Seriously. Anna archives, libby. There are so many open source projects out there for the ereader community

Don’t use kindle? They aren’t the only ebook provider

It’s a good piece of hardware. I do the same thing. Although I recently got a Kobo and I gotta say that I do prefer the kobo slightly better. Kindle is still good shit though

It’s going to remove all individuality and turn us into a homogeneous jelly-like society. We all think exactly the same since AI “smoothes out” the edges of extreme thinking.

News station finds that AI is unable to perform the job of a news station

🤔

Remember when Americans make fun of China because the government censors and controls what you can say online? Yeahhhh……

That’s the thing. The math says they’re both correct, and that it depends on the viewpoint of the observer.

I’m inside a car moving at 60 mph. I throw the ball forward (let’s ignore air resistance) at 30 mph.

Me, who’s inside the car, sees the ball move forward at 30 mph.

You, who’s outside the car, sees the ball move at the car’s speed PLUS the throw speed (60 + 30 =90 mph)

So, the ball is moving both at 30 mph and 90 mph. How can that be? It depends entirely upon your reference frame (inside the car? Outside the car? Inside another car moving at 40 mph?). The ball moves at all these speeds, and they are all “correct” within universal terms.

Ideally, yes.

What ends up happening if your research shows new conclusions on the basis of “better science” is that those in power will probably ridicule your new conclusions and findings since it doesn’t align with ‘accepted’ scientific consensus and doctrine. And by ridicule I don’t mean challenging the new theory on the basis of counter data/evidence and reasoning. I mean ad hominem attacks on the researchers themselves. “Well, they graduated from a top 30 university and not MIT, so anything they produce is not worth looking into”. You won’t be funded and the status quo will be allowed to continue without significant challenge.

I used to want to be a researcher when I was younger. My experiences have been wrought with closed-mindedness, arrogance, and lack of critical judgment and objectivity. Maybe my experiences aren’t representative, but hearing from others (at least in my field), I see that this is a systemic and widespread problem within the scientific community as a whole.

How long did it take to convince people the Earth was not at the center of our universe?

With your example, nothing is “moving”.

Imagine a giant wave in the ocean that is almost lined up perfectly parallel to the shore. Imagine the angle that the wave is off by is astronomically small (0.0000000001 degrees off from parallel). Also imagine the shore line is astronomically long (millions of kilometers).

One end of the wave will crash the shore slightly before the other end of the wave at the opposite end of the shore. The difference in time between the two sides of the shore is also astronomically small (so small that not even light could reach the other end in time)

Now let me ask you: did the wave “crash” travel faster than the speed of light? Of course not. I think that is a similar analogy to the laser movement concept you described.

Edit: Fun thought experiment. Depending on where you are on the shore (which end you are closer to), you may see one end crash before the other end (one event happening before the other event). Have two people at different locations on the shore, once they meet up with each other, they might disagree on which end crashed first! And they would BOTH be correct! Relativity is fucking crazy

Yes please support annas-archive!! It is a wonderful project. I can essentially get an epub file for any book (including banned books) I want. They have so much more than that too.

I thought that was Chris Pratt for a second. And wondering why we wanted a lidar enhanced photo of Chris Pratt’s face from a kilometer away.

Well said, and I’m sorry you had to work with them. That sounds like a horrible and soul sucking environment.

But good for you for standing up to your values and knowing when to take action (even if that action is just stopping working for them). Seriously- you should feel very proud of yourself for listening to your conscience and taking action. I have tremendous respect for that, and I think taking action like this says quite a bit about your character.

See everyone? You can do something. You don’t need to be MLK Jr. There are things you can do every single day that can help change things (no matter how small they may seem). Not saying that quitting isn’t a small feet - you are sacrificing a cushy lifestyle and potentially career aspirations, so that makes your decision even more commendable.

Then don’t work for them.

The reason they can get away with this is because they have troves and troves of people who grovel pathetically at their feet like they’re some sort of God to be worshipped in the “career” plane of existence.

Be honest. People want to work for them for the money (not that there’s anything inherently wrong with that) and so they can tell their friends and update their LinkedIn profiles with “I work at Google” to impress everyone else.

There are plenty of well paying, respectable tech jobs that are much more ‘morally noble’ than these conglomerates of parasites that will make you much happier to wake up every morning without having to perform some Freudian ritual in the mirror trying to convince yourself that what you’re doing is “making the world a better place”. Because it’s not. And these other companies won’t have you doing some absolutely dildo-to-ass inducing interview process where you’re essentially giving them labour market data for absolutely nothing in exchange (except to maybe be considered to have someone look at your resume for 0.7 seconds).

This is a major issue I have with tech. I’ve had the displeasure of being in big tech for many, many years after college (while I was still brainwashed) and working with plenty of truly abhorrent coworkers and people I’ve ever encountered. It’s astonishing, disgraceful, and terrifying how many people in tech have absolutely zero moral compass, and pigeonhole themselves into just “thinking about the science of it all” without thinking about the human impact (isn’t this supposed to be the point of advancing science and technology?).

And now look at the state of the world because of this. Fucking look around you. You can point the finger at others and blame others for this shit world we’re creating (and yes- there are certainly those in power who wield much more influence and control than any lowly coder), but if you want to help change things, you have to try. At least a little bit. And one way to do this is by just trying to not be working for companies like these. Is that really so fucking difficult? Go somewhere else. Trust me- if the Google’s and Meta’s and Amazon’s of the world begin losing genuine talent because workers aren’t morally willing to contribute to a soulless and arguably evil entity, then they will change real fucking quickly.

So - STOP GIVING THESE COMPANIES YOUR TIME AND MONEY BY INTERVIEWING FOR THEM. Take a stance for once and stand by your values and conscience. Think about the type of organization you want to work for and how it would align morally with your values. All it takes is a few minutes to research companies that aren’t so fucking awful for the world, and there are plenty of them around depending on what your values are. I have SO much more respect for others who took a position at a “less prestigious” company than those who worked at a Google.

People will still want to impress others and showcase their egos (to say I’m not guilty of this would be a lie), but if the collective metric for what we consider prestige aligned more with human value output of a company rather than raw salary or profit, then I really do think things could change. But you and I have to put in the leg work. No, it’s not fair that this is the world we were shoved into. But it’s what we have to do.

Anyway….sorry for the rant lol. I needed to get that off my chest.

Yes this is actually exactly how they want to present themselves. More donor money from guess who?

You’ve actually had to pay a huge fine?

Ruh roh!

Wouldn’t binary ‘10’ be 2, which it does contain? I feel like that’s cheating, since binary is just a mode of interpreting information …all numbers, regardless of base, can be represented in binary.

It does contain a 2 though? Binary ‘10’ is 2, which this sequence contains?

Do you want my biased opinion or unbiased opinion on where to get unbiased information?

It’s literally pixels on a screen bro