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Joined 11 months 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.


  • During my graduate research, our lab space was next to the cell modeling department and I would catch a talk here or there. Always found it a super interesting approach because it really tries to make sense of what we’ve learned from traditional biology and generates really nice hypotheses/theories for testing out in biological models. I also love how you can apply so much abstract mathematics to biological systems for biologically meaningful findings. Most of these types of cell modeling papers go above my head, but I still really appreciate them from outside.





  • 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.


  • No Microsoft Access is/was a GUI software actually meant to have databases instead of how everyone uses Excel/spreadsheets as databases. It is a part of the office suite. It works pretty much like traditional databases but has an easier to access GUI for non programmers I guess. I don’t think it’s used a ton nowadays except for legacy processes that haven’t been updated.





  • 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.



  • All of that interest is from people making computers, or people who manage security. Not from people that use computers as part of their life/work (in contrast to those who’s work is entirely about the computer itself). From a usability standpoint, this type of sandboxing for every app is cumbersome and all it leads to is users finding unsafe work arounds. I used to be able to use my android phone much more as a regular computer than I can now. And I wanted to make a simple app for myself to allow me to automatically copy and catalog photos from my cameras sd card to an external HDD, and I literally cannot do this without jumping through a million permissions and API hoops on Android even though I never plan on publishing this app for others to use. It became such a pain to figure out how to get access to the folders I would need, I just gave up on the entire project. I essentially needed a tool to systematically copy and rename files, and it’s nearly impossible because of these nonsensical policies.