Th4tGuyII
@Th4tGuyII@kbin.social
- Comment on OpenAI says Sky voice in ChatGPT will be paused after concerns it sounds too much like Scarlett Johansson 5 months ago:
Whelp, we're one step ever closer to terminators. Just gotta let Boston Dynamics cook now
- Comment on We have to stop ignoring AI’s hallucination problem 5 months ago:
Exactly. The big problem with LLMs is that they're so good at mimicking understanding that people forget that they don't actually have understanding of anything beyond language itself.
The thing they excel at, and should be used for, is exactly what you say - a natural language interface between humans and software.
Like in your example, an LLM doesn't know what a cat is, but it knows what words describe a cat based on training data - and for a search engine, that's all you need.
- Comment on All the ways streaming services are aggravating their subscribers this week 6 months ago:
And yet they'll be scratching their heads trying to figure out why more people are returning to piracy.
- Comment on Bitwarden has launched a new authenticator app 6 months ago:
True. While it's definitely more secure than their other 2FA offering (storing them with your passwords), it's still the same developers making both - so it still feels like putting all my eggs in one basket.
For IOS I can see this as a valid option, because unless you are willing to trust Microsoft, Google, or Authy with your 2FA, which I personally don't think one should, then you haven't got too many options.
But on Android there are plenty others that are known to be reliable, Aegis for example, so the value proposition is lessened for me at least.
- Comment on People left seriously creeped out after woman shares how to find out everything Google knows about you 6 months ago:
Went to check - had personalised Ads off on every account I have already, so I guess I won't be seeing what Google's got on me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- Comment on Bitwarden has launched a new authenticator app 6 months ago:
Cool idea for anyone who doesn't already use Bitwarden for their passwords, but I would be awfully sceptical of having my passwords and 2FA codes stored on the same service - only one breach required to royally screw me up
- Comment on Can we all agree that whatever version of predictive text we have nowadays is crap, and has been for a long time? 6 months ago:
Depends - I currently use Heliboard which doesn't seem to have any problems as long as I stick to dictionary words.
Samsung's keyboard sucks though - not only would it miss obvious typos, if you made the same typo often enough, it'd start learning the "word" and autocorrecting the actual bloody spelling to the typo!
(I had a habit of swaping the i and e in their, so of course Samsung decided "thier" was what I clearly meant to type) - Comment on No more 12345: devices with weak passwords to be banned in UK 6 months ago:
From what I see on the article, it looks like it mostly applies to manufacturer set passwords - though it does look like the devices are now required to prompt the user if they set a weak password (though I can't remember the last time I wasn't prompted)
- Comment on Can an online library of classic video games ever be legal? 6 months ago:
Exactly - the poor and working class are constantly told they need to evolve to keep up, why shouldn't that apply to rich people too?
- Comment on Net neutrality is back as FCC votes to regulate internet providers 6 months ago:
It's great that the FCC can get back to doing it's job properly now that its chair isn't an industry plant
- Comment on Private health insurance market grows by £385m in a year amid NHS crisis 6 months ago:
The rich Tories who stand to make bank off it being that way. Who would've thought it's a bad idea to let the rich decide things for the masses.
- Comment on Private health insurance market grows by £385m in a year amid NHS crisis 7 months ago:
It keeps looking more and more like the Tories are going to get their way as they keep knee-capping the NHS over and over again with a stagnant budget in the face of ever rising costs/demands.
They want to make the NHS shit to incentivise people going to private, so they can justifying privatising more and more of our NHS, until we end up looking like the US.
Honestly, fuck the Tories
- Comment on All New Atlas | Boston Dynamics 7 months ago:
Damn that's both insanely impressive and terrifying at the same time!
I see one of those things chasing me in the street I'm praying to Gods I don't even believe in - Comment on So much for free speech on X; Musk confirms new users must soon pay to post 7 months ago:
I genuinely have to wonder if Musk is intentionally trying to kill Xitter, because if he's actually trying to recoup his "investment" he's going about it completely the wrong way
- Comment on MKBHD - Do Bad Reviews Kill Companies? 7 months ago:
I feel like in most cases if a product has such bad reviews that it kills the company that made it, there's a good reason for that.
Of course there are exceptions, and it is expect that a reviewer that they do their due diligence to make sure they're giving an honest, accurate, and reasonable review, but no company should be shielded for being told their product isn't good if it isn't.
- Comment on Commodore 64 claimed to outperform IBM's quantum system — sarcastic researchers say 1 MHz computer is faster, more efficient, and decently accurate 7 months ago:
"...source code will only be supplied in one of three formats, they say: “a copy handwritten on papyrus, a slide-show of blurry screenshots recorded on a VHS tape, or that I dictate it to you personally over the phone.”
Technically speaking you could get your hands on the code if you were determined enouhh haha
- Comment on Commodore 64 claimed to outperform IBM's quantum system — sarcastic researchers say 1 MHz computer is faster, more efficient, and decently accurate 7 months ago:
- Comment on Google will delete data collected from private browsing 7 months ago:
Oh great they get to collect and make money off of "anonymous technical data" for years, and their punishment for doing all that is to delete the data, and swear they won't collect anymore of it for the next few years??
They already made their money off of people's data! This isn't a meaningful punishment, hell it's barely a slap on the wrist.
- Comment on Users ditch Glassdoor, stunned by site adding real names without consent 8 months ago:
Exactly how do Glassdoor expect people to give earnest reviews of their employers (which is literally the core of their business) if those people can't trust Glassdoor to not to throw them under the bus when they give honest reviews of malicious employers?
Talk about sabotaging your own business model - idiots.
- Comment on If we can use hydrogen to power electric motors, why can’t we use water to run a car? 9 months ago:
That's the theoretically part - there are processes that will capture the energy generated that would've otherwise become heat, but that only affects the timeliness. Given enough time, all workable energy generated by a heater would become heat, even if you had to wait for the matter itself to decay trillions of years from now when all the stars have long since breathed their last breath.
Also has somebody watched Technology Connections by any chance?
Heat pumps are so cool - if you showed onw to someone even a hundred years ago, even knowing what electricity was, they'd think it was magic. - Comment on If we can use hydrogen to power electric motors, why can’t we use water to run a car? 9 months ago:
Because it will always take more energy to break the water than you will get burning the Hydrogen in Oxygen back into water - it's basic thermodynamics.
You will lose some energy as heat that you cannot get back*.
You can't power a car from a process that loses energy. Even if you use a battery to donate the lost energy, then you might as well just cut out the lossy middleman and just run off the battery - which is what we currently do.
It is better to think of Hydrogen as an energy transporter than as a fuel, as you'd need to generate the Hydrogen somewhere that has abundant energy (ideally renewable), then transport I where needed, such as a Hydrogen powered generator.
*Interestingly the fact that all processes generate waste heat means the only theoretically 100% energy efficient process is heat generation itself, as all forms of energy eventually degrade to heat (as it is essentially the universe's waste energy).
- Comment on If we can use hydrogen to power electric motors, why can’t we use water to run a car? 9 months ago:
Because it will always take more energy to break the water than you will get burning the Hydrogen in Oxygen back into water - it's basic thermodynamics.
You will lose some energy as heat that you cannot get back*.
You can't power a car from a process that loses energy. Even if you use a battery to donate the lost energy, then you might as well just cut out the lossy middleman and just run off the battery - which is what we currently do.
It is better to think of Hydrogen as an energy transporter than as a fuel, as you'd need to generate the Hydrogen somewhere that has abundant energy (ideally renewable), then transport I where needed, such as a Hydrogen powered generator.
*Interestingly the fact that all processes generate waste heat means the only theoretically 100% energy efficient process is heat generation itself, as all forms of energy eventually degrade to heat (as it is essentially the universe's waste energy).
- Comment on AI Launches Nukes In ‘Worrying’ War Simulation: ‘I Just Want to Have Peace in the World’ 9 months ago:
Sometimes sure, but an LLM realistically has no decision making ability - it isn't considering strategies or ethics, or anything else for that matter, it's just pulling together an answer based on what people have said in similar contexts in it's training data.
I wouldn't want a parrot to decide who 's shooting who, nevermind nukes - though to be fair no one person or thing should be deciding either of those things anyway
- Comment on AI Launches Nukes In ‘Worrying’ War Simulation: ‘I Just Want to Have Peace in the World’ 9 months ago:
I don't mind having my own arguments thrown back in my face, but I do disagree with the premise that humans are anything like LLMs.
We have more than just a catalogue of conversational training data. We are hugely influenced by our current emotions, experiences, and traumas/fears.
I do agree with the idea that we shouldn't give too much power to one person, but I'd argue it's due to a lack of objectivity and a tendency towards selfish actions, rather than acting like an LLM.
Ultroning the world to achieve world peace isn't exactly the best outcome, especially for innocent folks caught in the crossfire
- Comment on AI Launches Nukes In ‘Worrying’ War Simulation: ‘I Just Want to Have Peace in the World’ 9 months ago:
Why the actual fuck is anyone considering putting LLMs into the driving seat of anything?!
Of course they make fucked up decisions with no proper or justifiable rationale, because they have no brains. They're language models, stochastic parrots stringing together sentences to fit the prompt(s) given to them.
- Comment on Why does incest result in birth defects? 9 months ago:
Pretty much...
Recessive malfunctions can hide away amongst carriers for generations before manifesting any deformities, during which time they have no effect on the carrier's survival, so there's very little selective pressure against them.
Dominant malfunctions which cause deformities simply can't hide away, so have enormous selective pressure against them.
Interestingly enough though, there are times where dominant malfunctions can survive that pressure...
For example, having Sickle cell disorder increases your resistance to Malaria, so even though the full form is rarely passed on, the single allele form (which caused partial disorder) is passed on due to a slight positive selection pressure. - Comment on We live in a post scarcity information society and we still haven't moved on from capitalism. 9 months ago:
Exactly. Information is a luxury - you could go your entire life without learning even a shred of information, but you'd still need to eat.
- Comment on We live in a post scarcity information society and we still haven't moved on from capitalism. 9 months ago:
Firstly, capitalism isn't going to just "poof" away just because there are more resources available. The rich will just hold them back to create artificial scarcity - like is done with diamonds.
Secondly, even discounting that, there are plenty of resources that are genuinely scarce no matter how much money you have to throw at the problem.
But if you're referring to just the scarcity of information - then you're still not quite right as not all that information out there is good information - a lot of it is misinformation (i.e. propaganda, etc.)...
And even that discounts the fact that for many people, they don't have the tools/capability to access the information, or simply can't access the information full stop (I.e. due to censorship, etc.).
- Comment on Why does incest result in birth defects? 9 months ago:
I'll try to keep it relatively simple - your cells contain chromosomes that contain your genes. You usually* have two sets of every chromosome.
These genes come in different variations/mutant forms called alleles. Most alleles function more or less the same, but some malfunctions result in deformities.
If a malfunctioning allele results in errant gene inactivation, it is known as recessive, which means as long as your other copy works, you're all good.
If a malfunctioning allele results in an errant gene activation, it is known as dominant, which means if you have the allele you get the deformity regardless of if your other copy works or not.
Fortunately for life, most malfunctioning alleles are recessive, so as long as you've got high genetic variance (a lot of alleles) in a population, the chance of two people meeting with the same recessive malfunction is low.
Incest can result in a drastic decrease in genetic variation, which can result in malfunctioning alleles becoming much more prevalent than they usually would be, resulting in many more cases of recessive deformities than in the wider population.
*For males this is not true of their sex chromosomes. Many genes present on the X chromosome are missing on the Y chromosome, which can lead to sex exclusive traits and diseases.
For example, it is the reason why there are almost no calico/tri-colour male cats, as the genes for it are in X but not Y chromosomes.
- Comment on Everybody has to self-promote now. Nobody wants to. 9 months ago:
This essentially boils down to big business wanting all the reward without any of the risk - they've turned artists into their own self-promoters so even when artists are new, they already have a stable audience to sell to, at the expense of the artist of course
