Lenguador
- 5 Posts
- 39 Comments
Lenguador@kbin.socialto
World News@lemmy.ml•Scientists at Fermilab close in on fifth force of nature
61·3 years agoFrom Wikipedia: this is only a 1-sigma result compared to theory using lattice calculations. It would have been 5.1-sigma if the calculation method had not been improved.
Many calculations in the standard model are mathematically intractable with current methods, so improving approximate solutions is not trivial and not surprising that we’ve found improvements.
Lenguador@kbin.socialto
News@kbin.social•'Barbie' Makes Greta Gerwig 1st Female Director with Billion-Dollar Movie
1·3 years agoThis seems like more of an achievement for the Barbie brand than for the individual director.
Oh certainly, that series took quite a risk on writing style and it’s quite divisive.
If you enjoy fantasy, you could try her other series as an alternative. The Inheritance Trilogy is a more standard writing style.
I almost put The Fifth Season down after the first chapter, I remember thinking: “This author has a chip on their shoulder”. I’m glad I persevered though, and I definitely recommend the series to people as it is quite different. I’d suggest giving it another shot.
Lenguador@kbin.socialto
Science Fiction@kbin.social•Babylon 5 Creator Says a Single Warner Bros. Executive Stopped the Show’s Comeback for Close to 20 Years
1·3 years agoI might try jumping in again on season 2, thanks.
Lenguador@kbin.socialto
Technology@kbin.social•Someone Used ChatGPT to Finish the Game of Thrones Book Series - IGN
1·3 years agoClaude 2 would have a much better chance at this because of the longer context window.
Though there are plenty of alternate/theorised/critiqued endings for Game of Thrones online, so current chatbots should have a better shot at doing a good job vs other writers who haven’t finished their series in over a decade.
Lenguador@kbin.socialto
Science Fiction@kbin.social•Babylon 5 Creator Says a Single Warner Bros. Executive Stopped the Show’s Comeback for Close to 20 Years
2·3 years agoAs a counterpoint to other comments here, I didn’t like Babylon 5. I gave up in the first season on the episode about religions, where each alien race shows a single religion but then humanity shows an enormous number of them.
Showing planets in sci fi as homogenous is a common trope, but such a simplistic take. This resonated poorly with me as I felt the aliens all behaved exactly like humans as well, to the point where you have stand-ins for Jehovah’s witnesses. That episode cemented for me the feeling I had when watching. Babylon 5 is racist against aliens.
Lenguador@kbin.socialto
News@kbin.social•How a plan to recognize Australia's indigenous people became the country's latest culture war
1·3 years agoWhy do you say they have no representation? There are a lot of specific bodies operating in the government, advisory and otherwise, with the sole focus of indigenous affairs. And of course, currently, indigenous Australians are over represented in terms of parliamentarian race (more than 4% if parliamentarians are of indigenous descent).
Lenguador@kbin.socialto
News@kbin.social•Johnson & Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer
0·3 years agoWhile in general, I’d agree, look at the damage a single false paper on vaccination had. There were a lot of follow up studies showing that the paper is wrong, and yet we still have an antivax movement going on.
Clearly, scientists need to be able to publish without fear of reprisal. But to have no recourse when damage is done by a person acting in bad faith is also a problem.
Though I’d argue we have the same issue with the media, where they need to be able to operate freely, but are able to cause a lot of harm.
Perhaps there could be some set of rules which absolve scientists of legal liability. And hopefully those rules are what would ordinarily be followed anyway, and this be no burden to your average researcher.
Lenguador@kbin.socialto
Technology@kbin.social•Elon Musk’s new AI company is staffed entirely by men
3·3 years agoTaking 89.3% men from your source at face value, and selecting 12 people at random, that gives a 12.2% chance (1 in 8) that the company of that size would be all male.
Add in network effects, risk tolerance for startups, and the hiring practices of larger companies, and that number likely gets even larger.What’s the p-value for a news story? Unless this is some trend from other companies run by Musk, there doesn’t seem to be anything newsworthy here.
Lenguador@kbin.socialto
Science@kbin.social•Artificial Muscles Flex for the First Time: Ferroelectric Polymer Innovation in Robotics
2·3 years agoSo, taking the average bicep volume as 1000cm3, this muscle could: exert 1 tonne of force, contact 8% (1.6cm for a 20cm long bicep), and require 400kV and must be above 29 degrees Celcius.
Maybe someone with access to the paper can double check the math and get the conversion efficiency from electrical to mechanical.
I expect there’s a good trade-off to be made to lower the force but increase the contraction and lower the voltage. Possibly some kind of ratcheting mechanism with tiny cells could be used to overcome the crazy high voltage requirement.
Lenguador@kbin.socialto
Singularity | Artificial Intelligence (ai), Technology & Futurology@lemmy.fmhy.ml•What AI developments have surprised you the most?
8·3 years agoDALL-E was the first development which shocked me. AlphaGo was very impressive on a technical level, and much earlier than anticipated, but it didn’t feel different.
GANs existed, but they never seemed to have the creativity, nor understanding of prompts, which was demonstrated by DALL-E. Of all things, the image of an avocado-themed chair is still baked into my mind. I remember being gobsmacked by the imagery, and when I’d recovered from that, just how “simple” the step from what we had before to DALL-E was.
The other thing which surprised me was the step from image diffusion models to 3D and video. We certainly haven’t gotten anywhere near the quality in those domains yet, but they felt so far from the image domain that we’d need some major revolution in the way we approached the problem. The thing which surprised me the most was just how fast the transition from images to video happened.
Lenguador@kbin.socialto
Science Fiction@kbin.social•[Discussion Thread] How can we grow the /m/scifi community?
1·3 years agoNone of the related magazines in this community are listing this community in their related magazine section.
I’d advise expanding (and trimming) the related magazine section, plus messaging mods to ask if they’d like to add your magazine to their related section.
Lenguador@kbin.socialto
Science@kbin.social•NASA Seals Crew Members In Isolated Chamber For Yearlong Test Of Mars Mission—Here’s What To Know
2·3 years agoI wonder what specifically they’re interested in vs long deployments in Antarctica (people do 12 months rotations in some stations there).
I found this article discussing the psychology of placements in Australian antarctic stations: https://psychology.org.au/for-members/publications/inpsych/2021/february-march-issue-1/life-in-the-australian-antarctic-program.
The differences as I see them are:
- Smaller crew
- No unsuited outdoor time
- Smaller space
- Communication latency / outages
- Personal belongings weight/volume limits
- Dietary restrictions
Lenguador@kbin.socialto
Australia@aussie.zone•Lab-produced meat could be on Australian supermarket shelves as soon as next year
9·3 years agoLooks like the same guys were doing publicity around 2019 https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2019-07-30/australia-joins-lab-grown-meat-industry/11360506
At the time, they claimed the cost to make a single hamburger was $30-$40, and now 4 years later, they claim to have gotten it down to $5-$6 per patty.
The article claims the first demonstration of a lab-grown hamburger was in 2013.So 6 years from proof of concept to (probably) first capital raise, then 4 years to start regulatory approval, 1 year for approval to take place (target is March next year).
Lenguador@kbin.socialto
News@kbin.social•3M reaches $10.3 billion settlement over contamination of water systems with PFAS 'forever chemicals'
4·3 years agoIn the last 12 months, 3M’s profits were $14.4B (source), so this fine represents 8.5 months of profits.
How large should the fine have been?
Lenguador@kbin.socialto
Reddit Migration@kbin.social•Pictures of Tiennamin square are being removed off of reddit, presumably due to Tencent's investments in the company.
11·3 years agoHow many people will read the title without the comments and leave with the wrong idea?
Not that I think you should take the post down, but the title is quite definitive, and confirms existing biases, so people are unlikely to research further.
Lenguador@kbin.socialto
Asklemmy@lemmy.ml•What are your favorite (Youtube) video's/documentaries of all time that you can watch again and again?
2·3 years agoIf you can get past the weird framing device, the Plinkett reviews of the Star Wars prequels are an excellent deep dive into the issues with those films: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxKtZmQgxrI&list=PL5919C8DE6F720A2D
Jenny Nicholson’s videos are great, but her documentary on “The Last Bronycon” is special, as the realization dawns on you while watching that she has more connection to Brony culture than you might have guessed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fVOF2PiHnc
Lenguador@kbin.socialto
Australia@aussie.zone•Why is the indigenous voice to Parliament so controversial?
4·3 years agoI’ve seen this sentiment before, but what evidence is there that the current system isn’t working?
For example, this chart shows remarkable improvement for Indigenous Australian infant mortality (source).
What metrics are you looking at which are not trending in a favourable way for indigenous Australians?
And, as indigenous Australians were only given the right to vote in 1962, how quickly do you expect parity with non-indigenous Australians to happen?






That reminds me of a joke.
A museum guide is talking to a group about the dinosaur fossils on exhibit.
“This one,” he says, “Is 6 million and 2 years old.”
“Wow,” says a patron, “How do you know the age so accurately?”
“Well,” says the guide, “It was 6 million years old when I started here 2 years ago.”