dTal

12 ms·

211.
by dTal 8mo ago
Almost everyone voting Brexit was uneducated on the issues, a fact rapidly borne out by actually speaking to them. Actually "uneducated" is quite charitable as quite a lot are racist also. I don't know how anyone can claim
212.
by dTal 8mo ago
gov.uk is not neutral at all! "The easiest way to apply is on the app" "By applying on the UK ETA app you're more likely to: complete your application quicker; get a faster decision". "You should apply online i
213.
by dTal 8mo ago
Is it possible that software is not like anything else, that it is meant to be discarded: that the whole point is to always see it as a soap bubble? --Alan Perlis
214.
by dTal 8mo ago
This is an excellent observation that probabilistic phrasing is inherently contextual, but I don't know if I'd agree that something being nuanced and context dependent inherently means "alignment is impossible". Certainl
215.
by dTal 8mo ago
Out of curiosity, what's your gripe with Qt?
216.
by dTal 8mo ago
Yes - for a certain narrow definition of "task" - but the reality is much more nuanced and comparing brains to single core processors is oversimplifying to the point of inaccuracy. A human brain has tons of "subsystems",
217.
by dTal 8mo ago
There's a ton of low hanging fruit now - more than ever. Every question answered raises multiple new questions. If there is a lack of opportunity to answer interesting questions, it is certainly not because the questions aren't th
218.
by dTal 8mo ago
gcc seems to be a funny stub that generates an "executable" that prints "Hello, World!" if the input file fuzzy-matches a hello world, and otherwise prints nothing. Seems to be a few simple regexes: to "compile&quot
219.
by dTal 8mo ago
Explain the existence of "elogind" and "eudev" then? It might be the case that one can disable some components of systemd, on a systemd system. It is certainly not the case that they are "loosely coupled", or
220.
by dTal 8mo ago
This is the same "useful idiot" trap that Julian Assange fell into. It's a challenge to incorporate the lessons of people like these without falling into the opposite trap, that of cynical apathy.
221.
by dTal 8mo ago
Interesting comment with worthwhile content, but the writing style strongly smells of ChatGPT, and the phrase "For someone in your position" is incongruous (who is being addressed?). Did you use it, and if so, would you mind shari
222.
by dTal 8mo ago
Money is power, and nothing but.
223.
by dTal 8mo ago
LLM output has its quirks, but human output can be much quirkier. To me, the most obvious tell of AI is a lack of quirks.
224.
by dTal 8mo ago
I would expect there not to be a meaningful number of "unfamiliar words and idioms" to a professional translator.
225.
by dTal 8mo ago
Disc = round part visible Disk = round part hidden or no round part Have I got it!?
226.
by dTal 8mo ago
Your ultra-reductionism does not not constitute understanding. "Math happens and that somehow leads to a conversational AI" is true , but it is not useful . You cannot use it to answer questions like "how should I prompt th
227.
by dTal 8mo ago
Right, but that was my point - statistically, answers do not follow questions without some establishing context, and as such, while LLMs are "simply" next word predictors, the chatbots aren't - they are Hofstaderian strange
228.
by dTal 8mo ago
>In a massive dataset of human writing, the answer to a question is by far the most common thing to follow a question. No it isn't. Type a question into a base model, one that hasn't been finetuned into being a chatbot, and the
229.
by dTal 8mo ago
Don't forget an entire new category of computing, AI, which is teetering on the edge of requiring processors from one manufacturer, which in turn requires gigabytes of closed-source runtime. Today, you can do functionally more with a
230.
by dTal 8mo ago
Is this supposed to be a difficult choice?
231.
by dTal 8mo ago
I have the opposite reaction to your historical energy figures - energy consumption is clearly not as important to technological progress as we imagine. If there's only a 4x difference between the Founding Fathers and B29s carrying nuk
232.
by dTal 8mo ago
Setting aside "elected officials"... government employees are already undercompensated compared to the private sector, making it difficult to attract talent. Eroding their personal rights and exposing them to personal risk on top
233.
by dTal 8mo ago
This is one example of a more general complaint about systemd and related projects: they force policy, rather than simply providing mechanisms. I recently did a deep dive on my laptop because I was curious about an oddity - the /sys fi
234.
by dTal 8mo ago
Is it? What's the connection between systemd and having a desktop?
235.
by dTal 8mo ago
45 dollars? Form 415? Maybe I'm jumping at shadows but this smells like a Trump dogwhistle.
236.
by dTal 8mo ago
It absolutely was a large part of the general snowstorm of rationales offered. "Regime change" they called it, remember? This Guardian article[0] is a wonderful little window into the zeitgeist of the time. You can see that many c
237.
by dTal 8mo ago
+1 for qalculate Favorite feature: you can type in any equation, writing 'x' for an unknown quantity, and it will solve for x. This comes in handy to avoid having to engage brain even for simple calculations. How many pixels per m
238.
by dTal 9mo ago
Ah, if only! GNOME and even to an extent KDE both depend on systemd components, to the point that systemd-free distros are compelled to fork it if they want a GUI: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Elogind Only yesterday I
239.
by dTal 9mo ago
Rule of law? Innocent people are being shot.
240.
by dTal 9mo ago
Considering that (for example) your data on ChromeOS is automatically copied to a server run by Google, who are legally compelled to provide a copy to the government when subject to a FISA order, it is unclear what Poettering's threat

More ›