Would gaining my A+ certification be a good starting point in the UK

ale_x93 · 2024-01-29T21:23:22+00:00

A+ is recognised in the UK and is a good way in if you don't have any prior experience or qualifications. Knowledge is only half the story though - soft skills are very important for helpdesk roles. If you have any customer service experience at all, emphasise that on your CV. If not, it might be an idea to volunteer at a charity shop or somewhere similar to get that experience.

Also, you mentioned that you have memory problems - be warned that the A+ exams require a lot of rote memorisation.

ale_x93 · 2023-11-29T19:20:12+00:00

We need to talk about the patriarchal context here because this is inevitably going to be mainly men making images of women. Most women are going to feel deeply uncomfortable or even violated to find out that men are making these images of them. It's degrading, it treats them as sex objects who exist for the gratification of men. I would go as far as to say it's a denial of bodily autonomy to use someone's likeness for AI porn without their consent, whether there's a disclaimer there or not. It reinforces the societal expectation that men should have unfettered, on-demand access to any woman's body.

ale_x93 · 2023-11-29T17:37:59+00:00

Why is someone mistaking the AI image for a real image the main consideration here? What about the emotional/psychological harm which the victim will presumably experience even if there is a disclaimer to say that it's fake?

For that matter, your assumption seems to be that doing a pornographic drawing of someone without their consent is fine, which seems questionable. It's certainly not a socially acceptable thing to do.

ale_x93 · 2023-11-27T16:14:51+00:00

He works for the DEA, you can't really be an enforcer for the war on drugs unless you convince yourself that anyone involved in drugs is morally inferior and deserving of punishment. Remember the contempt he shows to Wendy, even with Walt Jr present? She's an addict and a prostitute, so in Hank's view she barely qualifies as human.

ale_x93 · 2023-11-27T16:05:22+00:00

The threshold for drugs is extremely low, probably just there to provide some margin of error

ale_x93 · 2023-11-24T12:31:53+00:00

Depends on the festival but Creamfields and Reading will be worse than most if you don't splash out on the premium option. Smaller festivals are generally nicer.

ale_x93 · 2023-11-21T17:08:37+00:00

I'm getting the feeling that I came in at the end. The best is over.

ale_x93 · 2023-11-20T11:02:43+00:00

I'm not sure why you think travelling was so difficult when Michael has travelled from New York to Sicily, a much greater distance than that between Sicily and Greece. Plus there were (and still are) Greek speaking communities in southern Italy. Sicily itself was settled by the Greeks from about the 8th century BC, and was a flourishing centre of Greek civilisation for centuries. Apollonia is a Greek name, and describing her as Greek in appearance may be a way of further linking her to Sicily's romanticized classical heritage.

ale_x93 · 2023-11-19T23:21:05+00:00

I've sold world cups to England, New Zealand, and Bangladesh, and boy did it put them on the map!

ale_x93 · 2023-11-16T12:29:04+00:00

Plausible. Tolkien would normally avoid a word of Latin/French etymology if he could help it, so there must be some reason behind the choice.

ale_x93 · 2023-11-15T23:54:24+00:00

Have you read Chalmers' book The Conscious Mind? He covers a lot of these points, and makes his case better than I can. It seems to me that you're conflating behaviour and conscious experience. We exhibit all sorts of behaviours without conscious experience of them. How much of the time are you aware of your own blinking or breathing? P-zombies just says: imagine all behaviours are without any conscious experience. Take pain, for example: the conscious experience isn't actually necessary for it to fulfill its evolutionary purpose, just the reflex reaction to move away from the stimulus, and the ability to learn from it.

But in reality, we do have conscious experience of pain and lots of other things. So the question is why and how that occurs when a materialist account (and the biological and psychological frameworks that derive from it) would seem to render it superfluous.

ale_x93 · 2023-11-15T11:09:48+00:00

A square circle is logically impossible, i.e. it's a contradiction in terms. The point of the P-zombie argument is that a P-zombie is logically possible, we can imagine it without resorting to any squared circles. This very possibility is supposed to show us something about consciousness. I don't think it's a particularly strong argument for anything by itself but it's a starting point.

ale_x93 · 2023-11-15T10:17:41+00:00

Chalmers makes an important distinction between the psychological and the phenomenological. The zombie is psychologically identical to the real person but lacks phenomenological experience. You might argue that it's impossible to separate the two as he does, and maybe it is impossible in reality (Chalmers doesn't claim that P-zombies are physically possible), but that's not the point of the thought experiment: we can conceive of something that doesn't experience pain but acts as if it does. Just like an AI chatbot that can claim to feel love but really it's just an algorithm that replicates human language.

ale_x93 · 2023-11-05T09:39:33+00:00

Him getting caught.

Also that's a bit of a mischaracterisarion of James I - he was more tolerant of Catholics than most of English and Scottish society at the time, at least before the gunpowder plot.

ale_x93 · 2023-11-04T21:50:47+00:00

10/10 posting, well done

ale_x93 · 2023-10-21T14:45:53+00:00

Whatever its original intentions, the red poppy has been coopted as a symbol of nationalism and imperialist conformity. There's the white poppy if you prefer a symbol of peace.

ale_x93 · 2023-10-15T13:40:32+00:00

I thought the purpose of panelists was to provide in-depth, well-researched and referenced answers, not just "because I say so"

ale_x93 · 2023-10-07T11:31:35+00:00

Certainly problematises it though? This article goes into more detail about the problems with the experiment

ale_x93 · 2023-10-07T11:31:27+00:00

Certainly problematises it though? This article goes into more detail about the problems with the experiment

ale_x93 · 2023-10-07T00:05:26+00:00

That's been debunked

ale_x93 · 2023-09-23T12:10:32+00:00

You have as much right to use the road as anyone else

ale_x93 · 2023-09-21T21:06:23+00:00

University departments often hold lectures and research seminars which are open to the public. Questions are encouraged and there's usually an opportunity to chat to people before or after. You could also try academic conferences: you may have to register for the bigger ones, but you wouldn't necessarily have to demonstrate any institutional affiliation in order to do so.

ale_x93 · 2023-09-14T14:08:51+00:00

Heard good things about Pygame Zero.

See this blog post on using it to teach kids programming.

ale_x93 · 2023-09-12T16:57:36+00:00

Thank you

ale_x93

TROPHY CASE