allowing naturopaths to identify themselves as physicians. While it’s easier to see the harms of Texas’s medical laws right now, California has had it’s fair share of negative impact on it’s populous.

    A lot of the Republican rhetoric is empty, meaningless, and far from the truth. This is what makes Republican politics so frustrating. They say one thing, want something else, and do something entirely different. As a liberal it makes it difficult to engage in a meaningful conversation with them. But this sort of state comparison based on broad generalizations also increases the divide, while being very unhelpful.






  • Honestly I remember it being at 7 o’clock too but I think it might’ve just been that my camera was rotated a bit weird because it was mounted to a star tracker. I was really happy with how crisp it came out. I used a longer lens (this photo was at 400mm) and also made sure to use f8 as that’s been noted to be the sharpest aperture for my lens. Beyond that I had focused on the sun using the sun spots and then didn’t change the focus at all. I also had a remote trigger so I wouldn’t shake the camera while taking the image. Also for this image I brought down the highlights which helped cut down on the blooming around the brightest features and helped them look more defined. I am very happy I was able to get this result because this was the first time I’ve tried shooting an eclipse and really wasn’t sure if I was doing it right.




  • Yeah it was crazy, we could all see a red dot with our bare eyes during totality and weren’t sure what it was. Think it might’ve been a particularly bright solar flare!

    Like this photo isn’t even specially edited. I literally just brought down the highlights to get better definition on the beads because without that it looked more like the diamond ring. No artificial color enhancement or anything.




  • Yeah but if someone is searching “why is my wife/husband yelling at me,” the statistics on abuse for that sub-popularion may not be as skewed. And providing resources for men (especially men with children) doesn’t take Google that much more effort/money, and it provides a much needed service. As it stands, it is nearly impossible for an abused man (especially one with children) to seek out help using the types of services that are available for women. So if Google can help with that search a little bit, what’s the harm in showing that info? Aaand, even for someone searching about their abusive husband, the googler may be a man, and most services that are for abused women don’t have resources for men.