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Dimand

@ Dimand @aussie.zone

Posts
2
Comments
56
Joined
2 yr. ago

  • New OpenAI Tool Renews Fears That “AI Slop” Will Overwhelm Scientific Research

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  • It's certainly already made it worse. And I have been knocking back a lot of papers that at first look sound amazing but on deeper reading say nothing of value. The common trend now is to make a paper sound like you have done the experiment when actually it was just a thought experiment or simulation. I have seen theory papers with diagrams you would expect from an experimental students PhD thesis.

    It's having a terrible impact on the review process. I have been getting clearly LLM responses from reviewers for manuscripts, emdashes and flowery language all over the place but saying nothing of value. Which sucks because decent reviewers are often a big help when progressing research.

    But the bigger issue is that in general I think the review system is overwhelmed. I recently got a single line reviewer response for a manuscript submitted to Optics express, a journal I would have considered above such issues in the past. The quality of review is in freefall right now.

    I have talked to colleges around the country that feel the same way. I don't think the existing system will continue in the old way much longer. At this point, youa re almost better off putting a groundbreaking discovery straight on the arXiv and just skipping the peer review process. It is basically just a waste of time now, and only still exists as a gatekeeping step into prestigious journals. I also look at younger researches with high h indexes suspiciously. How much time did you spend gaming the paper system as opposed to actually doing useful research that takes time but generates less papers?

  • Four-year-old boy dies after car crashes into shopping centre in Canberra

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  • I actually think we have excellent gun laws and I expect the net effect of the upcoming changes will largely be positive as well.

    However strongly disagree that just because the designer of the car wasn't thinking it would be used to kill things, makes the car less dangerous than it is. I honestly wish people treated cars with a much closer attitude to firearms, a machine with potential to do incredible damage and harm if used incorrectly.

    I do wonder what the outcome would have been if the Bondi terrorists had used cars instead of firearms. Probably a lot of sadness, a few bollards and a political, "guess there is nothing we can do about this".

  • Four-year-old boy dies after car crashes into shopping centre in Canberra

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  • Why? Cars are incredibly dangerous devices, even though modern cars are designed to 'feel" safe. Hell you even need a licence to use one. Many people that drive have no idea how much damage they are capable of behind the wheel and are totally complacent.

    If they didn't have such incredible utility, they would be far more restricted.

  • Removed

    Australia’s strongest gun reform since the Port Arthur massacre has become law. Here’s what you need to know

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  • I would say it's pretty typical of all Aus communication and intelligence legislation from the last 20 years. Put total overreach into the legislation then apply it selectively, because scary terrorists or scary guns or fucking bunyips, idk.

    I have seen a lot of wives and mates getting gun licences recently. Pretty easy way to overcome the rather pointless quantity limitations. In some ways I worry the number limits may actually increase the spread of firearms in the country.

  • Microsoft Office has been renamed to “Microsoft 365 Copilot app”

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  • microslop

  • Australia’s red and yellow beach flags can confuse tourists. Is it time to change them?

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  • No. Some people will continue to be morons no mater what changes. The studly might as well find that 50% of people have below median intelligence.

    Green implies safe, swimming at the beach is never safe, even for a strong swimmer. There are dozens of pictorial danger signs at popular beaches and usually signs about how to interpret the flags.

  • NVIDIA Drops Pascal Support On Linux, Causing Chaos On Arch Linux

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  • Looks cool, thanks for the link. I'll give it a go.

  • NVIDIA Drops Pascal Support On Linux, Causing Chaos On Arch Linux

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  • Sounds like it's time to switch out the 1080ti for a 9070xt. Been almost 10 years, probably due for an upgrade.

    I will miss having that CUDA compatibility on hand for matlab tinkering. I wonder if any translation layers are working yet?

  • Anthony Albanese must show the same determination as John Howard following the Port Arthur massacre

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  • I like the idea of a case by case assessment. I feel like they should have already been doing this in the background and questioning people with sus armouries.

    But I strongly disagree with the removal of the class system. I know it will get abused and some yahoo will successfully argue they need a semi auto rifle for some stupid reason and get it without having to go through the current class C license requirements.

    Our class system is very effective and shouldn't be watered down because of this.

    Edit: basically, in the list of tools, keep the classes, they are very good but might need some updating to put more in class C.

  • Anthony Albanese must show the same determination as John Howard following the Port Arthur massacre

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  • It is true that after he was disarmed he went and got another gun. The gun number argument feels like an ineffective bandaid though.

    Is the collector with 20+ break action shotguns that are all over 60 years old and enjoys showing them off at the trap range is a worry, almost certainly not.

    What about some random guy with two very similar straight pull shotguns that can easily be modified to a higher capacity mag. And who just put in an application for their 3rd and 4th very similar guns (within say a hypothetical 4 gun limit).

    I would hope that the second person gets a much closer look over than the first. This is where an electronic national register and the resources to have closer individual scrutiny would be far more effective.

  • Anthony Albanese must show the same determination as John Howard following the Port Arthur massacre

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  • There is some truth to this though the author is leaning pretty heavily one way.

    To be a member of a sporting club I need to be a paid SSAA (Sports Shooting Association Australia) member. And the SSAA lobbies for changes in gun restrictions that I fundamentally disagree with.

    This is one of the main reasons I quit my membership and went rec hunting only when I renewed my license.

  • Anthony Albanese must show the same determination as John Howard following the Port Arthur massacre

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  • I would like to see some reform from this.

    I would very much like to see the national electronic register implanted fast and effectively along with nationally consistent laws. The current paper form system here in the ACT feels very outdated and I'm sure that the information transfer is slow and difficult.

    I would also like to see them change straight pull action rifles and shotguns to class C. I think there is a good argument for Adler style lever action shotguns to be class C as well. I feel like the legislation has not kept up here and the fire rate of these guns is a bit too high.

    I'm not against the citizen only limitation (noting it won't affect me) but I'm not sure if excluding permanent residents will have any significant impact.

    In terms of number limits, I am also unsure if this will have any significant influence. To me, even 1 gun is enough to be very dangerous. You can't really shoot more than one at a time. It's not like explosives where the total amount directly correlates to more dangerous. I would feel bad if I inherited my great great grandfather's still functional shotgun and had to destroy a 120 year old antique because I already had 2 other guns.

  • Live updates: At least 11 dead in shooting at Australia's Bondi Beach targeting Jewish community, officials say

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  • Haha. We have plenty of moron politicians. But typically all our legislation is usually written by public servants with expert advice and lawyers, and even they get it wrong sometimes. The politicians direct what they want, but most of them have never written a law. I assumed it worked this way in most places.

  • Live updates: At least 11 dead in shooting at Australia's Bondi Beach targeting Jewish community, officials say

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  • All good mate, I mostly just try and stop the spread of misinformation on Aus gun laws. Most people don't know much about them.

    The leaver actions are fast. The main difference is that you can leave your finger on the trigger for a pump and are meant to take it off for the leaver action, though you could do it with your non trigger hand. People are also buying left handed bolt action shotguns to get around this, though it's more awkward. All our shotguns have a capacity limit, usually 5 or less. It looks like these guys modified their barrel mags to hold more.

    You're not wrong about wasted ammo, reliability and reload speed, but you have to think about the worst case scenarios. Situation: close range, large dense crowd, shooter with an unreasonable amount of ammunition, and best luck in the world with no jams or reliability issues. That's the formula for mass casualties. This is what our laws are effective at protecting against, primarily by limiting the rate of fire.

  • Live updates: At least 11 dead in shooting at Australia's Bondi Beach targeting Jewish community, officials say

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  • Can't believe the guts that must have taken. Absolute legend.

  • Live updates: At least 11 dead in shooting at Australia's Bondi Beach targeting Jewish community, officials say

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  • Yeah no shit mate. That's why pump shotguns are also under a cat C licence here. The legislators weren't stupid, they basically categorised things on fire rate and public danger.

    The Adler lever actions are very questionable in my opinion. They are almost as fast. Though the one I tried would jam all the time. Lever actions like that weren't a common thing in the 90's so it slipped by for a while.

    And saying that a bolt action is potentially worse than a semi auto is some full on American bulshit. Sure things can jam and go wrong, but in the worst case situation with aresholes like this firing into a dense crowd where aim doesn't really matter, faster shooting is more casualties.

  • Live updates: At least 11 dead in shooting at Australia's Bondi Beach targeting Jewish community, officials say

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  • A cat C license (self loading) is a lot more difficult to get than a cat A,B licence. So far this has worked, no semi auto terrorist attacks since Port Arthur. Thank fuck these guys did not have semi auto weapons.

    I honestly wouldn't have much issue with them removing the cat C licence, effectively banning semi auto outside of military use. But it certainly has some legitimate use cases in feral animal control.

  • NSFW

    What's the hardest addiction you've tried to break or are trying to break?

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  • Never heard of this but are they deliberately made to taste bad? Seems like a clever idea. The nicotine is there if you need it but the terrible taste puts you off.

    That said, cigarettes smell awful to me and people keep going so I can't imagine how bad they would have to taste.

  • Scientists have finally ‘seen’ dark matter for the first time

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  • https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.07209

    I can't stand these popular science articles that just cherry pick phrases from a paper. tl;dr it's a very promising result but more observation of other galaxies or other mass consistent observations is needed before we should believe this.

    However, the signal from the MW halo alone does not constitute the definitive proof of dark matter annihilation. Detection of annihilation signals from other objects or regions with consistent WIMP parameters will be crucial for the final confirmation. Gamma-ray observations of dwarf galaxies in the MW halo are fascinating from this perspective.

    I would say the most exciting part is this gives us a mass range to optimise the search with earth based detectors. Start looking for 0.5-0.8 TeV masses.

  • YSK that risks to exposure of nuclear radition are often over exaggerated by considering a Linear No Threshold (LNT) model, which does not match with many studies.

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  • It was in the first 5 min that he mentioned it and it's a clear example of available data that clearly shows a cancer correlation with radiation. I don't see how this could be a case of people handling it well.

    Let's be very clear. I'm not saying this LNT wrong and I'm also not saying it's right, but that we don't have enough info to know one way or the other what the effects are in the low dose case. It's an area of active research where it is almost impossible to get good data.

  • Canberra @aussie.zone
    Dimand @aussie.zone

    ANU VC steps down: all staff email

  • Canberra @aussie.zone
    Dimand @aussie.zone

    Why ANU boss Genevieve Bell must go

    www.afr.com /work-and-careers/education/why-anu-boss-genevieve-bell-must-go-20250908-p5mtdn