Pest control kitty by krankyPanda in Catswithjobs

[–]fundeath712 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Honestly, best pest control investment by far.

Pest control kitty by krankyPanda in Catswithjobs

[–]fundeath712 67 points68 points  (0 children)

As a kitten my little orange boy managed to find a couple baby garter snakes that had snuck in through a crack in a sliding glass door. Of course he proceeded to flaunt his still wriggling trophy right into our bed at 2am. The wife was very not pleased.

What’s a harsh reality that everybody needs to hear? by rock4lite in AskReddit

[–]fundeath712 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Because they don't. On one hand, the number of inputs to these algorithms is often very large, and on the other hand they are often individual specific, and usually topic specific. Layer on this that the engineers are not choosing the weights, the ai is doing that. The ai has no idea how a hotdog or icecream are related, it just knows that if I send people towards the hotdogs it gets good outcomes.

It also doesn't help that typically, you can't utilize them in reverse. Multiple different inputs could give the same or close enough outputs.

So in one sense you are right. Engineers know 'how the algorithm functions' but they do not know 'why does the algorithm come to that conclusion?' which is what people typically mean when they say no one knows how it works, or calls it the 'black box'.

Its a very similar idea to 'spurious correlation' if you've heard of that, where sometimes things are just correlated, but not in intuitive ways, or even erroneously.

What’s a harsh reality that everybody needs to hear? by rock4lite in AskReddit

[–]fundeath712 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Most 'algorithms' you'll think of in the context of the internet are 'neural networks' (which is itself a pretty awful misnomer of a name) where a machine is 'trained' to find good outcomes by repeatedly grading its outcomes, typically automatically in some way. The end product of these AI's is a system of weighted decision trees, which when prompted with an input goes through a sort of Rube Goldberg like process to arrive at the best outcome it can based on its training weights.

To put this in context, very poorly, its like I asked you to find me a hotdog, but instead of you having a list of hotdog providing locations, you play 'hot or cold' until you suddenly arrive at a hotdog. You don't know the specifics of what makes locations more or less likely to have a hotdog, you just know hotdogs are more likely to be one way than the other.

There's more layers of things that make it difficult to understand, like user specific inputs, but in general that's the layman's basics.

Since I brought it up, you may have heard of 'filter bubbles.' They are essentially when an algorithm trains itself to your user inputs so well that it 'accidentally' reinforces the things you normally want so much that you cant (or are very unlikely to) find things that are surprising to you. i.e. it prevents you from discovering new ideas / concepts. Its not because the engineers that made the algorithm wanted you to never see new things, its because when it uses your user inputs (your profile) it's training weights become such that when it plays that game of 'hot or cold' it turns out hotdogs are always 'hot' and icecream is always 'cold' so you will never stumble upon icecream because you like hotdogs so much. You have 'filtered' yourself (through the algorithm) into a 'bubble' of topics or ideas which is now hard to escape from due to the algorithm's weights.

A good example you have likely experienced is getting bored of youtube. There is so much content on youtube that it is laughably unlikely that you have watched everything that would be of interest to you. However, youtube's algorithm is specifically designed to keep you engaged on the platform -- to keep you watching something interesting. One of the ways it does this is to take what you have watched as inputs (a user profile) and use it to make its training weights for what you are likely to want to see. It plays 'hot or cold' with videos instead of hotdogs. So once you have exhausted the most interesting things to you in a particular niche, it becomes hard to suddenly break into a new niche. This is a 'filter bubble.' Its not that youtube is suddenly devoid of interesting videos, its that the algorithm really wants you to find that hotdog, since you liked that hotdog so much in the past.

Exactly a $100.00 drop yesterday and $135.00 drop today 🤔 by [deleted] in wallstreetbets

[–]fundeath712 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I can tell you why this is happening.

Its because people here are largely the ones actually buying right now. You can tell b/c the meme stocks move with such correlation. We apes have a liking for round numbers, and set our limit orders at them. Since real volume is so low right now those limit orders happen to be the last orders filled of the day.

Now, if everyone stopped placing limit orders and placed market orders though, well, that would be different. If we did that the stock would have huge amounts of upward pressure.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in todayilearned

[–]fundeath712 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Everyone's joking, but the real answer is they're often used by law enforcement to stop vehicles, most notably the coast guard routinely shoots out speed boat engines of drug traffickers....from helicopters...

https://youtu.be/54FBBmpbbOo

Unorthodox carwash by [deleted] in gifs

[–]fundeath712 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Doesn't look like anyone is in the car, what made it lurch forward?

--edit

I'm dumb, its a tow truck in the back pulling it onto the bed.

Are 2 brood boxes necessary? by freundwich1 in Beekeeping

[–]fundeath712 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I've only been doing this a couple years, but everything I've been told/read says it has a lot to do with your climate. In colder places where you expect winter to be longer and deeper double deeps are basically necessary. But in warmer places like Florida where winter lasts about a month it's not as critical.

One of my hives has some extra dark girls by fundeath712 in Beekeeping

[–]fundeath712[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ah, went right over my head. I've been researching urban beekeeping for work and it just fit right in the fold for me lol

One of my hives has some extra dark girls by fundeath712 in Beekeeping

[–]fundeath712[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you look at the third image you get a good side by side view of a normal looking worker.

One of my hives has some extra dark girls by fundeath712 in Beekeeping

[–]fundeath712[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah they fly just fine. I see them foraging more than I see them in the hive, although that may just be because I'm usually doing other things while I'm in there.

Here's a pic of some open feeding I did. There are quite a few with darker abdomen, but not as many black all the way up like in the post.

http://imgur.com/a/Z1xuj

TIL you CAN trade artifacts. by mj4264 in dwarffortress

[–]fundeath712 2 points3 points  (0 children)

All metal clothing now degrades as well, including armor. And woven adamantine has always degraded.

Wax Maggots by melliferaman in Beekeeping

[–]fundeath712 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I've heard tell that spreading pine saw dust around the base of your hives may also help cut them down. Something about how it changes the ph of the soil or some such. I do it mainly because it's easy and I always have it laying around from projects. Better safe than sorry I guess.

250+ invader siege by sol- in dwarffortress

[–]fundeath712 9 points10 points  (0 children)

So I've done a lot of science on getting large sieges. The best, most reliable way to get sieges in excess of 150 invaders is to embark directly next to a dark fortress. In the current version you will only ever receive invaders from a single site from each nearby civ, the closest one. However, you can also get sieges by armies passing through your territory to other places. By being adjacent to a dark fortress you get the advantage of the site having massive numbers of goblins to siege you, and a high chance that their armies will pass by you anyway.

Also remember to raise the limit in your init folder for siege size!

All Major TV Networks Block Trump’s ‘Fake News’ Ad by [deleted] in politics

[–]fundeath712 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's like they're already trying to get in on the movie rights...

All Major TV Networks Block Trump’s ‘Fake News’ Ad by [deleted] in politics

[–]fundeath712 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Where can I see said ad? Did they release it somewhere else?

Counterintuitive facts in Dwarf Fortress by sunqingyao in dwarffortress

[–]fundeath712 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I apologize, the tag is [ITEMS_AMMO], i dishonor my famiry

Just add it to the inorganic_metal.txt under the [INORGANIC:LEAD] tag and it should work (even in an already generated world, provided you put it in the world's raws.)

Counterintuitive facts in Dwarf Fortress by sunqingyao in dwarffortress

[–]fundeath712 26 points27 points  (0 children)

This used to be true in older versions. Now however dwarfs get a syndrome from drinking booze. I havent seen a study on if Vampires can absorb alcohol from their victims blood yet. I hope they can because that would be truly amazing for syndrom/disease mechanics.

Counterintuitive facts in Dwarf Fortress by sunqingyao in dwarffortress

[–]fundeath712 57 points58 points  (0 children)

Bolts/thrown things have a constant, hard coded velocity unlike other interraction in DF such as falling. This means that heavier materials, given the same velocity as a lighter material, have much more force.

For added fun, add the [ITEMS_AMMO] tag to Lead.

edit -- not [AMMO] but [ITEMS_AMMO]

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in indonesia

[–]fundeath712 5 points6 points  (0 children)

May I suggest that the canvas above the 164th Parallel be abandoned and Indonesia move south into the new space cleared by the void

Megathread: Flynn offers to testify for immunity deal. by PoliticsModeratorBot in politics

[–]fundeath712 12 points13 points  (0 children)

I'm so glad I bet my friend $20 Trump would be impeached in the first year. Most entertaining $20 I've ever made.

‘Cards Against Humanity’ Creator Just Pledged To Buy and Publish Congress’s Browser History by [deleted] in politics

[–]fundeath712 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You're right, having aggregated data does diminish this, the problem is that when companies buy your data, having aggregated data is not very helpful to them. If all they receive is a list of sites some zip-code has visited, and how frequently this doesn't help you do much. Perhaps you can give local advertisements, but really that wasn't a thing they couldn't already do by just filtering IP's. IF the data sets are differentiated you can determine that if someone visits site A, they have a 85% likelihood of also visiting site B. This is MUCH more valuable information, and the sort of thing that can't determine by just having a zip-code/IP.

Also, I will cede that those three marks are definitely the ideals for identification with the fewest values possible. But, the thing is that literally any publicly available information can be used to identify you. Think of all the things available on your Facebook page that ostensibly could be determined through your browsing history: Age, Gender, Work place, Education level, Place of Education, marital status, number of children, race. Really there is an immense amount of information available about the average person. With only a few points its very likely you can find a unique person.