Pro tip: If you find large mysterious eggs on a derelict space ship, ALWAYS inspect them very closely. They tend to contain some really cool stuff. Mind-blowing, transcendental best stuff ever. I’m talking, like, way too legit to be legit, feel me? If you see movement inside, be sure to place your head close to the top of the egg. You should try to smell the egg or even give it a lick.

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: May 19th, 2024

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  • The whole concept of AI is evolving. When OCR was new, that was cutting edge AI. Nowadays, even your phone can pull text out of a photo. It’s still based on neural networks, but people don’t really think of it as AI any more.

    What about the selective background blurring during a video call? Also AI. What about frame generation or resolution up scaling? Also AI. There are lots of examples like this, and people don’t really think of them as AI any more.




  • That’s true, and I totally agree. However, many people don’t see it that way. When someone leaves Reddit, they tend to look for a drop-in replacement.

    What they find here is a smaller place with early Reddit vibes, which is good and bad at the same time. They would like to hang out in a niche community with thousands of like-minded users, but they’ll only find a community with a hundred users and two posts a month. Market share isn’t really an indicator of quality, but it does tell you something about the amount of activity.









  • Who needs a smart TV, when you can just use a 15 year old flat TV and plug it into a computer. Install Firefox and uBlock Origin to watch YouTube. It’s a real computer, which means you can watch pretty much anything with it.

    If you’re into hardware tinkering, get a mini ATX (or ITX) board and a small flat case for it. Should look pretty much like a VCR box from the 90s.

    If you want to make it quiet, you could use a passively cooled GPU with a HDMI output. Alternatively, get a AMD APU, and use the largest fan you can to cool it. Tweak the settings to run it as slow as possible. If that’s not an option, stick a few of those Noctua’s resistor cables between the board and the fan to force it to run slower.



  • In biology, there are always exceptions. As you pointed out, viruses frequently mess around with genomes. Also, some bacteria can grab a plasmid from a completely different species of bacteria. Larger critters can’t pull off tricks like that, and that’s the group we usually think of.

    Totally agree about gene editing being neutral. It’s just a tool like any other. That doesn’t make it good or evil. People who use it get to decide how it’s being used, and that’s the step where things can go wrong. It’s a powerful tool, so when used correctly, the results are life-changing. When mistakes are made, the price can be very high.

    What about the terminology then? My previous examples are usually covered under evolution, not genetic manipulation, and I think intention is the key difference. Evolution happens on its own, while editing requires an intention.


  • Yeah, well where do you draw the line though? When normies talk about something being GMO, it always involves fancy labs, modern biotechnology and greedy corporations.

    When wolves were modified to become dogs, people were effectively practicing low-tech genetic manipulation, but people usually don’t think of it in those terms. Well, what about when the same thing happens without humans in charge of the process? Like, why do peacocks have such impressive tail feathers? Humans weren’t involved in that manipulation, so does it still count? It’s the peacocks themselves who did all the selective breeding and genetic manipulation.

    What about when one species causes another to change? Just think of the relationship between orchids and hummingbirds for example. What about wasp-mimic flies or harmless snakes that look a lot like venomous ones? Surely, that’s a result of genetic manipulation too. This is getting completely ridiculous, so I guess we need to draw the line somewhere.



  • It’s a numbers game, and the slugs are winning.

    Foxes eat rabbits all the time, but they literally breed like rabbits, so there’s a balance of sorts. Birds eat bugs all the time, but bugs lay millions of eggs to compensate. Same goes for bacteria too. Lots of little critters eat bacteria, but bacteria just multiply so fast that there’s always plenty to go around for everyone.

    Most species are just brute forcing it with numbers instead of skill or planning. So far, it has worked well, and slugs are just repeating a billion year old exploit. Slow breeding animals like superb owls, elephants and humans are the exception.


  • One coworker claimed that all seedless fruit are genetically modified. I explained that it’s just good old selective breeding. No fancy tech required, though gene editing can achieve the same result. I even pulled up the relevant Wikipedia article to back it up. His response? And I quote:

    Wikipedia, it’s all lies.

    That hit me like a mental blue screen of death. My brain froze for a solid few seconds before rebooting. Once I recovered, I realized I’d just witnessed what might be the dumbest argument I’ve ever heard in person.

    At that point, I knew he was far beyond reason, so it was time to cut my losses. I let him keep his distorted worldview and steered the conversation toward less soul-crushing topics. It’s a coping strategy I’d learned a few years earlier: when you encounter people like that, you can either bang your head against the brick wall or simply walk around it. Once you realize it’s not a problem you can solve, it’s better to just avoid it.