bobburger
@bobburger@fedia.io
- Comment on Is there any actual standalone AI software? 3 months ago:
Llamafile is a pretty good option for 100% local LLMs. The smaller models are pretty good for basic applications. They run at a reasonable speed on my Samsung laptop and really fast on my M2 macbook.
- Comment on How would I troubleshoot an AC unit that isn't working well. 4 months ago:
That is what should happen when a starting capacitor fails, but it doesn't always happen as it's supposed to.
- Comment on How would I troubleshoot an AC unit that isn't working well. 4 months ago:
Another possibility is the starting capacitor for the compressor motor is bad.
If the capacitor is bad then the compressor motor won't actually start, but the fan will still turn on. This will make it seem like the AC unit is running, but there won't actually be any cooling going on. The fans will still blow air, and it'll feel slightly cooler because it's moving air, but it won't actually be cooler.
Replacing capacitors is pretty easy and not too expensive. However, it can be extremely dangerous so I recommend you leave it to the professionals unless you have some experience working with electricity.
- Comment on *for 1 week's worth of groceries but yea.. 4 months ago:
Which Trump policy's do you expect to cause deflation significant enough to reduce your grocery bill?
Which Trump policy's do you expect to reduce your dependcy on owning a car so that you won't be at the mercy of oil companies, car manufacturers, and insurance companies in order to survive?
- Comment on Israeli military announces daily ‘tactical pause’ in southern Gaza to allow in aid 5 months ago:
I feel like this quote from the BBC article is the bigger story:
According to Israeli media, neither Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nor the defence minister Yoav Gallant were aware of plans for a pause before they were announced.
Mr Netanyahu's office reportedly said the prime minister had told his military secretary that the plan was "unacceptable" after hearing about it on Sunday.
He has also reportedly been told that there has been no change to the IDF's policy and that the fighting in Rafah "continues as planned".
Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir said the decision to pause fighting had been made by a "fool" who was "evil". - Comment on What is the longest discontinuous marriage? 6 months ago:
It was a pretty common phenomenon. Wikipedia article about the subject
- Comment on Renters' hopes of being able to buy a home have fallen to a record low, New York Fed survey shows 6 months ago:
TL;DR - This is a bandaid solution that won't have much impact short term or long term. We need millions more houses, unfortunately building houses is an expensive endeavor and no one is going to do it without a huge payout which only comes from building huge houses. Governments need to provide incentives for developers to build houses people can afford.
I'm against investment firms owning SFRs and renting them out, but this is a very small part of the problem. If we converted every rental house into an owner occupied house it wouldn't actually increase the number of houses available, it would just change some renters into owners. Then what?
The actual problem is that we don't have enough houses. We need millions more houses to meet current demand (for owners and renters, not everyone can or wants to own a home), and we're getting further behind each year.
We need to make it easier for builders to build homes, whether that's private development companies or publicly owned housing councils. We need developers to build medium and high density "missing middle" housing as well as smaller units that are affordable to low income people. As it is, private developers don't build these types of houses because they aren't as profitable per square foot as shitty McMansions. Since housing projects take an extremely long time to complete, no one wants to tie up their money without a high return on their investment that they get through McMansions.
The federal government needs to step up and apply some pressure to change zoning laws and encourage development of missing middle and smaller houses. Some ideas on how the federal government can do that:
- Withhold infrastructure funding to cities with restrictive zoning
- Give grants to developers to pay for permitting and planning costs provided the developers have a minimum percentage of missing middle and small units in their developments
- The federal government agrees to buy all of the small units from the developer at above market rates and then resells them to first time buyers, provided the developers meet the same requirements as point 2.
- Give money to local governments so they can start effective housing councils that will develop affordable housing themselves
If we somehow manage reach housing supply and demand equilibrium we can't stop development. We need to keep building so we don't have the same situation we had after 2008 and end right back here 15 years later because all the developers walked away.
- Comment on kids are gowing up faster and faster 6 months ago:
I've almost entirely switched to using pak for managing my R packages. I'm not 100% sure what the magic is in pak, but it's really made my life easier when installing packages.
- Comment on kids are gowing up faster and faster 6 months ago:
I'm not sure if you're using Quarto or not, but use it almost daily and frequently write R and Python in the same file without any noticeable overhead.
- Comment on [deleted] 6 months ago:
A simpler answer might be llamafile if you're using Mac or Linux.
If you're on windows you're limited to some smaller LLMs without some work. In my experience the smaller LLMs are still pretty good as chat bots so they might translate well.
- Comment on Mercedes becomes the first automaker to sell autonomous cars in the U.S. that don't come with a requirement that drivers watch the road 6 months ago:
- Comment on Zuckerberg says Meta's Llama 3 is really good but no chatbot is sophisticated enough to be an 'existential' threat — yet 6 months ago:
A chatbot with a sick mullet
- Comment on Why craft breweries are under threat as closures leap 49% 7 months ago:
Seriously. Making beer is easy. Making good beer at scale consistently is incredibly hard, and most craft brewer's aren't doing the work.
- Comment on AI will reduce workforce, say 41% of execs in a survey 7 months ago:
41% is the number of executives that think AI will reduce their work force, not the number of jobs they expect to replace.
Your point stands though.
- Comment on Video chat options? 7 months ago:
I use simplex with graphene os on my pixel 7 pro and it works great.