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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • I think that’s a bad idea, both legally and ethically. Vehicles cause tens of thousands of deaths - not to mention injuries - per year in North America. You’re proposing that a company who can meet that standard is absolved of liability? Meet, not improve.

    In that case, you’ve given these companies license to literally make money off of removing responsibility for those deaths. The driver’s not responsible, and neither is the company. That seems pretty terrible to me, and I’m sure to the loved ones of anyone who has been killed in a vehicle collision.





  • Part of this is a debate on what the definition of intelligence and/or consciousness is, which I am not qualified to discuss. (I say “discuss” instead of “answer” because there is not an agreed upon answer to either of those.)

    That said, one of the main purposes of AGI would be able to learn novel subject matter, and to come up with solutions to novel problems. No machine learning tool we have created so far is capable of that, on a fundamental level. They require humans to frame their training data by defining what the success criteria is, or they spit out the statistically likely human-like response based on all of the human-generated content they’ve consumed.

    In short, they cannot understand a concept that humans haven’t yet understood, and can only echo solutions that humans have already tried.







  • Are there any electric tractors/combines on the market, let alone used ones? I mean industrial sized, not small yard work equipment.

    EDIT: OK, yes, there are some small electrified tractors available now. Fendt has a line available to customers, John Deere has a prototype, etc… But they are the smallest size of industrial tractors, meant for work like greenhouses, feeding livestock, municipal work, etc…


  • Electrifying farm equipment has huge engineering hurdles. They need a massive amount of power, which would mean very large and incredibly expensive battery packs. Those batteries would take either a long time to charge, or high current charging stations.

    During seeding or harvest the machines often run for 16+ hours a day, and are literally out in the middle of a field. Where is the super-fast charging station going to go? They can’t easily travel all the machinery back to home base every night, and there’s no way it makes economical sense for a farm operation to get chargers installed at every field.

    These are not necessarily insurmountable problems. There are a number of similarities to trucking, for example, and that’s an industry that’s starting to see electrification now. But the logistical problems are much harder than trucking. The biggest reason that John Deere etc… aren’t making electric tractors right now is that no one would buy one, because no one has any infrastructure in place for it.



  • While I’m sure the obvious systemic issues contribute to not looking for alternatives, that does sound like largely an issue inherent to optical pulse oximeters. Engineers aren’t miracle workers, they can’t change physics to their liking.

    I’m sure pulse oximeters now are more accurate than they were 20 years ago. The fact we’re still using them is because no alternatives have been found which are as easy to use, reliable, and non-invasive as pulse oximeters, even with the known downsides.






  • Canadian here. A minority gov is one which has less than X seats (where X is 50% in Canada and I believe Australia too), and usually that requires a coalition. “Forming government” in a parliamentary system like these basically means “has a good chance of passing meaningful legislation.” Since the leading party can’t do so alone, they form an agreement with another party (or multiple) to help them reach that criteria.

    It is entirely possible for the party with the most seats to also not form government, if they’re far enough below 50% and can secure no agreement with another party to push them across the line. In these situations, another general election would soon follow.