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Dejected Warp Core

@ dejected_warp_core @lemmy.world

Posts
2
Comments
889
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • What is your greatest motivator?

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  • I was pretty direct at my last interview about being in the job market due to a layoff. It comes up since I frequently get asked about why I'm looking for a position. At the same time, most folks in my industry have a mortgage, a car payment, kids, or all of the above. In general: they get that I'm trying to avoid going broke, without having to go into details.

  • xkcd #3196: Aurora Coolness

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  • The only northern lights I've ever seen were in Iceland. Honestly, the conditions were less than ideal and what I did see was very dim to the naked eye.

    What a lot of people don't know is that a camera (like on your phone) picks up even the faintest aurora with ease. I have pictures that make the whole thing look many times more vibrant than what I could see.

  • Closing programs

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  • Thank you for your service.

  • Jeff Bezos said the quiet part out loud — hopes that you'll give up your PC to rent one from the cloud

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  • Make no mistake, the oligarchs see the personal computer as a 40-year-old experiment that has failed, or needs to fail. They want their mainframes and CPU/hr billing back. Server hosting for enterprise uses has already gone this way for the most part. Small consumers are next.

  • Digg launches its new Reddit rival to the public

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  • As far as I recall, that's how it went.

  • What are your thoughts on the mass implementation of AI?

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  • I have a lot of thoughts on this because this is a complicated topic.

    TL;DR: it's breakthrough tech, made possible by GPUs left over from the crypto hype, but TechBros and Billionaires are dead set on ruining it for everyone.

    It's clearly overhyped as a solution in a lot of contexts. I object to the mass scraping of data to train it, the lack of transparency around what data exactly went into it, and the inability to request one's art from being excused from any/all models.

    Neural nets as a technology have a lot of legitimate uses for connecting disparate elements in large datasets, finding patterns where people struggle, and more. There is ample room for legitimately curated (vegan? we're talking consent after all) training data, getting results that matter, and not pissing anyone off. Sadly, this has been obscured by everything else encircling the technology.

    At the same time, AI is flawed in practice as it's single greatest strength is also its greatest weakness. "Hallucinations" are really all this thing does. We just call obviously wrong output that because that's in the eye of the beholder. In the end, these things don't really think, so it's not capable of producing right or wrong answers. It just compiles stuff out of its dataset by playing the odds on what tokens come next. It's very fancy autocomplete.

    To put the above into focus, it's possible to use a trained model to implement lossy text compression. You ship a model of a boatload of text, prose, and poetry, ahead of time. Then you can send compressed payloads as a prompt. The receiver uses the prompt to "decompress" your message by running it through the model, and they get a facsimile of what you wrote. It wont' be a 1:1 copy, but the gist will be in there. It works even better if its trained on the sender's written work.

    The hype surrounding AI is both a product of securing investment, and the staggeringly huge levels of investment that generated. I think it's all caught up in a self-sustaining hype cycle now that will eventually run out of energy. We may as well be talking about Stanley Cups or limited edition Crocs... the actual product doesn't even matter at this point.

    The resource impact brought on by record investment is nothing short of tragic. Considering the steep competition in the AI space, I wager we have somewhere between 3-8x the amount of AI-capable hardware deployed than we could ever possibly use at the current level of demand. While I'm sure everyone is projecting for future use, and "building a market" (see hype above), I think the flaws and limitations in the tech will temper those numbers substantially. As much as I'd love some second-hand AI datacenter tech after this all pops, something tells me that's not going to be possible.

    Meanwhile, the resource drain on other tangent tech markets have punched down even harder on anyone that might compete, let alone just use their own hardware; I can't help but feel that's by design.

  • What's the dumbest/silliest reason you got in trouble for in school?

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  • Sweet tap-dancing christ, this whole thread. If there's anything I've learned today, it's that some teachers are the most petty dictators that cannot tolerate being proven in the wrong, nor can handle having their decision making skills challenged. They're out there doing real lasting damage to people and their ability to think critically.

    It's almost enough to make me want to go into education, just to displace one of these tyrants.

    Sincerely, I'm sorry all of you had to go through any of this. Here's hoping you have support and find closure.

  • Digg launches its new Reddit rival to the public

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  • I was gonna say this is at least Digg 3.0.

  • [@alexkrokus] Elders

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  • Oooh, rocking an HP? I too like to live dangerously.

    But seriously, that's good to know. Those are probably easier to come by out in the wild. It really looks like Thinkpads go from office deployments straight to refurb companies these days. I never see them at thrift stores, and I'm not brave enough to dumpster-dive at e-waste.

  • [@alexkrokus] Elders

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  • Sometimes, old machines are survivors. Beware of confirmation bias when trash/thrift-picking cheap systems though. IMO, Thinkpads can be tough as a coffin nail. Including work systems, I'm on number 8 at this point with no hardware failures in sight.

    That said, I have a very lightweight Acer that's about a decade old with the worst keyboard and trackpad ever manufactured. It also performs like a slug, even with Linux on it. Still, it refuses to break so I can get rid of it.

  • Communication error

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  • As someone that can't do corn chips, "nachos" with potato chips are a darn good substitute. This dish is on the "loaded fries to side-of-fries" spectrum. 10/10 looks perfect.

  • It's dinner time, and you have to put together a meal with only ingredients already in your house, no going out for anything. What are you making?

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  • Yesterday we made quesadillas with gluten-free tortillas, kimchi, thinly sliced fried spam, and smoked cheese. All stuff we happened to have in our pantry. This was better than it had any right to be.

    I can also make vegitarian maki (sushi), spam musubi, or korean gimbap with a bit more prep work. We also always have Korean sides (pickled radish, cucumber, and more) on hand to throw together healthy meals fast.

    If push comes to shove, I can just thaw some ground beef out, season it up, and throw it on rice.

    If I'm feeling really lazy: peanut butter straight out of the jar. Don't @ me.

    Disclaimer: I can't eat wheat, so my whole diet got up and (mostly) moved to Southeast Asia to compensate.

  • u WoT m8

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  • This essay is brought to you by Raid: Shadow Legends.

  • What thing at work made you rage quit your job?

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  • My boss had Narcissistic Personality Disorder, complete with face-melting off-the-record disapproval of my behavior, followed by "love-bombs" affirming my positive contribution to the workplace, mere days after. This resulted in not so much a rage-quit as taking my first opportunity to exit as fast as possible. And the cherry on top? An open invitation to come back mere weeks afterwards. The pattern was so textbook, that all I had to do was look up NPD romantic advice and search+replace "partner" for "boss" in most cases.

    That said, I was pretty mad about how a great opportunity was ruined like this, let alone not as advertised. We've all heard "this meeting could have been an email", well there's also "this tirade could have been a counseling session."

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  • NGL, I kind of love this. It evokes the USSR, but in a really goofy and innocent way.

    Please keep posting whatever else your brain cooks up.

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  • While I've never seen it illustrated until now, I thought it was kind of obvious that this is our reality from outside our solar system. Is it not?

  • Americans think Republicans are too obsessed with trans people

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  • Thank you for saying this. I've come to the same conclusion and try to spread the word here and elsewhere.

  • States move to rein in ICE after fatal Minnesota shooting

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  • A few things to keep in mind here:

    • They have body armor
    • Not all states have Castle Doctrine - most do not, obligating you to attempt to flee instead of making a stand
    • They have numbers and firepower you do not
    • First-floor windows render strong doors moot

  • States move to rein in ICE after fatal Minnesota shooting

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  • I am not a lawyer.

    I think the key word here is "civil". Right now they're violating Federal law, which would involve higher courts, FBI, etc. A civil case would put all this awfulness in the hands of the State where the (Federal) law was broken.