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InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)KI
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10 mo. ago

  • 'Cold-blooded' is a term that's a little outdated, because of the confusion it creates around this very concept. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold-blooded has some information on it, and even says it's an informal term. Generally speaking, if we refer to something as cold-blooded, it's more reliant on or affected by the external temperature, while warm-blooded creatures will 'deal with' the external temperature.

  • The reason is likely to compete with Uber, 🤦

    A few points of clarity, as I have a family member who's pretty high up at waymo. First, they don't want to compete with uber. Waymo isn't really concerned with driverless cars that you or I would be owning/using, and they don't want (at this point anyway) to try to start a new taxi service. Right now you order an uber and a waymo car might show up. . They want the commercial side of the equation. How much would uber pay to not have to pay drivers? How much would a shipping company fork over when they can jettison the $75k-150 drivers?

    Second, I know for a fact that the upper management was pushing for the cars to drive like this. I can nearly quote said family member opining that if the cars followed all the rules of the road, they wouldn't perform well, couching it in the language of 'efficiency.' It was something like, "being polite creates confusion in other drivers. They expect you to roll through the stop sign or turn right ahead of them even if they have right of way." So now the waymo cars do the same thing. Yay, "social norms."

    A third point is that, as someone else mentioned, the cars are now trained, not 'programmed' with instructions to follow. Said family member spoke of when they switched to the machine learning model, and it was better than the highly complicated (and I'm dumbing down my description because I can't describe it well) series of if-else statements. With that training comes the issue of the folks in charge of things not knowing exactly what is going on. An issue that was described to me was their cars driving right at the edge of the lane, rather than in the center of it, and they couldn't figure out why or (at that point, anyway) how to fix it.

    As an addendum to that third point, the training data is us, quite literally. They get and/or purchase people's driving. I think at one time it was actual video, not sure now. So if 90% of drivers blast through at the moment of the red light change if they can, it's likely you'll hear about it eventually from waymo. It's a weakness that ties right into that 'social norm' thing. We're not really training safer driving by having machine drivers, we're just removing some of the human factors like fatigue or attention deficits. Again, as I get frustrated with the language of said family member (and I'm paraphrasing), 'how much do we really want to focus on low percentage occurrences? Improving the 'miles per collision' is best at the big things.'

  • I definitely liked diddy better, just because years later I remember the 'story' it had, and the fun of exploring the overworld. That magical feeling of getting to space? It was awesome. The challenge/gameplay may have been tighter in mario, but diddy was just overall more fun.

  • Permanently Deleted

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  • This isn't all that wild, in the context of things I've seen and had to hear about in my life. Kids don't even have to be teenagers to think about and try some pretty bold-faced moves.

  • Hubris

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  • Be a manly man and twist the container open by rotating your hands opposite of the seam's direction. If you get in some real manly grunting and groaning you'll be pleasantly surprised to know that your manly courage won't be questioned because everyone will focus on the body.

  • It's not about fungi making cheese. We know that bacteria are the largest component of the microbial community making cheese. The point is that aliens traveling through the enormous, barren-of-everything wastes would likely know how to use biotechnology, such as fungi and bacteria, to replicate the life cycles found on their homeworld. In ours, it's fungi breaking down organic matter, bacteria turning nitrogen into nitrates/nitrites, cyanobacteria turning carbon dioxide into reduced organic (carbon) compounds, etc., etc. In theirs, it could be strange silicon/phosporus/sulfur forms (unlikely, due to a bunch of esoteric but important rules about the chemistry of those elements) being processed by microbial life. After all, do you think a single celled microbe, or a relatively giant multi-cellular organism will arise first? If life there is anything like here, the single-celled organisms will be the foundation of any multi-cellular organism's environment, each contribution of the microbes shaping the biochemical pathways that the larger organisms will use merely by providing building blocks and affecting the environment, ala the sudden explosion of atmospheric, gaseous oxygen when microbes began to explore the pathways of photosynthesis.

  • Also probiotic in itself is not a real thing

    Oh please do go and fuck off. I've had to spend a ridiculous portion of my life reading the research on probiotics, and how they work is not entirely understood, but it's a far better established idea than "[introducing] more fuckboy dudes" into the targeted ecosystem.

  • Am I just crazy, or is the mary illustrated here kind of a bitch? The baby isn't going to care if you get it a fucking onesie or a lasagna, because it definitely won't understand anything going on for another year, minimum. If I bring a gift 'for the baby' that the parents will use, isn't that just as good? Maybe gold, incense, and myrrh aren't the best things to put in the crib, but I'm pretty sure it was some 14-year old hands that opened the gift wrap, and those 14 year old hands can sell the expensive gifts if they want to.

  • The defense can try to reject any juror that shows significant malice. Oftentimes both sides only have so many that they can strike from the potential juror pool unless the judge agrees there is enough bias to sway someone.

    ...and since this entire thread started because the judge is married to a previous executive of a healthcare* company, well, good luck Luigi defense.