@rick I'm almost inclined to bring burner devices to the conference that I power down and physically destroy before bringing back into wireless range of my home lol
I've listened to the Skeptic's Guide To The Universe podcast for many years now, and it's fundamentally shaped who I am as a person. But for the past several years I've been drifting away from it more and more. I still think critical thinking is incredibly important, but the events since 2016 have been a lesson in the limits of such things.
The SGU prides itself on being as apolitical as possible, and I think there's a disconnect there. I've come around to the view that almost everything in life has a political aspect to it, whether or not it's viewed that way. All science, and especially technology, can be political.
And I don't mean that they can become politicized. Some areas of science and technology have implicit political implications. New discoveries and inventions do not have a uniform impact on society.
This is something that I've noticed more in the podcast lately. Specifically, how the show has been talking about recent AI developments in large language models.
Like most topics, they are very objective about the topic and stick to the facts as much as possible and try not to wildly extrapolate or get caught up in the hype. They caveat and hedge based on their limited knowledge. All good.
ChatGPT is not politically neutral. Midjourney is not politically neutral.
Because of the nature of what it is and how it works, generative AI technology benefits some people at the detriment of others. There are externalities from these systems that affect some groups of people more than others — very real, well documented, and ongoing externalities.
Focusing simply on the technology is a political statement, regardless of intent.
@paezha I'm probably not the best person to find holes in your arguments (if only because I basically agree with you), but if I think of anything I'll let you know.
@whitequark I keep thinking about a project to build a WebAssembly port for the ESP32 so I can build an OS-free portable standalone FPGA dev environment. I have no idea if that's even feasible, but I daydream about it lol
I just think this project is really neat. FPGA toolchains are often a pain to work with, and so the idea of a web-based, self-contained FPGA dev environment with Amaranth is fascinating. Seems like it could make FPGAs much more accessible.
Isidro stops by the shop to visit Fina and Marta and Carmen tell him she’s in bed - he knows something is up because it’s not like Fina to miss work.
Marta asks Carmen if she knows about the breakup - yes, Fina (which I’ve just learned is short for “Serafina” 🩵) has told her everything.
Poor Marta just wants to make sure Fina is not alone since she can’t comfort her - she is the source of Fina’s pain and bc of the circumstances that led them to this point.
As I suspected, the flare came from AR3664, which has nearly rotated out of view of Earth. Probably aren't going to see any aurora from this flare. X8.8 is still impressive though. I wish the sun had been clear for me to see it (and take pics of it).
Managed to catch a just-shy-of-X1-class flare a few hours ago when I put my scope out on the deck.
The complex chaos of magnetic fields — that is much, much larger than the size of Earth — designated as Region 3664 and Region 3668 (center right sunspot smudge) has been spawning a great number of flares recently, flinging an truly stupendous amount of energy and relativistic particles out into the solar system.
Also, much of Minnesota, including Minneapolis/St. Paul, will have prime viewing too! Anyone that lives up there should go out at around 12-2AM tonight.
THIS IS SO EXCITING!!!
I haven't been paying attention to solar activity until recently, but I get the impression that a G4 storm is kind of a big deal that doesn't happen that often. That one is happening on a Friday night is even less likely. This is probably your best chance at seeing aurora short of traveling above the Arctic Circle.