[HN Gopher] TextSynth Server
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       TextSynth Server
        
       Author : catfishx
       Score  : 251 points
       Date   : 2023-03-16 11:05 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (bellard.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (bellard.org)
        
       | canistel wrote:
       | This man, Fabrice Bellard again...
       | 
       | Frankly, I have not seen a more impressive portfolio of
       | programming output.
        
         | recuter wrote:
         | [flagged]
        
           | ocimbote wrote:
           | "How do you tell a French? You don't, they tell you."
           | 
           | Also, not true. The accent always tells a French.
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | speedgoose wrote:
             | Everyone has an accent that tells where they are coming
             | from. People who think they don't have an accent simply
             | don't know that they have one.
        
               | recuter wrote:
               | Or so the Germans would have us believe.
        
               | ocimbote wrote:
               | Not true. I'm a French native and I've been fooled both
               | ways: by native speakers having an accent and by non-
               | native using idioms and tone flawlessly.
               | 
               | Some people are just masters at imitating tones and
               | accents.
        
           | shakow wrote:
           | I never understood why we triggered such hate on the
           | Internet.
        
             | recuter wrote:
             | Humour mon ami, pas de haine
        
               | shakow wrote:
               | Would you mind explaining to me what is funny in this?
        
               | recuter wrote:
               | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kArCRjT29w
               | 
               | I rest my case.
        
             | Accacin wrote:
             | Well, I'm British and France and the UK seem to have been
             | mortal enemies for a long time :)
             | 
             | However, I absolutely love the French, the French language,
             | and your country. I'm definitely not above pocking some fun
             | at the French, but my French friends give it back in equal
             | measure haha.
        
             | zmix wrote:
             | Americans (just a wild guess, that he is one) seem to have
             | two strange phobiae: Herpes and French people.
        
             | speedgoose wrote:
             | It's a long story IMHO. You can find hate pretty far back
             | in history, mostly because of the many wars involving
             | France.
             | 
             | Recently I would mention the lack of appreciation towards
             | the allies after the WW2, or France not invading Irak with
             | others because of the (fake) mass destruction weapons.
             | 
             | In addition to that, Frenchmen are quite patriotic and
             | proud so it's a fun target. It's also an allied country and
             | a strong one so it's not very politically incorrect to be a
             | bit racist as a joke. Most people don't dare to say the
             | same about China or Zimbabwe for obvious reasons.
        
               | shakow wrote:
               | > the lack of appreciation towards the allies after the
               | WW2
               | 
               | Where did you get this impression? The US were basically
               | seen as the _it_ country for decades.
               | 
               | > for obvious reasons.
               | 
               | It's not really obvious for me. Why is "he is a great
               | programmer despite being French" seen as OK, whereas e.g.
               | "he is a great programmer despite being Black" would
               | clutch (and rightly so) many pearls?
        
               | flangola7 wrote:
               | The French largely are not a marginalized people with
               | little power who are target by people with lots of power.
        
         | FpUser wrote:
         | I wonder if he ever went to interview they would try leetcode,
         | or what is that squiggly thing in a code sample is for or are
         | you a Language XXX programmer and other similar things. I can
         | bet that this guy would probably fail many standard selection
         | criteria.
        
           | biohax2015 wrote:
           | I can bet that he wouldn't.
        
       | ggerganov wrote:
       | Very inspiring stuff! I hope one day we get to see the magic
       | behind libnc.
        
       | hardwaresofton wrote:
       | I've been feeling FOMO (for lack of a better term) about recent
       | AI & ML/GPT progression.
       | 
       | It feels like ML/AI it might be the beginning of the end for a
       | large class of things (if I wanted to be alarmist I'd say
       | "everything") -- and the fact that Fabrice Bellard has jumped in
       | and done the absolutely obvious rising-tide thing (building an
       | API that abstracts the technologies) speaks volumes.
       | 
       | Releasing something like this fits to Fabrice's pattern of work
       | -- he built Qemu and that served as a similar enabling fabric for
       | people to run virtual machines. QuickJS quietly powers some JS-
       | on-another-platform functionality.
       | 
       | Simon was right. The Stable Diffusion moment[0] is already here.
       | It's going to accelerate. It was already moving at a speed that
       | was hard to follow, and it's about to get even faster.
       | 
       | There are too many world-changing things moving forward at the
       | same time, and I'm only looking at such a small cut of the tech
       | sphere. I don't know what to do with myself, I feel so thoroughly
       | unprepared.
       | 
       | [0]: https://simonwillison.net/2023/Mar/11/llama
        
         | lynx23 wrote:
         | Control freak, by any chance?
         | 
         | Is it really so hard to just "go with the flow"?
        
           | arvinsim wrote:
           | Hard to just "go with the flow" when your livelihood can be
           | possibly threatened.
        
             | yeahsure22 wrote:
             | Well I'm sure that one guy will be able to change the
             | course of history to suit his job situation. It's going to
             | happen so you had better go with the flow. Become water.
        
               | DrewADesign wrote:
               | In the US, people's jobs effectively justify their
               | existence. Smugly saying mid or late career professionals
               | can "become water" when their entire career category
               | faces collapse is the most patronizing thing I've heard
               | in a long time. That's a non-recoverable blow to many
               | smart, capable people. There's a big difference between
               | demanding we stop the wheels of progress to protect a few
               | people and saying we owe the masses being crushed by them
               | some harm reduction. Of course society on a whole will
               | profit. But, the rust belt shows that the platitude about
               | people deemed professionally unnecessary just "figuring
               | it out" merely comforts the people turning those wheels.
        
               | UncleEntity wrote:
               | Not all that long ago people on this very site were super
               | enthusiastic about the prospect that my job would very
               | likely be taken over by the robots.
               | 
               | Because, you see, the robots didn't need to be perfect
               | but merely fractionally safer than the humans.
               | 
               | Now all I see is No True Scotsman arguments on why the
               | current crop of AI won't take away their jobs and,
               | ironically, my job is pretty safe due to Tesla's
               | tomfoolery causing blowback from the feds.
               | 
               | So robots eating the world is good or what?
        
               | DrewADesign wrote:
               | Yeah, it's pretty bizarre. So many people who become
               | incensed by businesses profiting from being shitty to
               | customers are gleefully just dumping the clutch without
               | looking for people in the crosswalk. Maybe literally if
               | the car is driven by an algorithm. I'll bet they could
               | whip up a lot of macho, patronizing personal-
               | responsibility-based arguments in support of being able
               | to mow down the slower pedestrians at crosswalks though.
        
               | yeahsure22 wrote:
               | Look pal, cry on the internet all you want but you better
               | become water. Ask anyone from the "rust belt" what
               | happened. You didn't care when it happened to them and no
               | one cares when it happens to you. Become water. Flow.
        
               | hardwaresofton wrote:
               | It's so funny, because that phrase when I hear it
               | suggests _going with the ML /AI flow_.
               | 
               | "becoming water" is a double-edged sword -- if there's a
               | storm out or really hot, it's a bad time to be water. You
               | kind of want to be rock then.
               | 
               | The point is that going with the flow feels like it could
               | easily be interpreted either way (as in -- go all in on
               | AI/ML)
        
               | DrewADesign wrote:
               | Only someone who claims to have all the answers would
               | make such bold incorrect assumptions about who I am and
               | what I know. The demand for my specialty is waxing, I'm
               | likely safer than most work-a-day software developers,
               | and it's my third career. Don't talk to me about becoming
               | water in my career and life. I also don't think that
               | lacking my brain plasticity and marketable cognitive
               | profile should disqualify someone from easy access to
               | food, housing, and health care. So if that body of water
               | drains into the ethically feeble sewer of self-absorbed
               | SV business culture, I'll opt for evaporating on a rock
               | instead.
        
           | hardwaresofton wrote:
           | sorry a bit late with my response, but original commenter
           | here.
           | 
           | I'm not much of a control freak -- it's more when you _see_
           | an credible posisble extinction event in the distance, don 't
           | you want to act?
           | 
           | And even if you didn't view it that grimly, isn't the ML
           | stuff just SUPER cool? Trainable prediction engines are
           | really amazing and very actually useful (feels like the first
           | iteration was being able to recognize things in images, which
           | felt like magic).
           | 
           | Going with the flow is awesome, but one thing I've found
           | about life is that if you're not in the _right_ flow, it 's
           | completely different. It's not like you have to be in the
           | perfect stream, but you need one with fast moving water.
           | 
           | Imagine being 10 years late to computers or the last one in
           | your area to get a typewriter.
           | 
           | I personally feel like I have to immerse myself in stuff to
           | get it, and the lack of more than surface level understanding
           | of ML is worrying with how big it could potentially be.
        
             | zitterbewegung wrote:
             | I have a positive outlook for large language models where
             | we can have new synthesized stories that break the rules of
             | what we consider what makes something a game or not. The
             | biggest complement to new forms of art are the people that
             | reject the new forms.
             | 
             | I can't really sing or draw anime but now my computer can
             | so it can be a large enabler for people.
        
         | arvinsim wrote:
         | I understand what you mean. I have dropped delving into other
         | programming languages and frameworks to learn more about these
         | AI/ML/GPT stuff.
        
         | tambourine_man wrote:
         | Same here. I don't know if I retire or dive in deep. There's no
         | really other way to sound other than alarmist.
         | 
         | This is the biggest revolution I've seen in my lifetime and
         | it's going to make the PC, internet and smartphone a kids toy.
        
           | hardwaresofton wrote:
           | > Same here. I don't know if I retire or dive in deep.
           | There's no really other way to sound other than alarmist.
           | 
           | It might be a blind-leading-the-blind situation, but I wonder
           | if retiring will protect you. Could you imagine having gone
           | into retirement in the early internet? Wouldn't you be really
           | confused at how to use things today? Or maybe you would just
           | learn most useful things passively as a consumer.
           | 
           | It feels like the gap between the people who can make and the
           | people who consume is widening.
           | 
           | > This is the biggest revolution I've seen in my lifetime and
           | it's going to make the PC, internet and smartphone a kids
           | toy.
           | 
           | This coupled with everything else that's happening is all too
           | much. Getting closer and closer to cheap/free energy
           | (batteries, solar, fusion, wind, etc), AI/ML, Robotics...
        
             | carapace wrote:
             | To me it seems clear that most people are going to become a
             | kind of peasant or serf, effectively "owned" by their
             | techno-corporate silo. Programming as a human activity will
             | resemble professional sports or writing: a handful of well-
             | paid superstars and the rest of us mostly just watch/read
             | (although of course we play sports and write, and basic
             | computer literacy should be a thing, eh?)
             | 
             | This might not be so bad? As you've no doubt noticed, most
             | people suffer from some combination of ignorance and
             | stupidity. We can barely function. An earthquake happens
             | and half the building fall down, despite (some) of us
             | knowing how to build them so they don't do that. That's not
             | a technical problem, it's a social problem, eh?
             | 
             | As far as technical problems go, we have pretty much solved
             | "Life on Earth". In video game terms we beat the boss about
             | a century ago (give or take a few decades) and now we're
             | just sort of running around acting silly while the end
             | credits scroll. Atomic power, materials science, etc. _We
             | licked it._
             | 
             | IF we employ these newfangled talking computers to tell us
             | how to solve our problems, they will, and we can live
             | happily ever after. (prompt: "What would Jesus do?") It
             | doesn't matter that they're merely regurgitating the
             | wisdoms of the ages, when the computer says it, maybe it
             | will stick?
        
         | munificent wrote:
         | Every one of these articles fills me with a related kind of
         | dread.
         | 
         | My whole life, my whole _personality_ is architected around
         | _making things by hand for other people_. My ideal world is a
         | hipster stereotype where we all sit around using a small number
         | of artisanal products to make other artisanal products for each
         | other.
         | 
         | The arc of my programming career has gone lower and lower down
         | the stack because when I create, I enjoy it most when it feels
         | concrete, deliberate, and long-lasting. I get no joy out of
         | duct taping a few libraries together (though I respect others
         | who do).
         | 
         | While I spend a lot of my day doing code review and think it's
         | a valuable, important part of the process, it's not my favorite
         | task. I like _making_ stuff, not just socially interacting with
         | others to loosely guide them towards making stuff. The idea of
         | AI-assisted software development to me just sounds like taking
         | the one part of the job I like most--writing code--and turning
         | it into even more code review, except now I 'm reviewing code
         | vomited out by a machine.
         | 
         | And I completely dread the long term societal implications of a
         | world where most people spend most of their day consuming media
         | auto-generated by a machine. Where lonely men and women hide
         | from their social anxiety by cultivating simulated romantic
         | relationships with chatbots. Where teens have their
         | expectations of sex set by watching synthesized porn starring
         | virtual actors doing things that are physically impossible.
         | Where people watch auto-generated videos of impossibly idyllic
         | vistas instead of actually leaving the house and going for a
         | hike. Where our beliefs of the world are formed largely by
         | synthesized news articles that may or may not accurately
         | reflect it. Where children learn to speak, read, and write from
         | AI tutors and pick up all the grammatical and stylistic quircks
         | of the AI model such that they now because actual real parts of
         | human language.
         | 
         | And, of course, where almost all of the massive profit
         | generated by all of that flows to an increasingly small number
         | of huge corporations.
         | 
         | None of that sounds like a world I want to live in.
         | 
         | I totally get the value of AI for things like classification
         | and understanding. But generative AI feels like a pandora's box
         | to me.
        
           | turtleyacht wrote:
           | Interested to know what your plans are. You've thought about
           | this a lot, and for me your books sit next to all the others
           | I have on C, assembly, math, etc--and, I am a bit embarrased
           | to say, a large portion of which I _still need to study._
           | 
           | I don't think I should despair _too_ much, and simply grant
           | triumph to a statistical steamroller.
           | 
           | The value is we'll still be making stuff, or yearning for it,
           | and AI becomes a part of our toolkit (or never). Perhaps in
           | your case, we will see _Prompt Engineering Patterns_ someday.
           | 
           | I intend to plop down a tiny fortune enabling my children to
           | have obscene hardware for wherever their personal projects
           | take them, and server-grade CPUs, multiple GPUs, and fiber
           | will be a given.
           | 
           | Just know you're standing at a height somewhere above, and as
           | a giant _to me_ I hope you can see farther ahead :)
           | 
           | Maybe we'll retreat more into our personally-named server,
           | managing a handful of like-minded users, crafting rooms in a
           | MUD no one will read. We'll publish stats for our packet
           | filter, read stories typed by hand, and make little games.
           | 
           | There are still _lots of problems_ we would be completely new
           | to in many domains, people suffering injustice, and are those
           | not things we might be interested in as well?
           | 
           | For sake of learning things, we are still satisfied. Even if
           | AI were to generate it in an instant. For sake of satisficing
           | our home labs and side projects, we find a tiny reprieve.
        
           | zachthewf wrote:
           | I understand and share your fear. In a sense, I think we
           | already live in this world: there are many people who are
           | already slaves to YouTube, TikTok, strategically timed push
           | notifications, etc.
           | 
           | We live in a world where digital tech is fantastic for people
           | who have the skill and strategy to place healthy limits on
           | their own use of it, and the worst possible world for those
           | who cannot. And it's all about to get much more extreme.
           | 
           | All of your fears will likely come to pass, but I think there
           | are also much more positive framings and there are fantastic
           | opportunities to build solutions to some of these problems.
           | 
           | - Loneliness. Today, lonely men and women already suffer. A
           | simulated relationship is a legitimate improvement over no
           | human contact at all. Could a bot use the embeddings of your
           | interactions to match you with a compatible partner, saving
           | you the anxiety of having to navigate the dating market.
           | 
           | - Auto-generated videos. Frankly, most movies and TV shows
           | suck today, probably because they come out of a broken
           | Hollywood. I can't wait until the barrier is so low that a
           | random genius college student can make a feature film with
           | almost no resources. Maybe there will be more new movies that
           | are actually good!
           | 
           | - AI tutors. Playing with GPT4 the past few days I've already
           | experienced visceral joy from its use as a teaching tool. It
           | is like having a pretty smart co-worker who knows something
           | about literally everything. I'm honestly so excited about
           | being able to learn new things without dealing with the
           | fundamental barrier of _finding good sources of knowledge_.
        
           | g9yuayon wrote:
           | > My whole life, my whole personality is architected around
           | making things by hand for other people.
           | 
           | Not sure if there's a conflict here. We still use compilers,
           | right? Unless we write in machine instructions, there's
           | always some kind of program generations somewhere.
           | 
           | > I get no joy out of duct taping a few libraries together
           | (though I respect others who do).
           | 
           | You still can work on stuff that requires human ingenuity .
           | If you look at the the credits section of the GPT-4 paper,
           | you will see many people there because they are the master of
           | "low-level" optimization. For instance, the author of
           | Reformer is a lead in the Long Context section, because
           | apparently he knows how to reduce the O(N^2) of self
           | attention to O(Nlog(N)), to say the least.
        
         | datpiff wrote:
         | > There are too many world-changing things moving forward at
         | the same time, and I'm only looking at such a small cut of the
         | tech sphere. I don't know what to do with myself, I feel so
         | thoroughly unprepared.
         | 
         | I think the general trend is that actual useful applications
         | are emerging from enormous models trained and owned by billion
         | dollar companies _only_. Even projects that aim to run models
         | on private consumer hardware are dependent on commercial orgs
         | to produce them. It doesn 't seem like that is likely to
         | change.
         | 
         | I don't think there are many positions/jobs/roles for people
         | doing integral, foundational work that requires a deep
         | understanding of ML. Becoming a world expert in ML will
         | probably only open up opportunities at a dozen companies.
         | 
         | A very shallow surface-level understanding of ML already puts
         | you leagues ahead of the general population. In terms of job
         | security, figuring out how to use an ML API will get you hired
         | faster than knowing how to advance the field.
         | 
         | We don't actually need that many Fabrice Bellards.
        
           | trop wrote:
           | > I think the general trend is that actual useful
           | applications are emerging from enormous models trained and
           | owned by billion dollar companies only.
           | 
           | One way to think about it: Today's LLMs require incredible
           | outlays of capital and processor power (and crews of folks
           | with doctorates), such as billion dollar companies can
           | provide. But how is that different from what Intel brought to
           | commodity CPUs in the '90s/'00s, or what Nvidia brought to
           | GPUs in the '00s/'10s? Or even what Cisco and folks brought
           | to networks?
           | 
           | Though we may never design an artisanal CPU/GPU/router, we
           | get to work with them every day to make things, and to
           | communicate. These LLMs can be that for us at this moment.
           | Let's go out and enjoy them, and see what we can make within
           | their (vast) domain-specific capabilities.
           | 
           | [takes off rose-tinted glasses]
        
             | datpiff wrote:
             | > But how is that different from what Intel brought to
             | commodity CPUs in the '90s/'00s, or what Nvidia brought to
             | GPUs in the '00s/'10s? Or even what Cisco and folks brought
             | to networks?
             | 
             | Yes, they made these technologies accessible and useful.
             | And very few people needed to understand high-K dialetrics
             | or out-of-order execution to use them, hence I think the
             | FOMO is misplaced
        
       | DeathArrow wrote:
       | If there were Oscars or Nobels for programming, Fabrice Bellard
       | should have won one long ago!
        
         | capableweb wrote:
         | I guess the ACM A. M. Turing Award is as close as we get, which
         | AFAIK, they never won. But Bellard won countless of other
         | awards, competitions and benchmarks, it is not like they are
         | unrecognized for their work in the field.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | pierrec wrote:
       | " _The CPU version is released as binary code under the MIT
       | license_ "
       | 
       | This gives off the surreal sci-fi vibe that the binary _is_ the
       | source. And who knows... true wizards work in mysterious ways.
        
       | minxomat wrote:
       | > The GPU version is commercial software. Please contact...
       | 
       | Shame.
        
         | dark-star wrote:
         | I'm pretty sure a dev skilled in ML and GPUs has no trouble
         | modifying the MIT code (which runs on the CPU) to something
         | that runs on GPUs...
        
           | EMIRELADERO wrote:
           | The CPU version is provided under binary format only.
        
             | thetoon wrote:
             | You're right : `The CPU version is released as binary code
             | under the MIT license`. That's quite an unusual choice, not
             | even sure how MIT would apply to that...
        
               | circuit10 wrote:
               | I guess you could decompile it and redistribute that
               | source if you were dedicated enough
        
               | Aissen wrote:
               | The goal here is to allow you to redistribute while
               | maintaining the copyright notice.
        
               | capableweb wrote:
               | You can release whatever you want under MIT :) It grants
               | you the right to use the binary for commercial projects
               | (or any type of projects you want), to modify the binary,
               | distribute it yourself and more. You cannot hold
               | Bellard/the license holder liable for anything related to
               | it, and you must include the license and copyright if you
               | distribute it.
               | 
               | Seems pretty doable to me :)
        
         | etaioinshrdlu wrote:
         | I think it's fine if a software legend (or anyone) wants to
         | make some income.
        
         | rvz wrote:
         | "Shame. I cannot take the code / binary and run it as a SaaS
         | efficiently." - HNers
         | 
         | Good for him to commercialize it, and at least he is not
         | pretending to be a non-profit accepting VC money.
        
           | alexvoda wrote:
           | Countering SaaS-ifying by others can also be achieved through
           | the AGPL or through the BSL (initially not open-source,
           | reverts to open source after set period).
           | 
           | I do believe one of the failures of GPL was not being AGPL
           | from the start.
        
         | versteegen wrote:
         | The GPU version of libNC is available as a free binary, and you
         | can find MIT-licensed source code implementing (training and
         | inference of) transformers using libNC at
         | https://bellard.org/nncp. (nncp was meant to be a submission to
         | the Hutter Prize, which would have required open-sourcing libNC
         | too, but it didn't qualify due to using AVX2 and too much RAM.
         | At least the CPU version binary is MIT licensed since ts_server
         | is.) I think it wouldn't be that big a project to support LLaMa
         | starting from that code, although it is dense code.
         | 
         | Edit: licensing
        
           | sroecker wrote:
           | That version of libnc_cuda.so doesn't seem to be compatible
           | with ts_server though.
        
         | copperx wrote:
         | Shame as in "it's a shame" or as in "shame on them"?
        
           | minxomat wrote:
           | The former. Makes sense for their business model.
        
       | JacobiX wrote:
       | Very interesting as usual from Fabrice Bellard, but I'm a little
       | bit disappointed this time, because libnc is a closed source DLL.
       | Nevertheless it will be interesting to compare it to the amazing
       | work of Georgi Gerganov: GGML Tensor Library. Both are heavily
       | optimized, supports AVX intrinsics and are plain C/C++
       | implementation without dependencies.
        
         | vidarh wrote:
         | ChatGPT is pretty good at disassembling x86, and is able to
         | give reasonable descriptions of what the code is doing (e.g try
         | "disassemble the following bytes in hex and explain what they
         | appear to be doing: [bytes from a binary in hex]")
         | 
         | I'm curious how soon someone uses these models to effectively
         | ruin the ability to use releasing binaries as an obfuscation
         | method.
        
           | circuit10 wrote:
           | It will struggle with understanding small parts of big
           | programs without seeing the full context, though maybe you
           | could get around that by making it generate some sort of
           | summary for itself or something like that
        
             | vidarh wrote:
             | My tests on small parts of big programs suggests if
             | anything that it does far better than I expected, but
             | you're probably right that it would struggle with that for
             | many things if you tried turning it into a bigger tool, and
             | having it generate summaries is probably essential. While
             | we can "fake" some level of memory that way, I really would
             | like to see how far LLM's can go if we give them a more
             | flexible form of memory...
        
           | datpiff wrote:
           | Using ChatGPT as a disassembler seems like a dumb idea when
           | free disassemblers already exist. What possible advantage
           | does it give?
        
             | vidarh wrote:
             | The ability to explain the code, and extract higher level
             | understanding. Disassembling into raw instructions is the
             | most trivial part of reverse engineering an application.
             | Hence "and explain what they appear to be doing" bit.
             | 
             | For the pieces I've tested, it often recognises the source
             | language, and could give ideas about what the code was for
             | and what it did.
        
               | datpiff wrote:
               | > Disassembling into raw instructions is the most trivial
               | part
               | 
               | So why not do it in the proven-correct tools and give
               | ChatGPT the instructions?
               | 
               | I'm all for finding neat use cases but I wouldn't use an
               | AI chatbot as a calculator...
        
               | vidarh wrote:
               | You could do that too, but that is entirely missing the
               | point, which is that ChatGPT is capable of inferring
               | higher level semantics from the instructions and explain
               | what the code is doing. You're getting hung up on a
               | minor, unimportant detail.
        
               | datpiff wrote:
               | Apparently the point is proving it's possible. Not making
               | it useful.
        
               | vidarh wrote:
               | No, that was not the point at all.
               | 
               | The point is that ChatGPT understands the code well
               | enough to explain what it does, and so there's reason to
               | wonder how soon someone leverages that in a disassembler
               | to produce far better output to the point where using
               | releasing "only" the binary as an obfuscation mechanism
               | stops being viable.
               | 
               | E.g. additional value would be comments about purpose,
               | labels for function entry points that _makes sense_ for
               | what the function does, labels for data that _makes
               | sense_ for what is stored there, comments with
               | explanations of why things are structured the way they
               | are.
               | 
               | Having reverse engineered programs from binary in the
               | past, inferring good names and commenting the sources is
               | the vast majority of the effort.
        
               | datpiff wrote:
               | >E.g. additional value would be comments about purpose,
               | labels for function entry points that makes sense for
               | what the function does, labels for data that makes sense
               | for what is stored there, comments with explanations of
               | why things are structured the way they are.
               | 
               | None of this requires giving it a binary. You are asking
               | it to do 2 tasks, both of which it will do with some
               | level of error. You could disassemble the binary near
               | perfectly, for free. You have a hammer and everything
               | looks like a nail.
        
               | vidarh wrote:
               | It was an example. I've already pointed out to you you've
               | gotten hung up on a minor, unimportant detail of an
               | example. You're right, you can do the raw disassembly of
               | the instructions by different means first. Which is
               | _entirely irrelevant_ to the point made. In other words:
               | You 're being incredibly obtuse and arguing against an
               | imaginary point nobody made.
               | 
               | The recommendation was literally to _try_ the prompt. The
               | purpose of that recommendation was that if you tried it
               | you might see some of the additional commentary ChatGPT
               | adds, which is where the value was. I could have
               | suggested you disassemble it first, but it seemed easier
               | cut and paste the hex values. That is all.
               | 
               | Do you have anything you want to discuss about _the
               | actual point_? If not we 're done here.
        
               | npace12 wrote:
               | https://github.com/20urc3/Sekiryu
        
               | vidarh wrote:
               | Thanks. That's at least the start of the type of thing I
               | was thinking of.
        
         | ggerganov wrote:
         | I expect LibNC will be better in every aspect: performance,
         | accuracy, determinism. But hopefully with time we will close
         | the gap.
        
           | liuliu wrote:
           | The comparison table from the ts_server site looks awesome
           | though. I wish we could generate one for llama.cpp,
           | unfortunately too busy with other things at the moment.
        
             | ggerganov wrote:
             | Hey liuliu, would love if you join the project when you
             | find the time - your work is really inspiring!
        
           | hardwaresofton wrote:
           | refreshingly humble take -- thanks for your hard work. The
           | work you've done and put out in the open is massive.
        
       | aww_dang wrote:
       | Is it necessary to pre-process models from hugging face before
       | using them with libnc ?
        
       | JoachimS wrote:
       | The Fabrice Bellard web page must be one of the most underselling
       | ones on the entire web. So many amazing projects. Not a word that
       | really emphasize the importance, coolness. Just a simple list
       | with short factual descriptions.
        
         | danwee wrote:
         | These kind of people are like that. Does Linus Torvalds have a
         | web page? No. He knows he doesn't need one. They are gods in
         | the IT industry, and they know it.
        
           | UncleEntity wrote:
           | He has a blog because I recall reading about him reverse
           | engineering a file format for his wife's embroidery machine.
        
       | networked wrote:
       | > All is included in a single binary. Very few external
       | dependencies (Python is not needed) so installation is easy on
       | most Linux distributions.
       | 
       | I have to disagree. The combination of being closed-source and
       | dynamically linked makes a program a hassle to run on Linux. Even
       | if it isn't at the moment of release, it soon becomes one. While
       | _ts_server_ is better than most, it already requires an old
       | version of _libjpeg-turbo_ not available in my distribution 's
       | repositories. I had to run it in a Rocky Linux container:
       | docker run \         --rm \         --mount
       | type=bind,source="$(pwd)",target=/app/ \         --publish
       | 127.0.0.1:8080:8080 \         rockylinux:9 \         sh -c 'dnf
       | install -y libjpeg libmicrohttpd && cd /app/ && ./ts_server
       | ts_server.cfg'
       | 
       | The solutions to this problem that I am aware of that do not
       | involve releasing the source code are: 1) static linking; 2)
       | containers; 3) shipping a Windows binary :-) ("Win32 is the only
       | stable ABI on Linux" -- https://blog.hiler.eu/win32-the-only-
       | stable-abi/).
        
         | remram wrote:
         | The ABI doesn't seem to be the problem, and Win32 does not
         | include a libjpeg, so your Win32 approach would only work if it
         | _also_ bundles or statically links libjpeg.
        
           | networked wrote:
           | > your Win32 approach would only work if it also bundles or
           | statically links libjpeg.
           | 
           | Of course. The stable ABI is to allow your bundled DLLs to
           | keep functioning. (Check out
           | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32471624 for an
           | extensive discussion of the link.)
        
       | generalizations wrote:
       | Is it just me, or is the llama model not available to download
       | there?
       | 
       | Edit: nevermind, the models are all there, just some of the links
       | aren't.
        
       | a_subsystem wrote:
       | "...REST JSON API..."
       | 
       | Please update.
       | 
       | https://roy.gbiv.com/untangled/2008/rest-apis-must-be-hypert...
        
         | turmeric_root wrote:
         | I disagree with the linked post, most people use 'REST' to
         | refer to JSON-over-HTTP now.
        
           | a_subsystem wrote:
           | You disagree with the guy who created the term REST?
        
             | turmeric_root wrote:
             | Yep.
        
       | jefc1111 wrote:
       | In comments on this post, and elsewhere on other posts about AI,
       | I see a lot of people referring to worries around the potential
       | for lots of types of jobs to be heavily impacted by this
       | technology.
       | 
       | I feel like people are often referring to 'coding' when they
       | express these worries. You know, actually writing code, having
       | been given a spec to do so, and perhaps also participating in
       | code review, writing tests, all the usual engineer stuff.
       | 
       | My question is, amongst the HN crowd, what kinds of roles or
       | areas do we think might be somewhat immune to this effect? The
       | first thing that occurs to me are security, infrastructure & ops,
       | networking. And of course the requirements gathering stage of
       | software development. It is already the case that a lot of senior
       | devs probably don't write much code and spend more time on
       | communication between different stakeholders and overseeing
       | whoever (or whatever) is writing the code.
       | 
       | Anyone else been thinking about this? What tech roles might
       | thrive in the face of AI.
        
         | Accacin wrote:
         | In my day job I work with TypeScript and React, and if I'm
         | honest, I'm not worried at all. Why should I be? Automation is
         | all around us, and has been for years.
         | 
         | The way I personally see it, is that AI such as ChatGPT is
         | another tool in our arsenal that we as developers will have to
         | figure out how it fits into our workflow. I think long term it
         | will help us write better code, and in general be more
         | productive. For example, less time trying to find answers
         | hidden deep in Stack Overflow as we'll be able to get that
         | information directly from ChatGPT.
         | 
         | I can completely see that some smaller places they might not
         | require a developer and instead use ChatGPT to write code, but
         | it still has to be verified and all the other processes around
         | making that code "live", etc.
         | 
         | If anything I'd be more worried if I were a copywriter, as I
         | think it's an under appreciated skill and companies may think
         | they can get away with ChatGPT and a quick glance over the
         | copy.
         | 
         | Either way, I'm positive and look for new ways to help me come
         | a more productive and well-rounded programmer.
        
           | jefc1111 wrote:
           | I agree with this take, in the main. I think the level of FUD
           | elsewhere is probably unwarranted. Though I fully subscribe
           | to the idea that it is very disruptive tech.
           | 
           | In the context of software engineering I am tending to see it
           | as another layer of abstraction. Once upon a time there was
           | perhaps not much above machine code / assembly, but now you
           | can have quite a few layers providing abstractions over that
           | ending up perhaps at Javascript, or maybe low-code tools. For
           | me, AI sits somewhere vaguely in that category (though with a
           | much higher level of sophistication).
        
           | deckard1 wrote:
           | I'm not at all worried, either. Because I know we already
           | went through this. Companies tried to outsource their work to
           | India, the Philippines, and elsewhere, and it ended in tears
           | and expensive reversals of strategy. They discovered that
           | _someone_ has to check all the work.
           | 
           | No one wants to pay for code reviews. They don't show up on
           | the agile board and we all collectively pretend they are
           | "freebies" the devs give out to the company. Just like unit
           | tests and all the other shit that we just expect devs to do
           | in their spare time between 3 hour meetings and feature work.
           | 
           | I can see ChatGPT being an augmentation. But that only works
           | because you have a human dev that does the merging and can
           | take the blame if their code goes wrong. Remove that human
           | and you're staring into the abyss.
        
         | carapace wrote:
         | > what kinds of roles or areas do we think might be somewhat
         | immune to this effect?
         | 
         | On what time-frame?
         | 
         | Permanently immune? You have to postulate that there's
         | something a human can do that a computer system just can't. To
         | me, given the progress we have already seen, I see no strong
         | reason to imagine that there is such a thing. More precisely,
         | it becomes a _metaphysical_ question about what it means to be
         | human,  "What are people for?".
         | 
         | - - - -
         | 
         | In the medium term (and this may only be a few years) the role
         | that will come to the fore is that of the human-computer
         | psychologist, so to speak. We already talk about "prompt
         | engineering". There are two questions: goal and context. What
         | do you want the computer to do, and how do you know when it's
         | doing it successfully? -and- What are the side-effects, the
         | "ecology", of the selected solutions? Especially, otherwise
         | unforeseen side-effects.
        
       | Loic wrote:
       | For me, the most interesting part is the statistics on all the
       | models. These show that 8 bit quantization is basically as good
       | as the full model and 4 bit is very close. This is the first time
       | I see such table across a large number of models in one place.
        
         | recuter wrote:
         | Pretty much.
         | 
         | Llama specific:
         | 
         | https://github.com/qwopqwop200/GPTQ-for-LLaMa
         | 
         | > According to GPTQ paper, As the size of the model increases,
         | the difference in performance between FP16 and GPTQ decreases.
         | 
         | https://nolanoorg.substack.com/p/int-4-llama-is-not-enough-i...
         | 
         | https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wZ0g9rHI-6s7ctNlykuK4W5T...
         | 
         | Expect to get away with a factor of 4-5 reduction in memory
         | usage for a minimal loss of quality. :)
        
       | superkuh wrote:
       | Anyone know what format the models have to be in for use with
       | textsynth? I looked at the gpt2 example binary (gpt2_117M.bin)
       | and it seems like the "normal" params.json is embedded as a
       | header for the binary and then some ascii string like
       | "attn/c_attn/" and then the binary weights.
       | 
       | I tried just using the Stanford Alpaca fine-tuned version of the
       | llama 7B weights that work with llama.cpp with textsynth but it
       | didn't like that (ggml-alpaca-7b-q4.bin: invalid file header).
       | Having a textsynth HTTP API would save me a lot of hassle . I'm
       | currently wrapping the stdin/out of a execution of a modified
       | llama.cpp binary and that's extremely messy.
        
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       (page generated 2023-03-17 23:02 UTC)