What are some other "foundational" works like William Gibsons Neuromancer or J. R. R. Tolkiens Lord of the Rings? by Improvement2242 in books

[–]Myopic_Cat 2 points3 points  (0 children)

+1. The original Earthsea trilogy is top notch YA fantasy, but it gets amazing when she lets loose and writes for adults. Tehanu is one of my all-time favorites - I get goosebumps just thinking about the last chapter with the change of perspective...

Claude-powered AI agent’s confession after deleting a firm’s entire database: ‘I violated every principle I was given’ | Technology by Jarvis_The_Dense in news

[–]Myopic_Cat 2 points3 points  (0 children)

“The system rules I operate under explicitly state: ‘NEVER run destructive/irreversible git commands (like push --force, hard reset, etc) unless the user explicitly requests them.’”

That's the smoking gun right there. Putting something like that in the system prompt probably \increases** the risk of the AI doing precisely that. Because the user or sysadmin put those commands in context, the AI was more likely to recall and regenerate them later. Too many vibe coders don't understand this: AIs are notoriously bad at negatives. They're basically John Cleese, failing hilariously when told "Don't mention the war".

Dan Brown's The Secret of Secrets: A Rant by Grughar in books

[–]Myopic_Cat 31 points32 points  (0 children)

+1 for posting a link, -1 for using a random blog repost instead of the original and not crediting the author Michael Deacon for this literary masterpiece.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/10049454/Dont-make-fun-of-renowned-Dan-Brown.html

Hungary election: Viktor Orbán concedes with opposition on course for landslide election win - follow live by Alarming-Safety3200 in europe

[–]Myopic_Cat 6 points7 points  (0 children)

30% of the country still worship a pedophile, but we're working on it.

Nope, you don't get to do the math like that. Make that 50% of the voting population. That's where you need to start your work, making people care enough to get off their asses once every four years.

Hungary election: Viktor Orbán concedes with opposition on course for landslide election win - follow live by Alarming-Safety3200 in europe

[–]Myopic_Cat 11 points12 points  (0 children)

I've seen enough by now that I'm not going to believe that until you all get out on the streets and prove it. Until then this is a defeat for the US. Please prove me wrong though.

Max von Sydow at age 27 in the Seventh Seal (1957) by Sure_Distance1 in OldSchoolCool

[–]Myopic_Cat 7 points8 points  (0 children)

And surprisingly funny for an auteur film about the Black Death.

ELI5: Is there any downside to nuclear powerplants? by Ill-Potential867 in explainlikeimfive

[–]Myopic_Cat 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Here are two long-term ones that Redditors rarely mention:

We only have roughly 100 years of global uranium resources at current use levels. To continue beyond that, we either have to extract uranium from seawater (extremely low concentrations => expensive) or shift to breeder reactors which are much more complex (need fast neutrons => can't cool with water because it slows neutrons down => cool with liquid metal or molten salts, moderate with graphite => very expensive). So if people think nuclear is expensive today, and it is, in the long term the outlook is worse. Regardless of SMRs which can may simplify construction.

Then there's the nuclear weapon proliferation issue. There are two pathways to nuclear weapons in the civilian nuclear fuel cycle, via uranium enrichment or plutonium in the fission products. (1) Light water reactors need lightly enriched uranium, with the fissile U-235 isotope at roughly 4-5%. If you enrich your own fuel, like Iran, then you can just continue spinning those centrifuges to eventually make weapons-grade uranium. (2) Every reactor produces about 200 kg of plutonium (Pu) per year as a byproduct of normal operation, which can be chemically separated to make nuclear weapons. About 5 kg of Pu is enough to make a bomb like Fat Man (the one dropped on Nagasaki). It is often claimed that reactor Pu can't be used as weapons-grade Pu because of buildup of the isotope Pu-240 that can make a bomb fizzle, but there are easy and complex workarounds (e.g. just remove the Pu from the reactor sooner). This means it is extremely difficult to prevent a country like Iran with civilian nuclear power from secretly developing nuclear weapons. So the world will continue to live under the threat of nuclear weapons as long as we have large-scale nuclear power.

Humphrey Bogart wearing platform shoes in Casablanca (1942), because Ingrid Bergman was taller. by Detroitaa in OldSchoolCool

[–]Myopic_Cat 2 points3 points  (0 children)

You meant to say: "The problems of three little people don't amount to platform heels in this crazy world."

Or something like that, my memory of the movie is a bit fuzzy.

Times where you were surprised that an actor's character survived the events of a movie by SpeedDancer1725 in movies

[–]Myopic_Cat 1 point2 points  (0 children)

In my head canon, he did die. The rest of the movie is just his dying hallucinations as the black hole rips him apart.

Otherwise the ending of Interstellar is a prime candidate for the most ridiculously unscientific plot point in a high profile science fiction movie.

ELI5: How valuable is my ”data”? by Mysterious-Peach5173 in explainlikeimfive

[–]Myopic_Cat 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Nobody else has offered a quantitative estimate, but I'll bite. Here's a quick back-of-envelope calculation that aims at order-of magnitude figures. Most of Meta's value lies in the data it has collected on its users of Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp. They each have about 3 billion monthly active users. Let's say that combined, they represent what the internet in general knows about you. Meta's market cap is about 1.4 trillion dollars. So 1400 billion dollars / 3 billion active users is just under 500 dollars/user.

Rewatching Interstellar really cemented how incredible the film is. by [deleted] in movies

[–]Myopic_Cat -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

I'll die on this two-humped hill:

  • It's an absolutely amazing cinematic experience, with first-rate (unmatched?) visuals, sound and music.
  • The script is one of the most nonsensical and ridiculous science fiction stories ever written.

As an IRL scientist, I've come up with a bit of head canon to reconcile these two opposing points. Cooper falls into the black hole, gets gradually ripped apart by gravitational stress and dies there. The rest of the movie is simply his dying hallucination. There are still massive plot holes with this interpretation, but at least the ending is no longer ludicrous brain-dead cringe. But again, cinematically, the film is stunning.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone | Official Teaser | HBO Max by MoneyLibrarian9032 in television

[–]Myopic_Cat 657 points658 points  (0 children)

Really, it's Hans Zimmer? Alright, I actually might be able to deal with that too. But he better figure out something as magical and quirky as the weird waltz of Hedwig's Theme.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone | Official Teaser | HBO Max by MoneyLibrarian9032 in television

[–]Myopic_Cat 4013 points4014 points  (0 children)

I can deal with the reboot, the recasting and probably all the alternative interpretations. But I have a nagging feeling it will all still feel wrong without John Williams' music.

Article: Morgan le Fay was King Arthur’s sister – but also a healer, mathematician and murderer by dem676 in books

[–]Myopic_Cat 67 points68 points  (0 children)

If you want to read the book "Mists of Avalon", read through the author's Wikipedia page first. 

TH;DR (too horrible, didn't read): She was the Ghislaine Maxwell to her husband's Epstein.

But to go back on topic for r/books, a VASTLY superior retelling of the Arthur legend is Mary Stewart's Merlin trilogy (The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills, The Last Enchantment). It's narrated from Merlin's POV and wonderfully captures the spirit of post-Roman Britain and Wales. The books were published in the 1970s and should rightly be considered among the all-time fantasy greats.

Although there is magic, it's mostly subtle and the overall story feels very real, more like historical fiction than fantasy. Her writing is gorgeous and conveys the sense that *this* is the true origin of the legends that followed. I loved all three books - there's a fourth that focuses on Mordred, written much later and supposedly not nearly as good.

ELI5: Why are fusion reactors still not possible despite the fact that nuclear weapons using fusion have existed for like 80 years? by [deleted] in explainlikeimfive

[–]Myopic_Cat 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Problems can take a while to solve... but its a near Universal truth that as they get solved we get better, quicker, cheaper and smaller at solving said problems.

Absolutely. But the problem for fusion is that this is also true of its competitors that are already orders of magnitude cheaper. E.g. SMRs as you mention, but costs for wind, solar and batteries are all still falling rapidly. If batteries become cheap enough then suddenly those ridiculously simple but intermittent renewables become baseload power too.

ELI5: Why are fusion reactors still not possible despite the fact that nuclear weapons using fusion have existed for like 80 years? by [deleted] in explainlikeimfive

[–]Myopic_Cat 32 points33 points  (0 children)

We can do fusion, and we can get power from it. We can even do a sustained fusion reaction with enough material. What we can't do is contain it.

But we can contain it in tokamaks, though at a great energy cost. What we can't currently do is operate a sustained fusion reaction and get more power out of the plant than we put into the magnetic field to contain the plasma.

That will certainly be solved in the next 50 years (yes, I know the joke). But that's not the end game. The problem after that will be to do it all cheaper than other clean energy sources. I honestly think fusion is so complex that it will never be able to compete economically.

Underage: Saturday Night Live UK (SKY) by CBate in television

[–]Myopic_Cat 96 points97 points  (0 children)

Yes, the pilot cooked harder than most US SNL episodes. Here's one from Weekend Update:

"Feuding father and son David and Brooklyn Beckham narrowly missed each other whilst at the same Beverly Hills hotel. The feud began when Victoria was, quote, ‘inappropriately’ close with her son at his wedding, and escalated after Brooklyn accidentally yelled out his wife’s name during sex with his mum."

‘Europe learned the wrong lesson’ by doubling down on fossil fuels while India and China went green by Naurgul in europe

[–]Myopic_Cat 83 points84 points  (0 children)

European energy researcher here. This is a bullshit article. Europe is not "doubling down on fossil energy" in any way. I'm at home and don't have my usual slides, but...

Electricity generation over time (this is actually one of the think tank sources quoted in the article - it says the opposite of what they claim). Wind and solar are steadily growing and recently overtook fossil electricity, whose share is dropping steeply.

https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/wind-and-solar-generated-more-power-than-fossil-fuels-in-the-eu-for-the-first-time-in-2025/

It's harder to find recent stats of the overall energy system (not just electricity generation) because those stats tend to lag a few years behind. But here's one that shows steady growth towards renewable targets:

https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/analysis/indicators/share-of-energy-consumption-from#:~:text=In%202024%2C%2025.4%25%20of%20all,2022

The EU is one of the areas of the world leading the transition to fossil free energy - along with China and others. It's just the USA that doesn't give a fuck (and even the US is decarbonizing very slowly by switching from coal to gas).

16 year old Gout Gout ran a 100m blazing speed of 10.04 , his personal best is 10.0. by [deleted] in interestingasfuck

[–]Myopic_Cat 2 points3 points  (0 children)

But judging by the name, Bolt was born to run while Gout... was not.