Is half the site dead?

[oneagainst]

Hang on, it's just after 11pm here...

So that means...

There's a dog in the backyard!

doxxing @Duleigh as an Antipodean wiener? Fair dinkum.

 

[onehitwanda]

doxxing @Duleigh as an Antipodean wiener? Fair dinkum.

this is the strangest sentence I've read today and it is magnificent.

 

[JuanSeiszFitzHall]

a poem, with apologies to Samuel Taylor Coleridge


fuck it I actually can't, Kublai Khan has defeated my mid-afternoon abilities.

Scholars recently found the first draft of "Xanadu:"

In Xanadu did Kublai Khan
Oh bloody Hell, it's that twit from Porlock again

 

[Duleigh]

More like quadrapodean - Uff da!

 

[EmilyMiller]

View attachment 2238745

Have you been violating IT policy again?

Policies are meant to be violated, hun .

Em

 

[MrPixel]

Re-railing this thread...

Still can't get to stories from the index page, author control panel still down, log-in page broken. Can get to the forums (...obviously!... duh...) but it takes 6 Hail Marys and that the browser has kept the cookies from previous login. Manu must be going nuts trying to tie-down all the loose ends from what I suspect was supposed to be a minor upgrade. It's all pretty borked-up at the moment.

On the plus side, the local internet has been fixed. Between my computer wanting to drop the hotspot connection every time I left it for more than 5 minutes and LitE's server woes it's been a frustrating fun morning.

Policies are meant to be violated, hun .

Oh. Is that what you call "it" now?

 

[EmilyMiller]

Ooo! I like what you did there - A Cat 5 of Nine Tails!

Is it revealing too much about me to say I got that joke ?

Em

 

[SimonDoom]

Different strokes for different folks.

Em

As it should be.

 

[onehitwanda]

Is it revealing too much about me to say I got that joke ?

Em

we all know you're a massive Nerd.

(it's one of the reasons we love you so much)

 

[EmilyMiller]

Seems to be working now for me, if a little slowly.

I take full responsibility. Manu had to upgrade the servers to cope with anticipated demand for my second LW story.

Sorry folks.

Em

 

[EmilyMiller]

we all know you're a massive Nerd.

(it's one of the reasons we love you so much)

I know too much IT shit for a biologist

Em

 

[onehitwanda]

I know too much IT shit for a biologist

Em

can't do sexy sexy science without a sexy sexy router.

 

[EmilyMiller]

can't do sexy sexy science without a sexy sexy router.

Actually, AI is doing some of the stuff I used to do. If you can accurately predict protein folding, who needs grunts like me to increase expression and purify it? Baculovirus giving way to Insilicocovirus.

Em

 

[MrPixel]

Actually, AI is doing some of the stuff I used to do. If you can accurately predict protein folding, who needs grunts like me to increase expression and purify it? Baculovirus giving way to Insilicocovirus.

I dunno, Em. AI might be the latest IT fad in several disciplines, but it still needs to have a "sanity check" step in the process. You know, some person with the training and skills to verify that, yep, it's right... this time.

 

[onehitwanda]

Actually, AI is doing some of the stuff I used to do. If you can accurately predict protein folding, who needs grunts like me to increase expression and purify it? Baculovirus giving way to Insilicocovirus.

Em

who's going to tell the AI it's wrong, or that that nitrogen-heavy complex it failed to notice on the end actually makes your anti-insomnia drug a rather shock-sensitive explosive?

tangent: I manage engineers for my many sins. Aspects of my job could probably be replaced with AI, but very little of theirs could. And none of them are going to tell an AI with no morals stuff that they will tell mum (me). On a good day I'm highly skeptical about AI.

Actually make that on a *very* good day when I've had a nice bottle of wine and some cuddles. All other times I lump it alongside snake-oil and perpetual motion machines.

 

[MrPixel]

<thread derail>

I don't know if you guys read the recent story, but (some US military operation) conducted an AI battle simulation that ended with the AI actor killing the (simulated) operator because he/she/it was "interfering" with the assigned mission in trying to stop it, overriding the fail-safes.

My dog being too smart for his own good is annoying. An AI operative that's too smart, however...

</thread derail>

 

[EmilyMiller]

I dunno, Em. AI might be the latest IT fad in several disciplines, but it still needs to have a "sanity check" step in the process. You know, some person with the training and skills to verify that, yep, it's right... this time.

who's going to tell the AI it's wrong, or that that nitrogen-heavy complex it failed to notice on the end actually makes your anti-insomnia drug a rather shock-sensitive explosive?

tangent: I manage engineers for my many sins. Aspects of my job could probably be replaced with AI, but very little of theirs could. And none of them are going to tell an AI with no morals stuff that they will tell mum (me). On a good day I'm highly skeptical about AI.

Actually make that on a *very* good day when I've had a nice bottle of wine and some cuddles. All other times I lump it alongside snake-oil and perpetual motion machines.

But AI-like stuff has been round in structural biology for decades. How do you think x-rat crystallography and EM images are interpreted?

The group leaders can do checking fine. They will just need less PhD students and Postdocs.

Em

 

[onehitwanda]

The group leaders can do checking fine. They will just need less PhD students and Postdocs.

hmm. I'm not in academia but in industry; to me it seems like intelligent people will simply find the spaces where computer models fail and become very, very good at pushing those corners with the nuance and nonlinearity that humans are so good at generation.

AI's really good at saying "I'm 99.3% ± 0.27% confident that's a nail and I can use a hammer on it"

But a human's got to be there and go "uh, that nail is poised above someone's finger and if you hammer it you'll hurt them" - no ML model in the world can do that.

 

[MrPixel]

FWIW, author Control Panels and story indexes are working again, 6/6/2023 @ 11:00AM CDT.

 

[EmilyMiller]

hmm. I'm not in academia but in industry; to me it seems like intelligent people will simply find the spaces where computer models fail and become very, very good at pushing those corners with the nuance and nonlinearity that humans are so good at generation.

AI's really good at saying "I'm 99.3% ± 0.27% confident that's a nail and I can use a hammer on it"

But a human's got to be there and go "uh, that nail is poised above someone's finger and if you hammer it you'll hurt them" - no ML model in the world can do that.

Group leaders find Postdocs and PhD students annoying and time-consuming. When they aren’t using them as a dating pool that is.

Em

 

[onehitwanda]

When they aren’t using them as a dating pool that is.

Em

Oh... oh eeuw.

 

[TxRad]

Like MrP said, "It's alive!"

 

[MrPixel]

Group leaders find Postdocs and PhD students annoying and time-consuming. When they aren’t using them as a dating pool that is.

My best buddy commented about this phenomenon. He is a PE, and his comment about the female engineering students while he was working on his MSCE was "Oh, they're just there to work on their MRS degrees."

It took a couple of raised eyebrows from him for me to get the joke.

 

[EmilyMiller]

My best buddy commented about this phenomenon. He is a PE, and his comment about the female engineering students while he was working on his MSCE was "Oh, they're just there to work on their MRS degrees."

It took a couple of raised eyebrows from him for me to get the joke.

So much fun being a STEM girl .

Em

 

[HordHolm]

My best buddy commented about this phenomenon. He is a PE, and his comment about the female engineering students while he was working on his MSCE was "Oh, they're just there to work on their MRS degrees."

It took a couple of raised eyebrows from him for me to get the joke.

I was in Waco, TX twenty odd years ago, hanging in a downtown bar with a couple of locals I was friendly with, when a bunch of girls came in. Immediately the locals rolled their eyes, and upon questioning them I was told the girls were obviously from Baylor. Being an ignorant Brit I needed further info, but was simply told that they were there to get the big MRS. I tried working out in my head what degree that was for a moment or too before the penny dropped, and I could only think 'what a waste of a chance for an actual education'. Sad.