Posts by Biggles@qoto.org
(DIR) Post #AX9tC3li7izIvn2ZZQ by Biggles@qoto.org
2023-06-28T18:32:51Z
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@stux People often say "give them a chance". The tale of the frog and the scorpion applies.Facebook has its chance, for years, and had to change its name things got so bad. Anyone thinking they're not going to start internally matching fediverse accounts with Facebook and selling that info is willfully ignoring all of their prior behavior. There's a track record here. Give them another chance implies it's ok to risk losing what we've built to accommodate them. It's not. We already had one community destroyed by a billionaire man-baby, I'd hate to see a repeat.
(DIR) Post #AXMSxKRBnKMMX3EgTo by Biggles@qoto.org
2023-07-04T20:10:11Z
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@freemo genuinely curious - which science is it that the radical left seems to have a problem with? Just looking for a representative example. Because the ones that come to mind are all right bugaboos - but maybe I have a blind spot.
(DIR) Post #AXMyeA739fYvXciiwa by Biggles@qoto.org
2023-07-05T02:05:17Z
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@freemo Rejecting science that disagrees with your current beliefs, whatever they are, seems to be a thing many people do - left, right, or center. Even actual scientists who should know better do it, sadly. Cognitive Dissonance is a harsh mistress. But thank you for the reply - I at least now can see where it comes from. I think with the Covid especially many people formed unsupported opinions early on and close their mind to new evidence, to their disadvantage, and it's an uphill battle to get people to understand that biology is a bit more wibbly-wobbly than many (including doctors) believe it is.
(DIR) Post #AXOLiF3fCbN88p0jAm by Biggles@qoto.org
2023-07-05T17:58:27Z
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@freemo @mike805 Thank you. I was just going to mention scurvy (and other vitamin deficiency diseases), and my own thyroid hormone replacement, which also doesn't fit. (My thyroid took a hike in my 20's - seems to run in the family)But - it gets off topic. Maybe my local peer group is special, but I never saw significant pushback on vaccinations there, and we definitely lean liberal. The only real pushback in my very limited peer group has been from one who believes all illness comes from diet, and another who things both the virus *and* the vax are a government plot. Both very far right (wives). I mostly disregard their advice :-) but again, my peers and experience may be atypical, as we're mostly computer dorks...
(DIR) Post #AXOMNMllR8DfvkFRIm by Biggles@qoto.org
2023-07-05T18:05:53Z
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@freemo @mike805 Ah - that may explain my perceptions, at least there. I didn't notice any strong pushing because I was already convinced. We lost 3 family members to the virus before the vax came out, and we were fairly desperate for a *real* solution - and I had read quite a bit of good makes-sense-to-my-comp-Sci-background info on the new class of vaccines. (We've lost one more since - a sister-in-law in Texas who was positive the vax was poison. Sigh. And we've seen multiple infections since, but the rest of us are vaccinated, and have done very well. Small sample size I know)
(DIR) Post #AXTfDo1ji8RVmk0r4K by Biggles@qoto.org
2023-07-08T02:57:03Z
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Quantity is not quality.In fact - I'd probably go a step farther. There's probably an optimal size for most things, like say a population, just to pick a random example. Too many is probably diminishing returns past that size, at best, or actively destructive at worst. Just something to ponder for no special reason.
(DIR) Post #AXhPKuPiXHlIsAmCUi by Biggles@qoto.org
2023-07-14T22:38:34Z
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@freemoHonestly, and obviously speaking just for myself - I trust your judgement here. If you think a domain is egregious enough to block entirely - go for it. Even if I don't agree, I don't have the health of the entire domain to think about - but you do. I'd rather err on the side of heavy handed moderation than horrible people every damn day of the week.
(DIR) Post #AXhUB2AtKGRzokx6p6 by Biggles@qoto.org
2023-07-14T23:32:49Z
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@freemo Understood, but my point stands: you are both more invested in this and have a thicker skin than myself; I trust you to weigh the alternatives and do what you believe is right. Anyone who doesn't (myself included) - well, they have lots of other options. I figure if you reach instance-blocking mode, they probably deserve it.
(DIR) Post #AYE3z7eTQVZBG0dQVE by Biggles@qoto.org
2023-07-30T16:44:48Z
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@freemo Uh, no. I happen to know for a fact that neither of my dogs have a drivers license. Plus, legally, by age and weight in California, they really should be in child seats, which in the front seat must face backwards. So - logistical issues.
(DIR) Post #AYwPh7eGvXhJuI5AAq by Biggles@qoto.org
2023-08-21T02:13:32Z
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@simon To LLMs in general, tbh. There are some tools that have hidden issues, gotchas or legal issues, and shouldn't be used by people who aren't deeply aware of the drawbacks and limitations. You are aware of them. I don't see you making assumptions and coming to great harm because you, say, trusted the LLM not to hallucinate entire legal filings. You are in the minority, sadly - I know otherwise sane people who think they can replace actual humans with just a LLM. And its causing harm to those real people. Until someone comes up with a LLM that can readily tell me "I'm sorry, I don't have the data I need to give you a good, correct answer." - I fear they'll do more harm than good. And i don't see that coming any time soon.
(DIR) Post #AZ6vzRR9EWf8bcK1QG by Biggles@qoto.org
2023-08-16T17:59:58Z
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@DanaBlankenhorn @joaocosta A good rule of thumb with lasers is "there's probably a cheaper and easier way to do this not involving lasers".
(DIR) Post #AZAMLMW9Nt7C0BeelE by Biggles@qoto.org
2023-08-27T18:19:21Z
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@NatSecGeekSurprising essentially nobody who has been paying attention to history for the last hundred years...
(DIR) Post #AbSMcKS3oAnFi9VD1s by Biggles@qoto.org
2023-11-04T07:55:46Z
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@grammargirl The "I" in AI stands for "intelligence". I'm not buying into a game where others can use the word intelligence with all that implies to sell their snake-oil, but I'm not allowed to criticize it for doing the bad things intelligent things can do like lie, or cheat. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, you're justified in calling it a duck and treating it accordingly. When a supposed AI glibly gives me a made-up answer because the real answer isn't in its corpus, as opposed to "I don't know" - that's a lie, kids.
(DIR) Post #AbT7A5MJ1cXadfqSSu by Biggles@qoto.org
2023-11-04T16:37:16Z
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@grammargirl The proponents *already* ascribe more power to AI than it deserves, unfortunately - with real world effects. People are losing their jobs because managers believe it can do things it can't. "It's just a pattern-matching engine that emits plausible responses without any understanding of the meaning of the content" - while more accurate - doesn't communicate the point nearly as well as "it lies".
(DIR) Post #AbXqwbtQdjKm0mgrEO by Biggles@qoto.org
2023-11-06T23:27:37Z
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@textfiles Ha! DAK in the San Fernando Valley. I was fortunate enough to live nearby, so we used to make pilgrimages to DAK's warehouse to pick over the leavings; once thing had somewhat run their course in the catalog, any leftovers got a second life in the warehouse. You could browse thru giant shipping-container boxes of just about anything and everything, both from the catalog and stuff that didn't make the cut, all marked down. It was a picker's paradise, a Fry's before Fry's existed (or at least before it hit the Valley). Rarely left empty handed. I never ordered from the catalog - too impatient - but spent hours and a big chunk of my disposable income on DAK stuff. I didn't need it, it was mostly junk, but we had to have it...
(DIR) Post #AbXsH7Hjjb1P7OOzlA by Biggles@qoto.org
2023-11-06T23:42:11Z
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@textfilesNot knowingly. But it wasn't a huge operation and we probably went there a hundred times, so I may well have and not realized it. The warehouse was a big swap-meet and everyone was comparing notes. And yes - the catalogs were just devoured. Thank you for archiving them.
(DIR) Post #Acg8BgdUjjJ9aSu4JM by Biggles@qoto.org
2023-12-10T21:08:25Z
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@simon Crazy idea - the pre-installed system python should come out-of-the-box with one default pre-installed virtual environment, activated on user login. Make it a default. That way you can't accidentally screw up the system python, but can still just install modules. The python distro should *just do the right thing* and not count on the end-user doing the right thing after the fact.
(DIR) Post #AcqpCj7aKmvQgRdVHk by Biggles@qoto.org
2023-12-16T00:59:19Z
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@simon @matt @danilo @maria @dalias "Useless for learning" is a bit of a straw man. More accurate perhaps is "actively dangerous for the lazy or gullible". As an example, I point to *multiple* instances of lawyers turning in phony case citations. These people should absolutely know better - yet it's happened multiple times, and will happen again. The llm is presented in the news as an AI - artificial intelligence - and source of information. To most people, that brings to mind a trusted advisor, or subject matter expert - and when they say "provide 5 legal citations that support my argument" - boy, it sure sounds convincing, because the AI is generally incapable of saying "I don't know" - and that's the dangerous bit. Lots of tools human beings make are both useful and dangerous. Fire, the automobile, a chainsaw. We generally don't hand those out to people without some sort of training or warning. We regulate their use. But the law and human society are still catching up here. LLMs are useful in the right hands, very much so. But they need a wrapper preventing children, the gullible, and apparently lawyers from diving in without some warnings. You simply can't trust the output the same way you'd trust, say, a teacher of the subject.
(DIR) Post #Acqr4sMSISWovqyYiG by Biggles@qoto.org
2023-12-16T01:20:42Z
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@danilo @maria @matt @simon @dalias "Spicy autocomplete" made me snort. Well played.
(DIR) Post #AdbignAesgTOzhOUe8 by Biggles@qoto.org
2024-01-07T15:57:50Z
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@simon Until I meet a LLM that is capable of responding "I don't know" when asked about something missing in its training instead of "hallucinating". The word "intelligence" has certain foundational implications that are missing here. This isn't to say it can't be made into a useful tool, just that it looks so much like intelligence that *calling* it intelligence seems intentionally misleading. I dip my foot back in every time a new model comes along - basic factual questions - and have yet to see an "I don't know".