avatarname
avatarname t1_j1z6mu1 wrote
So we have cosmonauts, astronauts and taikonauts...
How will Indian space travellers be called?
avatarname t1_ixhi8vw wrote
Reply to comment by pcvcolin in ‘Without enough Latvians, we won’t be Latvia’: eastern Europe’s shrinking population | Latvia’s population is 30% smaller than it was in 1990 and by 2050 numbers will be in decline in over half of Europe’s 52 countries. by mossadnik
Where are these numbers from?
Official statistics of Latvia show 1,895,400 people living in Latvia on Oct 1, 2022. Even if we discount 36 thousand Ukrainian refugees which are included in this number, we have a bit less than 1,859,000 something.
avatarname t1_ixeivk1 wrote
Reply to comment by pcvcolin in ‘Without enough Latvians, we won’t be Latvia’: eastern Europe’s shrinking population | Latvia’s population is 30% smaller than it was in 1990 and by 2050 numbers will be in decline in over half of Europe’s 52 countries. by mossadnik
The thing is the outmigration stuff is good few years old, with rising salaries today it is not that much of a concern, especially going forward. Main concern now is that more people die than are born.
avatarname t1_ixeijir wrote
Reply to comment by pcvcolin in ‘Without enough Latvians, we won’t be Latvia’: eastern Europe’s shrinking population | Latvia’s population is 30% smaller than it was in 1990 and by 2050 numbers will be in decline in over half of Europe’s 52 countries. by mossadnik
This was more of a case in the 90s, nowadays Latvia is more economically developed for this to be a huge concern. Even the population decrease at the moment is more due to the fact that way less people are born than die, not due to emigration of Latvians, as approx the same number of people arrive in Latvia as leave it. With Ukrainian refugees there has even been population increase this year so all these estimates may also change if there is more instability in the region in Russian speaking countries and we have more relaxed immigration policy (it has also been rather strict compared to say Poland, since we already have a big Russian speaking minority, like you cannot employ a Ukrainian or Belorussian or anyone for minimum wage in Latvia, you can only pay them above average wage and only if a Latvian is not applying for the same job, of course there are ways how to avoid this, usually they employ a dude in Poland or Lithuania where it is way more relaxed and then send them here as a contractor or sth like that, but it is more tricky)
Latvians can go to USA visa free without any engagement, well at least to travel. But if people leave Latvia for work, it is today mainly to other EU countries, no need to travel so far away from home for better salaries and also no need for work permits or green card. Also Norway, due to high salaries, and still UK, although maybe rules are more tight now.
avatarname t1_ix9xz9j wrote
Reply to ‘Without enough Latvians, we won’t be Latvia’: eastern Europe’s shrinking population | Latvia’s population is 30% smaller than it was in 1990 and by 2050 numbers will be in decline in over half of Europe’s 52 countries. by mossadnik
To be honest though, as a Latvian I can say that in 1990 a lot of people in Latvia were recent Russian speaking immigrants from other Soviet republics who left, either to go back to their countries or West in the later years so the decline has been not as much about ethnic Latvians or Latvians who have lived here for generations, but of first generation immigrants.
But yes, it is and will be a challenge going forward.
avatarname t1_ix5ciy0 wrote
Reply to Waymo launches the world's most advanced robo-taxi service. Rides can be hailed to go anywhere in downtown Phoenix, Arizona, 24/7, and with no safety driver by lughnasadh
It was 12 years ago when I first learned that Google was testing self driving cars, then it felt like sci-fi... and even now it still kinda does, even if it is more normalized now. It takes a bit longer than I expected, but we are going in that direction and that's cool.
avatarname t1_ix5auxp wrote
Reply to comment by sext-scientist in The CEO of OpenAI had dropped hints that GPT-4, due in a few months, is such an upgrade from GPT-3 that it may seem to have passed The Turing Test by lughnasadh
I do wonder sometimes if our intelligence is just the question of scale of these things with some tweaking. We tend to think we are oh so imaginative and inventive and then on YouTube I discover that I have pretty much left the same comment only worded differently 13 years, 6 years back and now, on the same video that I forgot I had watched before :D
avatarname t1_itfte3f wrote
Reply to comment by ProjectShamrock in Technology that lets us speak to our dead relatives has arrived. Are we ready? by el_gee
I mean yeah, we are not living in sci-fi yet, but AI today can convincingly recreate voices of people and rearrange words in sentences etc. So indeed it kinda is a glorified chatbot, but I think the more complex chatbots become, the less distinguishable from the real thing they become. Just that I don't think it is possible to recreate a feel of a person from hours, even long hours, of conversations to record them, even if they took all their reddit/facebook/twitter/youtube posts and comments, it still would not be enough
avatarname t1_itfrz6n wrote
Reply to Assuming we had the technology, would any of you all be willing to go and live permanently on a habitable exoplanet or a terraformed planet? by Golfer345
Depends on how many people there are. Maybe if it was several tens of thousands, and it would be growing constantly, I would. I like living in places that change constantly and there are new developments and stuff being built, so I think I would enjoy to live in such a rapidly developing place, but not if there are like just some 80 first colonizers and next batch is coming in 10 years
avatarname t1_jdo15v3 wrote
Reply to comment by chocolatehippogryph in A recently submitted paper has demonstrated that Stable Diffusion can accurately reconstruct images from fMRI scans, effectively allowing it to "read people's minds". by iboughtarock
They could already monitor computer screens either with security cameras or some software, if you work in office, yet at least where I am from they do not do it. Even though it is possible. They even do not monitor the time you log in or log off, at least for white collar work I do. Of course, it is different in manufacturing and warehouses etc. where people are treated as slaves... It has always sadly been so that white collar workers (especially not in entry level jobs) can slack off more than people who actually do hard physical work. I know part of that is that they think the more free we are, the better our brains will work and come up with million dollar ideas, but still...