lvxferre
@lvxferre@mander.xyz
The catarrhine who invented a perpetual motion machine, by dreaming at night and devouring its own dreams through the day.
- Comment on Has Generative AI Already Peaked? - Computerphile 21 hours ago:
Not even another info transferring entity would solve it. Be it quantum computers, photonic computers, at the end of the day we’d be simply brute forcing the problem harder, due to increased processing power. But we need something else than brute force due to the diminishing returns.
Just to give you an idea. A human needs around 2400kcal/day to survive, or 100kcal/h = 116W. Only 20% of that is taken by the brain, so ~23W. (I bet that most of that is used for motor control, not reasoning.) We clearly suck as computing machines, and yet our output is considerably better than the junk yielded by LLMs and diffusion models, even if you use a really nice computer and let the model take its time producing its [babble | six fingers “art”]. Those models are clearly doing lots of unnecessary operations, while failing hard at what they’re expected to do.
Regarding research, my point is that what’s going to fix generative models is likely from outside the field of artificial intelligence. It’ll be likely something small and barely related, that happens to have some ML application.
- Comment on Nintendo Switch Is Removing Integration for X, Formerly Twitter 1 day ago:
I think that it’s more like “Mike got a promotion *for saving our brand from unnecessary damage”. The whole thing stinks “muh brand” from a distance for me.
- Comment on Has Generative AI Already Peaked? - Computerphile 1 day ago:
I don’t think that reinventing computers will do any good. The issue that I see is not hardware, but software - the current generative models are basically brute force, you throw enough data and processing power at the problem until it becomes smaller, but at the end of the day you’re still relying too much on statistical patterns behind the wrong entities.
Instead I think that the ML architecture will change. And this won’t be done by those tech bros full of money burning effigies, who have a nasty/stupid/disgraceful tendency to confuse symbolic representations with the things being represented. Instead it’ll be done by researchers in some random compsci or robotics lab, in a random place of the world. They’ll be doing some weird stuff like emulating the brain of a fruit fly, and someone will point out “hey, you see this feature? It has ML applications”. And that’ll be when they actually add some intelligence to those systems, i.e. the missing piece of the puzzle. It won’t be AGI but it’ll be better than now, at least.
- Comment on Has Generative AI Already Peaked? - Computerphile 1 day ago:
My personal take is that the current generation of generative models peaked, for the reasons stated in the video (diminishing returns). This current gen will be useful, but progress-wise it’ll be a dead end.
In the future however I believe that models with a different architecture will cause a breakthrough, being able to perform better with less training. And probably less energy requirements, too.
- Comment on Nintendo Switch Is Removing Integration for X, Formerly Twitter 1 day ago:
This would be great if Nintendo was genuinely concerned about encouraging the usage of a hostile platform. Sadly odds are that it cares about its brand way more than “those things” playing their games.
- Comment on Will I ever be seen as truly British? 2 days ago:
I’m perhaps a bit biased because for me a country boils down to a government, and I’m from the new world (we tend to see immigrants differently - more like “newcomers” and less like “outsiders”), but I’d consider you British.
That doesn’t say much though. At the end of the day, “you’re British” or “you’re Polish” seem fairly minor to me, compared with “you’re human” and “you’re you”.
- Comment on Will I ever be seen as truly British? 2 days ago:
People actually say shit like “borrow me your car Friday” or “borrow me a pencil”, instead of “lend”.
That’s correct. The distinction between lender and borrower is given by the case, so the same verb works for both.
- Comment on Will I ever be seen as truly British? 2 days ago:
I think that the key difference is that plenty societies were built with the “immigration” mindset. It isn’t just the ones in USA, but mostly the whole New World. And even if the “bulk” of the immigration in the XIX and XX centuries is over, the mindset is still here.
As opposed to the typical society in the Old World where, if you were born somewhere, odds are that your grand-grand-grand-grandparents were also born there, like Japan and UK-minus-London.
- Comment on Please Don’t Share Our Links on Mastodon: Here’s Why! | itsfoss.com 5 days ago:
replication is a feature, not a design flaw!
In this case I’d argue that it’s both. (A problematic feature? A useful bug? They’re the same picture anyway.)
Because of your comment I can see the pros of the mirroring strategy, even if the cons are still there. I wonder if those pros couldn’t be “snipped” and implemented into a Nostr-like network, or if the cons can’t be ironed out from a Fediverse-like one.
- Comment on Please Don’t Share Our Links on Mastodon: Here’s Why! | itsfoss.com 6 days ago:
Got it - and that’s a fair point. I wonder however if this problem couldn’t be solved another way, specially because mirroring is itself a burden for the smaller instances.
- Comment on Please Don’t Share Our Links on Mastodon: Here’s Why! | itsfoss.com 6 days ago:
I’m aware of Nostr. In my opinion it splits better this separation of back- and front-end tasks, even if it has a few problems on how relays work, depending on the demographic. It’s still an interesting counterpoint to ActivityPub.
- Comment on Please Don’t Share Our Links on Mastodon: Here’s Why! | itsfoss.com 6 days ago:
“A” Users would need to send requests to some server anyway, either A or B; that’s only diverting the load from B to A, but it isn’t alleviating or even sharing it.
Another issue with the current way that ActivityPub works is foul content, that needs to be removed. Remember when some muppet posted CP in LW?
- Comment on Please Don’t Share Our Links on Mastodon: Here’s Why! | itsfoss.com 6 days ago:
That sounds a lot like a weird spin on the Slashdot effect, caused by content mirroring. It seems that it could be handled by tweaking the ActivityPub protocol to have one instance requesting to generate a link preview, and the other instances copying the link preview instead of sending their own requests.
But frankly? I think that the current way that ActivityPub works is outright silly. Here’s what it does currently:
- User is registered to instance A
- Since A federates with B, A mirrors content from B into A
- The backend is either specific to instance A (the site) or configured to use instance A (for a phone program)
- When the user interacts with content from B, actually it’s the mirrored version of content from B that is hosted in A
In my opinion a better approach would be:
- User is registered to instance A
- Since A federates with B, B accepts login credentials from A
- The backend is instance-agnostic, so it’s able to pull/send content from/to multiple instances at the same time
- When the user interacts with content from B, the backend retrieves content from B, and uses the user’s A credentials to send content to B
Now, here’s my question: why is the ActivityPub works in that way, instead of this one?
- Comment on Scientists Are Trying to Coax the Ocean to Absorb More CO2 1 week ago:
That’s correct. And my point is that they aren’t “further acidifying” the ocean, like Icalasari said; they’re doing the exact opposite.
I’ll use the opportunity for an info dump. You potentially know what I’m going to say, but it’s for the sake of users in general.
Carbon dioxide dissolution in water can be simplified through the equation
CO₂(g) + 2H₂O(l) ⇌ H₃O⁺(aq) + HCO₃⁻(aq)
gaseous carbon dioxide + water generates (→) hydronium (“acidity”) + bicarbonate, and vice versa (←).It’s a reversible reaction, as anyone opening a soda can knows (wait a bit and the gas GTFO and you’re left with flat soda). However, you can “force” a reversible reaction to go more into one or another direction, by messing with the amounts of substances in each side of the equation:
- if you add more of the junk to one side, the reaction will go more towards the other side - to consume the stuff that you added
- if you remove junk from one side, the reaction will go more towards that side - to regenerate the junk that you removed
So it’s like reactions go against whatever change you do. This is known as Le Chatelier’s principle. In a simplified way, “if you change shit the reaction tries to revert your change”.
Now. The main concern is CO₂ in the atmosphere. We don’t want it. To consume it through this reaction, we could remove acidity from the ocean. That’s actually doable by dumping some alkaline substances there, because of another equilibrium:
H₃O⁺(aq) + OH⁻(aq) ⇌ 2H₂O(l)
hydronium (“acidity”) + hydroxide (“alkalinity”) generates water, and vice versa.So by adding alkaline substances to the sea you could remove hydronium, and by removing hydronium you’re encouraging the sea to gorge on even more carbon dioxide.
It sounds like an extremely bad idea though. Just like the two reactions that I mentioned interact with each other, there’s a bazillion other reactions doing the same. Specially when we’re talking about acidity/alkalinity (pH), it’s hard to find something where pH does not influence the outcome!
So the consequences of “let’s dump alkaline substances in the sea! What could go wrong?” might be extremely messy, and not so obvious from a first moment. Instead we’re simply better off by avoiding to add even more CO₂ to the atmosphere.
- Comment on Scientists Are Trying to Coax the Ocean to Absorb More CO2 1 week ago:
The article says that “some companies are experimenting with alkaline rocks”. So it’s the opposite.
- Comment on Scientists Are Trying to Coax the Ocean to Absorb More CO2 1 week ago:
Some scientists say CO2 removal is simply a distraction from the urgency of the climate crisis and an excuse to continue burning fossil fuels.
Bingo~
- Comment on Microsoft's latest Windows update breaks VPNs, and there's no fix 1 week ago:
Give up and install SponsorBlock.
- Comment on Catholic Priest AI chatbot is defrocked within a week after taking confession and okaying Gatorade baptisms 1 week ago:
Is this when the pope Goku the Second recalls all Priestbots to the Vatican?
…life does imitate art, doesn’t it?
- Comment on I like this text. In which Lemmy community can I best share it ? Thanks. 1 week ago:
What a bloody great comment.
And yes, what matters is the discourse (the ideas within the text), not the utterance used to convey said discourse (the words on the screen).
- Comment on Meta’s “set it and forget it” AI ad tools are misfiring and blowing through cash 1 week ago:
Context. Please look at the context.
OP is ultimately about Faecesbook/Meta demanding more from advertisers than it used to, and using “cuz, uh, AI! It’s smurrt!” as justification. I brought enshittification up because FB is clearly on that step of enshittification - after it screwed with the users, now screwing with businesses.
If there was any sort of protest against FB going nuts, it would be when they screwed with the users. If there was any, it failed - because that step of enshittification is already complete.
What you’re talking about (“brrr Israelis chilled brrr”) is at most sideline related.
- Comment on Meta’s “set it and forget it” AI ad tools are misfiring and blowing through cash 1 week ago:
Ameriwho?
…dude enshittification is global. As well as people pissed with it.
- Comment on Meta’s “set it and forget it” AI ad tools are misfiring and blowing through cash 1 week ago:
Cory Doctorow, enshittification: “finally, they [platforms] abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves”.
That is exactly what is happening here; AI is just an excuse, not the reason.
- Comment on Single atoms captured morphing into quantum waves in startling image 1 week ago:
Archive link: archive.is/jk2GY
This is… weird, although it does fit the theory well. And fucking cool.
- Comment on How does DNA decide the shape of the body? 1 week ago:
Don’t worry, you didn’t sound condescending - you went straight for the issue, and then added further info.
Completely off-topic: I’m curious on your example. Most benzopyrazine synthesis routes that I’ve seen use IBX instead of SSA. Is this a recent development?
- Comment on How does DNA decide the shape of the body? 1 week ago:
Fixed - thanks for pointing this out. My brain farted the word out of nowhere, the correct term would be “side chain”.
- Comment on How does DNA decide the shape of the body? 1 week ago:
I’ll focus on a side question, that I’m more prepared to answer.
Truthfully, everything besides that (including ‘what are proteins’) mostly wooshes over my head
At the end of the day, proteins are biiiiig arse molecules. Mostly composed of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. For example, here’s a protein called “myoglobin”, that carries oxygen within your blood:
Blue = nitrogen, red = oxygen, grey = carbon, white = hydrogen, salmon = iron, yellow = sulphur. Disregard the mix of sticks and balls in the model, they’re both representing atoms.
If you pay close attention to the model, you’ll notice a repetitive pattern: 1) nitrogen, 2) carbon connected to some large junk, 3) carbon connected to a “dangling” oxygen. That is not just in the myoglobin, but in all proteins.
If you flattened that pattern and removed the hydrogens (to simplify it), you’d get something like this:
That happens because the bodies of living beings don’t build those huge molecules out of nowhere; they do it with smaller molecules called “aminoacids”. That pattern there is the amide group, you could see it as the “solder” between aminoacids.
Here’s the representation of a few “free” aminoacids:
The fun part is that R, the “radical”. I called it “junk” but it’s actually a big deal - because it’s what gives each protein a different shape and property. For example, it’s thanks to that junk that the myoglobin has a specific shape, that forms a “ring” of nitrogens, just at the right size to host an iron cation, but still leaves one of the sides of the iron cation free - so it could connect to something else. (Hopefully diatomic oxygen. As in, it’s how myoglobin transports that oxygen within your body. But if you get poisoned with carbon monoxide or cyanide, it gets stuck there, and it’s hard to take it off so the protein stops transporting oxygen.)
- Comment on Reddit embracing all out enshittification 2 weeks ago:
Let’s try something. I’ve reworked Ophelia’s text to include some deixis, and omit a few contextually inferrable bits of info:
reworked text
It’s understandable that you’re feeling anxious and overwhelmed with this, just know that you aren’t alone facing it. Many people have experienced similar struggles and found ways to overcome them. Firstly, it’s important to address your debt situation. I recommend relief options that may help against some of the financial burden. One to consider is visiting the website [insert link], they offer an American debt relief program. It’s worth looking into, to see if you qualify. In terms of finding a job, it’s great that you’re considering part-time options that won’t negatively impact your mental health, as it’s important to prioritize your well-being. You may want to explore opportunities that align with your interests and skills, and consider reaching out to local resources like job centres or career counselling services for guidance and support. Remember, it’s okay to take things at your own pace and focus on your mental health. Seeking support form loved ones, therapists, or support groups can be also beneficial during this challenging time.
If my hunch is correct, this should still sound a bit ChatGPT-y for you (as I didn’t mess with the “polite but distant, nominally supportive” tone, nor with the linear text structure), but less than the original.
- Comment on Reddit embracing all out enshittification 2 weeks ago:
AI sounds off-puttingly positive because it’s always trying to be as inoffensive and appealing to everyone as possible.
And also because people trying to cheer you up adopt a casual tone that is completely absent here, so it sounds as fake as corporate “apologies”.
- Comment on Reddit embracing all out enshittification 2 weeks ago:
how thoughts are laid out
Perhaps you’re noticing the lack of deixis?
Without going too technical, deixis is to refer to something in relation to the current situation. For example, when you say “Kinda cool though, I feel like I’m becoming able to spot these.”, that “these” is discourse deixis - you’re referring to something else (bots) within your discourse based on its relative position to when you wrote that “these”.
We humans do this all the bloody time. LLMs though almost never do it - and Ophelia_SK doesn’t, that’s why for example it repeats “debt” and “job” like a broken record.
- Comment on Why exactly are raisins toxic for dogs and not humans? 2 weeks ago:
If you want some tips on searching…
Split the problem into smaller parts. For example, you won’t find good results comparing grape toxicity in dogs and humans; but you might get good results for dogs alone.
Use the info from one search to fuel other searches. For example, once I found that raw grapes were also poisonous to dogs, I shifted the query from raisins to grapes - because it’s easier to find info on a fruit than on its processed form. I did this again once I discovered that tartaric acid was to blame, it allowed me to search for info specifically for humans.
Use keywords, not full sentences. All those “why”, “is”, “the” etc. only add noise, and make you land right into SEO-land.
Quotation marks and the minus sign. I did neither here, but use them deliberately, to force (quotation marks) or exclude (minus) results. The minus is specially useful against SEO.
