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SturgeonsLaw

4,574 karma · joined February 28, 2014

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SturgeonsLaw··on Pacing the frontier
Here's a step by step guide on how to gene edit rice

https://bio-protocol.org/en/bpdetail?id=1225&type=0

Mostly it's just heating and cooling tiny volumes of liquids

SturgeonsLaw··on Delayed Gratification – Proud to Be 'Last to Breaking News'
It's "just a blog", but if you're after positive and uplifting, that does exist

https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/

I like to check this every so often as a palette cleanser for the endless bad news that is available elsewhere

SturgeonsLaw··on Vehicle Motion Cues
On Android I use super dim, as someone who enjoys low light situations, even the darkest brightness setting can be too bright sometimes
SturgeonsLaw··on GM Backs Sodium Ion Batteries for U.S. Grid Storage
Depending on just how much more cost effective sodium battery tech gets, that might not be a questionable proposition
SturgeonsLaw··on Suspecting AI cheating, Ivy League prof ordered in-person final; scores fell 50%
Make education free. I'd love to study something like philosophy or art history but there's just no return on that investment. Unless you're already wealthy, it doesn't make sense to drop five or six figures on a degree unless it's likely to pay for itself.

Which is even becoming less likely with STEM, as we hit a confluence of higher education costs, fewer job openings, and AI as a competitor for work.

SturgeonsLaw··on Grok 4.5
Why are the tech oligarchs all such dweebs...
SturgeonsLaw··on Mouse: Precision Editing Tools for AI Coding Agents
The most baffling thing is that this is not (as I had assumed) about giving agents control of a mouse cursor, instead it's finer-grained text editing skills.

The word mouse has had an established meaning in computing for over half a century, so it seems like an odd term to lay claim to for something so unrelated.

SturgeonsLaw··on Bring back crappy forums
Forums handled this by bumping old threads to the top when a new comment was added. This post sorting method could play nicely with tree style comments
SturgeonsLaw··on The KIDS Act would require age checks to get online
If there was to be a small silver lining out of all this, then a way to verify human comments would be nice.

But it's not worth the privacy impacts and chilling of free speech.

SturgeonsLaw··on Trade, merchants, and the lost cities of the Bronze Age (2019) [pdf]
Isn't depreciation the financial system's way of acknowledging that physical things deteriorate over time?
SturgeonsLaw··on The circus freaks of open source
Not just outsider artists either, Vincent van Gogh is one of the most widely known artists in history and he was dealing with increasingly severe mental health episodes over the years. A large amount of his art was produced while in varying states of psychosis. Starry Night was painted in an asylum.
SturgeonsLaw··on Motorola effectively bricked its entire line of WiFi routers without explanation
FUD existed before them. So did the word crypto, as a matter of fact.

That's two things they ruined.

While we're at it, I think them claiming the term Web 3.0 is very self-aggrandizing.

SturgeonsLaw··on Motorola effectively bricked its entire line of WiFi routers without explanation
Wow, that is one of the best use cases for AI I've seen. I wonder what the cost of all that was.
SturgeonsLaw··on Ask HN: So what happened to Facebook "localhost" tracking?
"on the device itself"
SturgeonsLaw··on Dear Microsoft, enough is enough
One look at enterprise will tell you Windows is not a dead platform
SturgeonsLaw··on Ian's Secure Shoelace Knot
Rolling up headphone wires (or any wires) works best when you create a looped bundle and alternate between overhand and underhand. It stops it from getting twisted and tangled. When done right, you can hold one end, throw the under end, and it all unfurls neatly.

Learned this from a theatre stagehand and have been using it ever since.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=CYdu7aW_pm8

SturgeonsLaw··on UK media fails to disclose defence sector links in nearly 60% of cases
My position is that war is a blight on humanity, and people waging war are committing evil acts. Russia's actions in Ukraine reinforce my view.

I am fortunate enough to live in a country that is not being bombed, and I wish that for every human being.

SturgeonsLaw··on UK media fails to disclose defence sector links in nearly 60% of cases
It absolutely is sinister. Everything about the military is, when you decouple the rhetoric from the actions and consider what it is that those organisations actually do.
SturgeonsLaw··on Gemma 4 12B: A unified, encoder-free multimodal model
Unified memory is soldered to the motherboard and needs to be ordered with the new laptop, for prices that are well above what the equivalent amount of SODIMM would cost.

Fine if work's paying, but for personal devices (that might have been purchased before local models got good), people have what they have.

SturgeonsLaw··on DeepSeek makes the V4 Pro price discount permanent
Thank you for the explanation!
SturgeonsLaw··on DeepSeek makes the V4 Pro price discount permanent
What's the image trying to convey? Genuine question, I just come here to read nerd stuff and I'm not aware of any controversy
SturgeonsLaw··on Google's Antigravity bait and switch
Maybe I'm just a cranky old greybeard, but to me, the fact that these CLI tools are written in Node, React, etc. says a lot about the type of devs that are building them
SturgeonsLaw··on Google's Antigravity bait and switch
If I woke up one day to find some corporation had snuck in overnight and subbed out my shampoo for their newest scent without asking, then yeah I'd be looking for more reliable options for that too
SturgeonsLaw··on Iran starts Bitcoin-backed ship insurance for Hormuz strait
I don't think this is trolling, that comment sums up outside perceptions of the USA that I've been hearing. Even the vitriolic tone is increasingly commonplace here, and we're a close US ally.

Diesel prices tripled here at their recent peak because of the USA and Israel's pointless incursion in Iran and it's clear that Trump and his administration are both desperate to open the Strait, and also completely unable to do so.

The world is getting pretty fed up with the idiocy, especially when it crosses the line from sad buffoonery to something that economically impacts us.

SturgeonsLaw··on Points are a weird and inconsistent unit of measure
Not to mention measuring people's weight in stone
SturgeonsLaw··on Google Cloud fraud defense, the next evolution of reCAPTCHA
They could do it like that, but they won't do it like that, because tracking the population is a feature not a bug
SturgeonsLaw··on VS Code inserting 'Co-Authored-by Copilot' into commits regardless of usage
Which would be fine if the only two choices were build the torment nexus or starve. But it's not the only source of income out there.
SturgeonsLaw··on Eka’s robotic claw feels like we're approaching a ChatGPT moment
Might as well put an AI chip in the toddler's exosuit and get another bot
SturgeonsLaw··on Meta tells staff it will cut 10% of jobs
Not a commentary on Zuck specifically, but many powerful people with fragile egos build an inner circle of incompetent sycophants
SturgeonsLaw··on Trusted access for the next era of cyber defense
As far as I can tell, using the word cyber to specifically and only talk about security has come from the kind of suits who take Gartner seriously.

I don't know any techies who use the term like that, unless they're in a role that interfaces with the suits.

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