MajorasMaskForever

joined 2 years ago

Lol whoops yeah, ARRL. I work in aerospace where we love our alphabet soup and I brainfarted AFRL.

I wasn't trying to say that the band plan doesn't exist for a reason, it absolutely does, some reasons which you pointed out exactly. I've definitely been around guys who treat the band plan like it is the law, and I imagine the original commenter had the misfortune of running into one of those guys and believed him at face value. Imho it's one of the reasons ham radio has been dying as a hobby.

Nothing legally stops you from listening. To transmit, you are legally required to have a callsign (which you must broadcast during transmit) and your callsign must be licensed for that frequency.

If you break the law, it's highly unlikely that the FCC themselves will hunt you down and fine you. If you're using it to talk to others on the HAM bands, they'll likely get pissed at you for not being licensed but actually tracking you down is difficult. Using it for your own personal projects, friend groups, etc, it's unlikely anyone would notice you at all.

A license is like $15 for life (just need to occasionally tell the FCC you're still alive), the test will teach you some stuff, I don't see it as that onerous to play by the rules so I'd recommend following them.

[–] MajorasMaskForever@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (5 children)

A HAM license realistically is for two things:

1 the test teaches you major items you should know about how radio works 2 how to not fuck shit up for everyone else

For the bands allocated to HAM radio in the US, as long as you're not fucking shit up for everyone else the FCC doesn't really care. A good example of that and my personal favorite rule is the power transmission rule of "only enough power to complete the transmission". Functionally it's so vague that I doubt anyone would ever actually get their license suspended over it.

The group ~~AFRL~~ ARRL has a pretty restrictive "band plan" that I think is where the above comment's salt is coming from. A perception I have and have heard others talk about is the HAM community has a tendency to be borderline hostile to newcomers and are very gate-keepy, which ARRL in my experience embodies.

I have a license purely to play by the rules from a legal standpoint when I'm out in the rocky mountains hiking and camping with friends, makes communicating with different groups way easier

Edit: formatting, typoing ARRL

[–] MajorasMaskForever@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

May I present to you:

The Marriam-Webster Dictionary

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/artificial

Definition #3b

[–] MajorasMaskForever@lemmy.world 10 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (4 children)

I don't think the term AI has been used in a vague way, it's that there's a huge disconnect between how the technical fields use it vs general populace and marketing groups heavily abuse that disconnect.

Artificial has two meanings/use cases. One is to indicate something is fake (video game NPC, chess bots, vegan cheese). The end product looks close enough to the real thing that for its intended use case it works well enough. Looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, treat it like a duck even though we all know it's a bunny with a costume on. LLMs on a technical level fit this definition.

The other definition is man made. Artificial diamonds are a great example of this, they're still diamonds at the end of the day, they have all the same chemical makeups, same chemical and physical properties. The only difference is they came from a laboratory made by adult workers vs child slave labor.

My pet theory is science fiction got the general populace to think of artificial intelligence to be using the "man-made" definition instead of the "fake" definition that these companies are using. In the past the subtle nuance never caused a problem so we all just kinda ignored it

That's why there's a Minecraft port on the Switch and the new Donkey Kong game has you blasting through rocks with your virtual monkey hands

That's always the hard part of these "government fraud" narratives. It's the insidious shit, the ineptitude, incompetence. Not something you can walk into the FDA and find a filing cabinet labeled "deliberate and known waste contracts".

I work in aerospace and the worst engineers I've had the displeasure of working with were on cost+ contracts (the money keeps rolling in until the job is "done").

The only real way to track down abuses like that is to stick an oversight committee on each and every contract, watch them like a hawk. But who watches the watchers? You run the risk at every stage, eventually you either need to trust or gamble

[–] MajorasMaskForever@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I think a better definition would be "achieve something in an unintended or uncommon way". Fits the bill on what generally passes in the tech community as a "hack" while also covering some normal life stuff.

Getting a cheaper flight booked by using a IP address assigned to a different geographical location? Sure I'd call that a life hack. Getting a cheaper flight by booking a late night, early morning flight? No, those are deliberately cheaper

Also re: your other comment about not making a reply at all, sometimes for people like us it's just better to not get into internet fights over semantics (no matter how much fun they can be)

[–] MajorasMaskForever@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

That's kind of the point though, isn't it?

If I were to post with "Extend the plank!" there's a near zero chance that even fans of the movie, or even the franchise, I'm thinking of will get the movie right. If I instead say "Who am I to argue with the Captain of the Enterprise" a normie might guess Star Trek, a true nerd and fan of the franchise will peg that instantly as from Star Trek Generations

Edit: That said, there are several lines in this thread that aren't necessarily only recognizable to fans or people familiar with the movie, but instead just pop culture references.

Most definitely. The fact that the four door 5 foot box exists is hilarious to me in a sad kind of way.

I occasionally get made fun of for owning a 22 two door Ranger, that I bought a "tiny" truck. Honestly I hate how big it is, but I wanted a truck that would be my single vehicle, something I can use for DIY house projects, commute in, go camping/off roading, and take on cross country road trips. Custom ordered it with the specific features I wanted all for ~40k, meanwhile the guys giving me shit for it are paying just as much for a truck with less features, it never leaves the city, and waaaaay more expensive at the pump.

Morons

[–] MajorasMaskForever@lemmy.world 9 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

For these kinds of comparisons people have to cherry pick and cannot compare similar class trucks because similar class trucks haven't really changed in 30 years

If you compare the size of a base 1990 F150 https://www.edmunds.com/ford/f-150/1990/features-specs/

To a base 2025 F150 https://www.edmunds.com/ford/f-150/2025/features-specs/

The 2025 is 6 inches shorter, barely an inch taller, and barely an inch wider. Or in terms of percentages: -3.1%, +1.1%, +1.2% respectively

What has changed in 30 years is it was common back then for an average consumer to buy a "regular" cab two door truck with a 6 foot box, four door behemoths were rare. If you wanted a 4 door truck you had to get the F350

Today it's the other way around, it's rare to see a single cab F150 and now you can get a 4 door F150

From a technology standpoint, nothing is stopping them. From a business standpoint: hubris.

To put time and effort into creating traditional logic based algorithms to compensate for this generic math model would be to admit what mathematicians and scientists have known for centuries. That models are good at finding patterns but they do not explain why a relationship exists (if it exists at all). The technology is fundamentally flawed for the use cases that OpenAI is trying to claim it can be used in, and programming around it would be to acknowledge that.

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