Rob Thacker

@robthacker.bsky.social

1281 Followers 455 Following

Astrophysicist & photo geek✨Graduate Coordinator of astrophysics at SMU. You are made of the ♥ of stars. Halifax/K'jipuktuk (he/him)

Image of a faucet/drain installer tool. It is made of plastic and is a tall vertical wrench with fittings on either end. It allows you to reach up into the space behind the sink easily.
Many, many clusters of dogwood blooms stretch out before the viewer. Their pink and white blooms fill the frame.
Close up of the indigo sun tomatoes. A cluster of purple fruit hangs down with bright green stems visible.
Looking towards two planters of sweet 100 tomato plants. White piping loops over the planters, while six tomato plants are growing in each.
Black and white image of a snow covered field reaching out to a dark tree line with cloud covered mountains in the distance. Shadows from trees rake across the lower right of the image, contrasting against stripes of cloud in the sky in the top left.
View of a tomatoe bed. Red poppy flowers are leaning in from the left. Green spirals sit next to each plant.
The AI Psychopathy Problem When we train an agentic AI using pure Reinforcement Learning, we are essentially building a disembodied ventral striatum. We are giving it a hyper-reactive drive to maximize a specific number (the reward), but we do not know how to program a digital prefrontal cortex to contextualize that drive. Therefore, a psychopathic human and a reward-hacking AI share the exact same operational architecture: they both possess high intelligence and a relentless drive to achieve an immediate objective, completely unconstrained by the broader, unwritten rules of the environment they operate in. The ultimate irony, as you pointed out, is that computer scientists are desperately trying to solve an alignment problem in silicon that human biology hasn't even completely solved in carbon.
Looking down on three planters, each 3 ft x6 ft. On each planter there are small growing houses each with a zip on the top. Tomato stakes are tied to hoops over the planters.
Image of three planters in a garden. Each one is covered with plastic weighed down by rocks. Hoops for fabric are also visible.
Looking towards a tree in front of the Burke building at Saint Mary's University. The boughs are full of red blossom.
A young beech still holding it's copper leaves stands isolated against a path leading off to the left. A small tuft of bright green new growth fills the bottom corner to contrast against the beech leaves.
List of Top 10 deaf researchers by academic impact. Linda M Campbell # 1 at 40.6, Carol Padden #2 at 31, Annelles Kusters #3 at 30.7, Poorna Kushalnagar #4 at 30.6, Christian Rathmann #5 at 26.8, Ingo Barth #6, Maartje de Meulder #7, Kristin Snoddon #8, Christian Marcos Arias #9, Johanna Mesch #10.
BBC image of the capsule and remote boats approaching it
Spiderman pointing at Spiderman (a notorious meme)
A young beech tree stands in front of a background of birch and pine. Orange leaves that have not yet been shed create a weave of colour against the dark background. A few shadows reach out from the background, created by a low Sun.
Close up of a yellow crocus. The petals are open and stamens are visible. All around are fallen leaves from the previous fall.
Cut through of the mixing surface looking from above, there is much more looping of the mixing surface and it is tightly wound in the centre region.
A slice precisely through the mixing plane shows the detailed structure of mixing as systems punch and ripple back and forth.
Looking towards a stream that meanders in an S-shape from the bottom right through to the top left. Trees fill the top of the frame.
A box surrounds a region with two roughly hemispherical lobes that are radiating out from a central point. A colour legend on the bottom right gives scaled values for the plotted fields.
The root ball of a spruce tree that fell a few years ago. The dirt that was pulled up has finally been washed off by the rain, revealing the detailed root structure.
A crescent sun rises over distant trees. A thin band of cloud crosses the image.
Close-up of birch leaves still hanging on the tree. A shallow depth of field holds the middle leaf in focus while the others slide in and out. The leaves are crinkled and copper in colour.
Diagrams showing the locus of the spinning top axis (precession and nutation) drawn on unit spheres. On the right is a red bauble with a white patch that paints the lines of diagrams on to a bauble.
Looking vertically upwards to the glass roof of the atrium. The metal frame holds panels of glass which are covered in snow on the outside. A few small patches of blue sky are visible in places.
Featherlike fronds of ice criss-cross on an ice-covered surface. The pattern is random and yet strangely organized.
A series of round bicycle locking frames arcs to the left along a path. Each of the frames has an orange snow-plow warning stick attached to it that points directly upward.
Panoramic view of an inlet, the waterline cuts across the middle of the image. On the right is a stand of trees with a red maple that reflects in the water. On the left many of the leaves have fallen, revealing structure in the woodland that is reflected in the water.
A view of two cedar planters, each with the surface covered in straw. The new planter is on the left and the cedar is still it's new warm colour. The older planter on the right is going grey having weathered through many seasons.
Yellow branches of ginko leaves reach out beyond a bright red maple in the background. In the top left of the image some green oak leaves fill the corner.
The flowers that were previously buds are now completely open. Two new leaves are also growing.
View of some maple leaves isolated against a dark green background. The maples leaves are a mixture of green and beautiful dark reds.
Six flowers protrude out of a bud, with one flower opened to reveal white petals of the callery pear flower. Two of the ornamental pears hang beneath the bud cluster. Twigs and a wall of blue fill the background.
The sun rises over distant mountains giving a yellow cast to the sky that peeps through the hard blue cloud cover. Sea mist is lit bright red by the off-axis sun, while waves beach towards the viewer.
A tractor drives down and across a brown field. Throughout the field are gulls, following the newly turned soil.
A break in the cloud ripples across the sky. Shafts of sunlight beam through the break in the cloud lighting up the landscape.
A hummingbord that is mostly green hovers between sprays of bright red crocosmia flowers.
Several sprays of bright red crocosmia hang down together. The flowers are in pairs along a stem, with the tips yet to bloom.
Looking towards a tree in front of a road. Three fawns are in the foreground while the doe is half-hidden by the tree in the centre of the image.
A spray of bright red crocosmia flowers. The flowers themselves come in pairs along the stalk. The first flowers are open, while those toward the tip or the spray are still closed, showing red and yellow/green colours. In the background is green foliage.
A cluster of five dogwood flowers forms a cross, updown and across. Behind are leaves supporting the flowers, while vegetation is in the background. The petals each have a point at their tip. The image is black and white.
A yellow bearded iris has two petals reaching upward, while two others lay outward from the stem. In the background is green foliage and another flower that is out of focus.
A happy lobster is looking through a telescope. One eye is closed while the other squints through the eyepiece of the telescope.
View of a framed black and white image. A stream bends around in the bottom right while the mid-ground is full of ferns lit by the evening Sun. Trees extend into the distance, the light dancing through the branches.
A black and white image showing the Atlantica hotel on the right and a tree reaching out into the middle of the image. On the left a crane appears to be reaching over. The leaves of the tree are lighter than the sky.
A small tree stands between three green bushes on the ground. Behind is a building covered in panelling, grey at the bottom and then orange further up. The tree is covered in white blossom.
Looking towards a house two sprinklers send out streams of water that are backlit by the sun. In the upper right of the image an optical flare from the sun streaks across to the mid left of the image.
Looking upwards into the canopy which is dominated by two white pines. The one of the right is dark and in shadow while the one on the left is lit.
Looking down on a spray of flower heads. Four cluster together, while a fifth is visible to left and underneath. The petals are mostly white, with tints of red/pink. Petal edges curl elegantly and present sharp edges when in focus.
Looking through the brush of the forest a single trunk stands highlighted by the Sun streaming through the canopy. Brush and fronds surround it creating a dense feeling of growth.
View of a building on Duckworth St in St John's. The brick faced building is long closed. Windows are broken. Shadows of telegraph poles reach toward the door.
Looking down a sidewalk with trees on both the left and right. A few wheelie bins are dotted on the left. Snow blankets everything in the image.
Looking towards a small group of trees and a stream in the background. The trees are covered in snow creating a strong contrast between the boughs and the snow on them. Snow blankets the ground in both the foreground and distance.
A tree stands in front of a building covered in panels, grey towards the ground, orange higher up. The boughs of three are covered in a dusting of snow and weigh down under the weight. Just behind the tree is a railing with small amounts of snow dotted along the length.
View of a distant sunrise. A cloud bank covers reaches down from the top left to bottom right. The sun is rising almost where the cloud touches the horizon.
A view out over water towards the sunrise. The sun's reflection arcs back to the viewer. In the sky a bank of cloud reaches down to the right. The sun sits between the small space between the horizon and the cloud bank.
The Sun rises as a crescent shape over a distant forest. A single band of cloud cuts across just above the horizon.
The Halifax clear sky chart for Friday night through Sat morning. At 7 am the predicted cloud cover is around 60%, with some models showing totally overcast.
Updated sky chart showing that on Saturday morning at 7 am the skies are forecast to begin clouding over.