Like a bathroom fan?

I’d say flying foxes (giant bats/megabats) that are all around the Indian Ocean fit the definition of flying during the day. You can see them fly over Sydney at dusk every day. Also, I think some aren’t even considered nocturnal.

Machine Learning (and even Large Language Models) do have genuine use cases they excel at and are probably more efficient at.

One good example is protein folding. ML transformed biomedical research by basically solving the protein folding problem in minutes on a GPU instead of essentially trying to brute force a solution that was millions to tens of millions times more complex. I’m glossing over details, but it’s mind blowing how much better (especially when you consider resource usage) how much better ML is in this case. Think $1 and minutes vs $100000+ and years… for a single protein.

The problem is using LLMs and Generative AI for things they seem good at but actually aren’t.

It’s common in many countries to do this. Especially on buses. Very annoying to listen to 5 people’s tiktok feed while riding a cramped and rattling bus.

I only have one user blocked on Lemmy, and I think it’s who you’re referring to.

Right, that which is dead can never die.

(I kid, I kid)

Put your seat back, you’ll get more room.

That doesn’t change the issue here.

Keep in mind the best answer is still the size. The rest is my opinion.

Besides the obvious size difference already discussed, the biggest causes of Lemmy feeling like a ghost town, are the splitting up of communities, both by instance and by niche, and the lack of common defaults across instances.

The first split is inherent to the design but could be solved (I think I saw a proposal for aggregating like communities from different instances that aren’t defederated), but I don’t know what the interest level is.

I feel like the second is a mental issue for everyone coming from the likes of Reddit. With the number of people here and the amount of activity you’d see, people should be much more forgiving of “off topic” posts in any given community. I’m guilty of it too, so this isn’t meant to be a slight. But the answer to someone asking what community they should post in for some niche topic shouldn’t be “create one”. It should be “post in a popular related community, they’ll be fine with it”. I could go on about the nuances, but hopefully my point is clear: hardly any communities (if any) on Lemmy are big and active enough at this point to warrant gatekeeping to keep the noise level down.

The last one would be easier if there was a solution to the first one, but having five or six communities that everyone who joins Lemmy is subscribed to by default would go a long way to making this place feel busier.

I’d tell ya, but then I’d have to kill this account.

You’re describing fraud. Waste would be spending money unnecessarily, but not having anyone specific intentionally gain from it.

Wasn’t this exact question posted somewhere on Lemmy last week?

This is a bad idea. He will just acquire a taste for whatever “tastes bad”. This isn’t going to be some magic trick that nobody has ever thought of.

I was lucky enough to be able to quit without any programs, but in my worst, I was choosing things that were “harder to drink” because of their taste (like the most bitter beers I could find) so that I would “drink slower”. All it did was make me acquire a taste for really bitter beer and I drank as fast as ever.

My opinion is don’t do it. Just be yourself. For many situations, you’re only going to see the person for a couple of minutes, at most, so who cares what they think? If the conversation goes beyond that, you might find you want to make a connection, and now you’ve started the whole thing with a lie. Not a good look, and also you won’t feel good about it.

My perspective is as a white guy who travels extensively (almost 40 countries now, 6 continents).

As others have mentioned, people don’t judge you immediately based on where you come from. In my experience, they will most likely already have judged you based on your looks. The reaction will entirely depend on where you go, and to a smaller extent how you act.

For example, in (East) Africa, you probably won’t get treated as nicely as white people do, from what I’ve heard. And white people get stared and pointed at a lot (unless you’re in the full immigrant/expat part of a big city), harassed for money, and called mzuungu constantly. Generally this is all “in a nice way” for white people (but I got tired of it and didn’t like it), but talking to other travellers, if you’re “Asian”, it isn’t so “nice.”

In southeast Asia it will be a mixed bag depending on what you look like. You’ll probably fly under the radar, and have to deal more with people being shocked at your lack of speaking the local language. I saw this happen to Asian-American people a few times.

In Central and South America, excluding Peru and Brazil, be prepared for outright racism. Peru and Brazil have relatively large Chinese and Japanese descendant populations, but in the rest, I believe there is a lot of anti-Asian prejudice. They’ll call you “chino”, make eye/hand gestures, etc. Not all of this is in a hostile way, but I imagine it can get tiring or worse. Some will outright ignore you in stores and restaurants or even give you scowls. I saw all of this happen to other travellers, and heard even more stories.

I don’t know if I can talk about Europe or Australia. I don’t stand out there and I haven’t really talked to anyone who does. I imagine it really varies by country and maybe even neighbourhood.

One thing to remember is that in places where English is a second language, they can’t tell where you’re from based on accent as much. You could say you’re from Australia with your American accent and they’ll full on believe you.

Oh and another one, since you were talking about using Mandarin or Cantonese with an accent… There are very few places outside of China, Hong Kong, Taiwan where people will speak any Chinese, let alone recognize the accent. Maybe Malaysia and Singapore? English is the de facto language of travel pretty much everywhere. Acting like you don’t know it won’t get you anywhere. You’d have to do a fake Chinese accent while talking English. Practice your best Uncle Roger I guess.

Final Bonus Pro Tip: the best thing you can do for yourself when travelling to countries that aren’t primarily English, is learn how to say hello and thank you in the local language. If you initiate a conversation (e.g. respond to a stare) with a local language “hello”, you will get a smile and hello back and tension will ease. The rarer the language, the bigger the smile.

Your immune system is not a perfect machine, but it’s evolved for thousands [sic] of years to be able to defend us against the bad germs we are exposed to.

Millions of years. Not thousands.

People also used to get sick a lot more and die a lot younger before we understood germs. The immune system isn’t magic, it helps protect us but if you get the wrong bug or too much of a bad bug, it can fail. Also, it evolved when we were living in caves and trees, not in cities and houses.

The ramifications of getting sick can go well beyond the acute symptoms you see (cold, cough, headache, vomiting, diarrhea, etc.) There can be long term, chronic, hidden affects you don’t realize, like heart or other organ problems.

Also, our immune system is not particularly good at fighting off parasites, and they can do real damage.

You shouldn’t walk around in a hazmat suit, but practicing basic hygiene and avoiding extreme exposure are important to short term and long term health.

And, washing your hands after you use the bathroom isn’t just for your own health, it’s also for the health of others. Not washing your hands is disrespectful to everyone else.

Thousands [sic] of years of evolution may not be perfect, but I trust it more than I trust these fucking corporate fucks, that’s for sure.

Right, it’s just corporate fucks and lobbying. Best to trust a comedian over the last 150+ years of fucking science. George Carlin was great, but come on. Spouting off his anecdotal feelings about health theory as fact? Yeesh.

I think Facebook groups are the main competitor from Big Tech. I know people who use FB Groups for similar things that I used to use Reddit for.

I think they mean something like Facebook groups. I.e. a big tech company that has forums similar to Reddit’s, at the scale Reddit has.

I bought marbles for cheap at the dollar store last summer. They’re good for camping games when you don’t have a lot of space.

I get an error when I go to that link.