ah I get what you’re saying., thanks! “Good” means that what the machine outputs should be statistically similar (based on comparing billions of parameters) to the provided training data, so if the training data gradually gains more examples of e.g. noses being attached to the wrong side of the head, the model also grows more likely to generate similar output.

I only have a limited and basic understanding of Machine Learning, but doesn’t training models basically work like: “you, machine, spit out several versions of stuff and I, programmer, give you a way of evaluating how ‘good’ they are, so over time you ‘learn’ to generate better stuff”? Theoretically giving a newer model the output of a previous one should improve on the result, if the new model has a way of evaluating “improved”.

If I feed a ML model with pictures of eldritch beings and tell them that “this is what a human face looks like” I don’t think it’s surprising that quality deteriorates. What am I missing?

We found very ancient human viruses! To the lab! Gotta see if we can use them to infect modern humans…

I know that research is generally for good, but why is it so hard to tell if a quote is from an actual researcher or a comics super-villain?

Nah, micro is the superior option! 😜

There were some often-quoted tests in which even professional sommeliers could not tell the difference between super-expensive wines and much cheaper ones. See this article on The Guardian for instance

To be fair it was the NSFW tag that gave me the idea. I went “why would this have an NSFW tag? … Ooooh!”

Genitals. Both male and female. (Generally) awesome when in use but a maintenance nightmare otherwise. Reasons for being the worse (some depending on gender) include: initiating takeoff visibly and without reason, leakages, being very fragile, requiring more packaging than any other body part and others

Ah thanks for the context, I didn’t know! But doesn’t my point essentially stills stand?

As more people work from home and more Flatiron-like buildings struggle to find businesses looking for offices, developers might find “ex prestigious office to luxury apartments” a more appealing conversion than “ex Walmart to affordable housing”.

Also, my understanding of the housing crisis is that people can’t find an affordable place to live close enough to where they work. In my country there are plenty of small towns that used to be very pretty places to live, that have very affordable housing and that are turning into ghost towns because all the jobs are concentrated in a few big cities.

If you take away the offices, less people are going to need to live in New York, San Francisco or London. Plenty of people might still choose to, of course, but there should be less competition to rent the last bed space in a filthy apartment at ludicrous prices. Or to buy a small flat in a converted former office.

I like how this is finally acknowledging WFH as something that is here to stay but I’m not sure I understand the connection with the housing crisis. From the article:

New York’s famous Flatiron Building will soon be converted from empty offices into luxury residences

Luxury apartments in premium locations is the first thing I would think of too if I were a developer, but their target buyers don’t sound like the sort of people who currently suffer from the housing crisis. But maybe I’m wrong and there will also be developers converting less prestigious office space into affordable housing…

The other thing I don’t get is this: I don’t know Manhattan but I did work in some (I assume) similar business hubs in the middle of overpriced cities and I wonder: are many people going to want to live in expensive converted office spaces if they don’t work near there any longer? I mean if they were given the chance to WFH from anywhere would they still choose Manhattan? Honest question and maybe the answer is yes, because of the restaurants, culture, good schools or whatever… I would personally make different life choices if I could work completely remote, though.

This does seem to be the correct reason, at least statistically speaking!

serious answer: it depends on your definition of “worse”. There’s some study linking smelling farts (and specifically the component that makes them rank) to health benefits: https://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2014/jul/14/silent-not-deadly-how-farts-cure-diseases

there’s an old joke about this:

man goes to doctor saying “I keep farting, doc; my farts aren’t smelly and luckily they are also silent but I am worried because I fart all day long. Even now, as I was talking to you, I kept farting the whole time”.

“I see”, says the doctor. “I will prescribe you this pill, to be taken twice a day for a week”.

“And will that help with the farting?”

“No, but it should help you with your sense of smell. Then come to see me after one week and we’ll try to fix your hearing”

John the Baptist is considered a prophet also in Islam, so local variations of the name John are not so infrequent in Muslim countries, at least according to Wikipedia, see Yahya.

Hahaha I was like that boy too.

Girl:does he have interests? Is he passionate about something? Do I see ourselves spending quality time together?

Boy: I’m on a date, my shirt is clean, I have mints for my breath, I have gone for the romantic walk in the park, this time I’ve done it all perfectly! I’ll get at least a kiss for sure!

I agree with this, OP. After some time has passed, it’s also pretty likely that the other person has just moved on anyway and that they also would want to avoid the awkwardness of that diacussion

Ah yes it’s that pre-emptive awkwardness of nearing the end of a date, knowing that (although nothing in particular went spectacularly wrong) you don’t really want to have more and trying to signal this to the other person.

I’ve been on the receiving end of that too and now, many years later and away from the dating game, I can retroactively see it and accept it for what it was but man, it would have stung back then to hear it in plain and simple words. Being ghosted seemed like a better option to me too in retrospect. Kudos to you for being mature enough to handle that conversation!

I agree with you, and that’s what I choose to think when I feel like the “best” version of me.

But there are moments (or a part of me) that has a way more violent disposition and feels differently about people who do terrible thing.

I’m a very calm person and not at all violent so please don’t report me to the police on the base of these posts… That violent part of me is small and weak, but I just think it’s important to acknowledge it because it’s also the part that makes me recognize that a rapist or a murderer is a person like me and that it might be me, with the wrong set of circumstances, life choices and frame of mind.

He mentions rapists and murderers. I choose to think that they don’t deserve to be given a gruesome death (or a death sentence at all for that matter) but I’d be lying if I said I have never felt that way when reading about some f-ed up stuff on the news. Maybe I’m also higher on the Hitler scale than I thought I was.

Shit, I’m sorry, it was insensitive of me to make that joke (well, half-joke)

Well, they probably didn’t do it very scientifically but if they could think of it and the tools existed, someone in history is likely to have tried it as a method for killing people.

Impaled people, for instance, could allegedly take days to die. Being slowly eaten by ants or rats sounds pretty painful too

There’s one called “life” that is pretty cruel too. It might take anywhere from seconds to more than a hundred years for it to eventually kill you and some.people get to experience a lot of pain throughout the experience.