Ex-professor, physicist, dad, gamer. I used to teach and do experimental particle physics; now I work on robotics software and deal with corporate culture shock. #exac #exacademic
Public Key
npub150t75r3dxdd0u0wepluzzdjx0va9fl0rxdm736vp8qxhe2x2acrssqdq4x Profile Code
nprofile1qqs284l2pcknxkh78hvsl7ppxer8kwj5lh3nxalgaxqnsrtu4r9wupcpzpmhxue69uhkummnw3ezuamfdejszrthwden5te0dehhxtnvdakqz9rhwden5te0wfjkccte9ejxzmt4wvhxjmcff90lj
Show more details
Published at
2026-08-02T08:31:47Z Event JSON
{
"id": "2a0baf299da82635a1fc453968ecae61184a075b460d91cf44dee9a0093eb211" ,
"pubkey": "a3d7ea0e2d335afe3dd90ff82136467b3a54fde33377e8e981380d7ca8caee07" ,
"created_at": 1785659507 ,
"kind": 0 ,
"tags": [
[
"t",
"exac"
],
[
"t",
"exacademic"
],
[
"proxy",
"https://mastodon.online/users/ThreeSigma",
"activitypub"
],
[
"L",
"pink.momostr"
],
[
"l",
"pink.momostr.activitypub:https://mastodon.online/users/ThreeSigma",
"pink.momostr"
],
[
"-"
]
],
"content": "{\"name\":\"Three plus or minus five\",\"about\":\"Ex-professor, physicist, dad, gamer. I used to teach and do experimental particle physics; now I work on robotics software and deal with corporate culture shock. #exac #exacademic\\n\\nProfile picture is an image of a data plot, with a single point and an error bar.\\n\\nPronouns: He/him\\n\",\"website\":\"https://mastodon.online/@ThreeSigma\",\"picture\":\"https://files.mastodon.online/accounts/avatars/109/258/986/807/569/584/original/801852e875937648.png\",\"nip05\":\"[email protected] \"}" ,
"sig": "c9467013218aa3a2483785650de729a3ea54c4e04debe4a8122222fe53ad3eafeabfbc27442e652186a798c5ddbb6b5f073233c673c6357c696986b62602b1d3"
}
Last Notes npub150t75r3dxdd0u0wepluzzdjx0va9fl0rxdm736vp8qxhe2x2acrssqdq4x Three plus or minus five Its probably more useful than my brain full of the Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy and Monty Python sketches. npub150t75r3dxdd0u0wepluzzdjx0va9fl0rxdm736vp8qxhe2x2acrssqdq4x Three plus or minus five Yeah. For that reason I don’t think the cis het guy can declare himself queer; the community has to include him in a way that they (mostly) agree on. That seems unlikely to me, no matter how many queer friends he has. npub150t75r3dxdd0u0wepluzzdjx0va9fl0rxdm736vp8qxhe2x2acrssqdq4x Three plus or minus five That's just "wants to be cool enough to hang out with the cool people". npub150t75r3dxdd0u0wepluzzdjx0va9fl0rxdm736vp8qxhe2x2acrssqdq4x Three plus or minus five That's Funyons. Nunya is a singer famous for "Orinoco Flow" and other songs. npub150t75r3dxdd0u0wepluzzdjx0va9fl0rxdm736vp8qxhe2x2acrssqdq4x Three plus or minus five I can see this being true if it’s a stalemate: both extreme camps thrive and both abhor the middlemen. But if the AI side definatively wins the ones who refuse to adopt at all are going to be axed. npub150t75r3dxdd0u0wepluzzdjx0va9fl0rxdm736vp8qxhe2x2acrssqdq4x Three plus or minus five It’s not clear to me it’s worse than some waffle bars I’ve seen.. npub150t75r3dxdd0u0wepluzzdjx0va9fl0rxdm736vp8qxhe2x2acrssqdq4x Three plus or minus five The good news is that this means the next gen AI is training on this generation’s shit. This poison ensures that it will reinforce its blandest habits and learn nonsense, speeding up the downward spiral of AI and hopefully dying out. npub150t75r3dxdd0u0wepluzzdjx0va9fl0rxdm736vp8qxhe2x2acrssqdq4x Three plus or minus five In my last job I was pulled into an all-faculty meeting. President of the college then told us that the few-percent retirement contribution "temporarily paused" a couple of years ago was permanent and no one had ever said it was temporary. npub150t75r3dxdd0u0wepluzzdjx0va9fl0rxdm736vp8qxhe2x2acrssqdq4x Three plus or minus five Might be causal the other way though: only places that actually want to fix the problem do reporting.. npub150t75r3dxdd0u0wepluzzdjx0va9fl0rxdm736vp8qxhe2x2acrssqdq4x Three plus or minus five I’m not sure it’s big in the UK yet, but a major theme in the US right wing propaganda is “both sides are corrupt and competence is a myth”, in part to reduce voting enthusiasm and in part because they want people to distrust the whole idea of government so they can shrink it. “Your vote doesn’t matter” is complementary to that. npub150t75r3dxdd0u0wepluzzdjx0va9fl0rxdm736vp8qxhe2x2acrssqdq4x Three plus or minus five Maybe run each file through sort, then apply a simple diff with ignore-whitespace? npub150t75r3dxdd0u0wepluzzdjx0va9fl0rxdm736vp8qxhe2x2acrssqdq4x Three plus or minus five I’m not arguing about what rank and file conservatives believe, I’m saying this is what the ideology is. I think it’s quite likely that many conservatives voters do not subscribe to the ideology of their party. (And similarly on the left.). But the intellectual history on the right is one in which people have a natural position in the ladder of power and where being in the wrong place means disaster. npub150t75r3dxdd0u0wepluzzdjx0va9fl0rxdm736vp8qxhe2x2acrssqdq4x Three plus or minus five Well, yes, but one side’s ideology says this is a bad thing, while the other side says it’s a good thing. npub150t75r3dxdd0u0wepluzzdjx0va9fl0rxdm736vp8qxhe2x2acrssqdq4x Three plus or minus five I don’t get it. Having more currencies is very capitalist. More currencies gives more opportunities for manipulation. I’d you want to stop capital from accruing power, how does having a new currency help? npub150t75r3dxdd0u0wepluzzdjx0va9fl0rxdm736vp8qxhe2x2acrssqdq4x Three plus or minus five Nvidia was a strong company before the ai boom, but not massive like it is now. (I work in one of those other markets and the dominate by being cheap and their software subsidized.) npub150t75r3dxdd0u0wepluzzdjx0va9fl0rxdm736vp8qxhe2x2acrssqdq4x Three plus or minus five One of the troubles with this is that it's totally insane. How can nvidia GROW it's market when it's building a whole bunch of AI farms that either npub150t75r3dxdd0u0wepluzzdjx0va9fl0rxdm736vp8qxhe2x2acrssqdq4x Three plus or minus five I don’t know stonks but this makes sense to me: no one gets sticks for dividends, so earnings are not directly relevant. Future size drives stock prices. So they are saying nvidia (and adobe) are peaking, running out of market to grow to. npub150t75r3dxdd0u0wepluzzdjx0va9fl0rxdm736vp8qxhe2x2acrssqdq4x Three plus or minus five I still don’t know what “breaking” means. Riots? Striking? npub150t75r3dxdd0u0wepluzzdjx0va9fl0rxdm736vp8qxhe2x2acrssqdq4x Three plus or minus five 13% is lot. No one should expect those kinds of returns on investment year-on-year in a healthy economy. It’s larger than inflation or interest or population growth or worker earnings, or even all of those added together. What real-world value can that possibly be meaningfully related to? npub150t75r3dxdd0u0wepluzzdjx0va9fl0rxdm736vp8qxhe2x2acrssqdq4x Three plus or minus five They're connected, but not the same. The stock market has been doing very well for the last few years, but none of that wealth has come down to many people. Conversely, I've lived through many stock crashes which affected my life not at all. npub150t75r3dxdd0u0wepluzzdjx0va9fl0rxdm736vp8qxhe2x2acrssqdq4x Three plus or minus five Anyone who has a good pension is probably richer than most people. And if you're not about to retire in the next few years, then a market dip doesn't really hurt you, assuming it recovers somehow. npub150t75r3dxdd0u0wepluzzdjx0va9fl0rxdm736vp8qxhe2x2acrssqdq4x Three plus or minus five I don’t care about stock market crashes. Who gives a shit about what rich people own? The problem is the economy collapsing, as employers cut jobs and people can’t spend. npub150t75r3dxdd0u0wepluzzdjx0va9fl0rxdm736vp8qxhe2x2acrssqdq4x Three plus or minus five I really dislike the use of the word "populism" because none of their policies are actually popular. npub150t75r3dxdd0u0wepluzzdjx0va9fl0rxdm736vp8qxhe2x2acrssqdq4x Three plus or minus five Don't forget that after you get through all that and the page loads, their modern layout means that no actual content is visible on your old phone's smaller screen. The layovers on top and bottom and media mean there's no room for the text you wanted to read. npub150t75r3dxdd0u0wepluzzdjx0va9fl0rxdm736vp8qxhe2x2acrssqdq4x Three plus or minus five I dunno. If they had kept the licenses in a cardboard box in an unlocked building and it got stolen, I would still put at least some of the blame on the thieves. Not all, but some. npub150t75r3dxdd0u0wepluzzdjx0va9fl0rxdm736vp8qxhe2x2acrssqdq4x Three plus or minus five All the hallmarks of crackpottery: math is stated without proof. Few figures with meaningful calculations or data. One author, no institution. Grandiose abstract. If you scroll down into it, you see phrases in boldface, which is not a thing in physics papers. Scroll further and half of it is bold. npub150t75r3dxdd0u0wepluzzdjx0va9fl0rxdm736vp8qxhe2x2acrssqdq4x Three plus or minus five I know we all want distraction from the horribleness, but shouldn’t there be more media/social media attention on the fact that the stazi have just been given tons and tons of cash and there is no legal way to stop them? Do we have a plan for how to deal with this? npub150t75r3dxdd0u0wepluzzdjx0va9fl0rxdm736vp8qxhe2x2acrssqdq4x Three plus or minus five Maybe? But AI doesn't spit out spaghetti code, it spits out code that plausibly resembles code a human would have written. It purports to communicate, and often is says things that make some kind of sense. npub150t75r3dxdd0u0wepluzzdjx0va9fl0rxdm736vp8qxhe2x2acrssqdq4x Three plus or minus five Because coders lean heavily toward the literal-minded, I think exaggerating to this extent is probably won't sway them much. npub150t75r3dxdd0u0wepluzzdjx0va9fl0rxdm736vp8qxhe2x2acrssqdq4x Three plus or minus five I think that’s an exaggeration. Yes, it’s for communication in part, but I’ve written tons of useful code to be executed on the computer that was never read by anyone else. Not even me, sometimes. The silicon part isn’t everything, but it’s necessary. npub150t75r3dxdd0u0wepluzzdjx0va9fl0rxdm736vp8qxhe2x2acrssqdq4x Three plus or minus five I know this thread is about ChatGPT, but t you have to stop and wonder at the incompetence of police that can’t deal with such a case without lethal force. When warned! npub150t75r3dxdd0u0wepluzzdjx0va9fl0rxdm736vp8qxhe2x2acrssqdq4x Three plus or minus five This post got to me via the hashtag, but scrolling back through several pages of your post history I can’t find a synopsis or link to what the project is. npub150t75r3dxdd0u0wepluzzdjx0va9fl0rxdm736vp8qxhe2x2acrssqdq4x Three plus or minus five Yes, it wasn't the only one. I know of at least one other. npub150t75r3dxdd0u0wepluzzdjx0va9fl0rxdm736vp8qxhe2x2acrssqdq4x Three plus or minus five No worries. It’s not really a trigger, more like an itch. I think those of us that experience it don’t need CWs or anything. npub150t75r3dxdd0u0wepluzzdjx0va9fl0rxdm736vp8qxhe2x2acrssqdq4x Three plus or minus five Very cool. But also: trypophobia activated. npub150t75r3dxdd0u0wepluzzdjx0va9fl0rxdm736vp8qxhe2x2acrssqdq4x Three plus or minus five No caching at your local server? Or rather, no effective caching? npub150t75r3dxdd0u0wepluzzdjx0va9fl0rxdm736vp8qxhe2x2acrssqdq4x Three plus or minus five surely it’s the servers talking to you, not the users? Sorry to be daft, but I don’t understand the basic mechanism. npub150t75r3dxdd0u0wepluzzdjx0va9fl0rxdm736vp8qxhe2x2acrssqdq4x Three plus or minus five I’m not familiar with fediverse inner workings. Can someone explain why it’s such a big load? Each boost is maybe a kb of data, so even a million of them over a day is a GB of transactions. I assume other servers cache the actual post, which again is less than a kb. What’s the huge overhead? npub150t75r3dxdd0u0wepluzzdjx0va9fl0rxdm736vp8qxhe2x2acrssqdq4x Three plus or minus five What's your data on the efficacy of these protests, particularly in fascist-run countries as ours is about to be? npub150t75r3dxdd0u0wepluzzdjx0va9fl0rxdm736vp8qxhe2x2acrssqdq4x Three plus or minus five OK, but that's not happening any time soon in this country. Or other countries. npub150t75r3dxdd0u0wepluzzdjx0va9fl0rxdm736vp8qxhe2x2acrssqdq4x Three plus or minus five How? npub150t75r3dxdd0u0wepluzzdjx0va9fl0rxdm736vp8qxhe2x2acrssqdq4x Three plus or minus five So, I was primarily an educator. Most people who know, say, a Newton as a unit know it from high-school or first-year physics. Generally those courses don't get to Bq or Ci units, and most units are single letters. Two-letter symbols are easily confused with elements or look like compound units to first blush. npub150t75r3dxdd0u0wepluzzdjx0va9fl0rxdm736vp8qxhe2x2acrssqdq4x Three plus or minus five maybe a lowercase n? npub150t75r3dxdd0u0wepluzzdjx0va9fl0rxdm736vp8qxhe2x2acrssqdq4x Three plus or minus five I honestly didn’t even see the link to the paper, overshadowed as it was by Noether’s. npub150t75r3dxdd0u0wepluzzdjx0va9fl0rxdm736vp8qxhe2x2acrssqdq4x Three plus or minus five I’d be all over this.. except there’s no good abbreviation.
