Zworf

@Zworf@beehaw.org

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Zworf ,

Yeah that slogan really captured very well the intentions at the world economic forum.

I know it's not what they officially stated but it really captured (they since walked it back and said it only was meant to "describe emerging trends") the intentions of what happens when they all come to Davos and divide the world between them.

But I don't believe "as a service" models are more sustainable. They will just enable more rent-seeking behaviour meaning we will get even less for our money. The incentive to deliver will be even lower as they will get paid anyhow.

Zworf ,

I have LTSC 2021 officially (MSDN) and I have to say I'm not very impressed. You still can't turn off the telemetry crap. There is still a windows store. There's a bit less bundled scamware but beside that it's a bit overrated IMO.

Zworf ,

The audio from the AI also seemed to cut out a lot during the demo. So it does appear like no shenanigans to me.

Zworf ,

I didn't think it was super creepy but I thought the voice was so overly enthusiastic and overacted and soooo sugary. bleh.

This won't work for me unless that can be customised and toned down a lot.

Zworf ,

Training your own will be very difficult. You will need to gather so much data to get a model that has basic language understanding.

What I would do (and am doing) is just taking something like llama3 or mistral and adding your own content using RAG techniques.

But fair play if you do manage to train a real model!

Zworf ,

Hmmm weird. I have a 4090 / Ryzen 5800X3D and 64GB and it runs really well. Admittedly it's the 8B model because the intermediate sizes aren't out yet and 70B simply won't fly on a single GPU.

But it really screams. Much faster than I can read. PS: Ollama is just llama.cpp under the hood.

Edit: Ah, wait, I know what's going wrong here. The 22B parameter model is probably too big for your VRAM. Then it gets extremely slow yes.

Zworf ,

It depends on your prompt/context size too. The more you have the more memory you need. Try to check the memory usage of your GPU with GPU-Z with different models and scenarios.

Zworf , (edited )

This is something that the amazing Naomi Wu brought up for years before, and was ordered to stop publishing by the local government. It was about the same thing. It's sometimes misrepresented as being about Signal, but her point was: There's no point in using a secure messaging app like Signal if your keyboard (IME) leaks everything you write! So she was making the exact same point as in this article.

I really miss her content. 😢

Zworf ,

Yeah she clarified that literally, it's not linked in the article.

https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/1677480809450835969

I can't find the source of her saying it was about the IME thing but I recall reading that from a person close to her. She had just raised it before all this happened. Edit: Oh wait, that's here: https://skepchick.org/2023/08/maker-naomi-wu-is-silenced-by-chinese-authorities-and-why-i-blame-elon-musk/ (This was linked on wikipedia)

And yes she's a great person, she was often criticised for being a CCP stooge but that was BS. She was as outspoken as one can be being in China (and unfortunately, clearly a bit more than that).

Zworf ,

A lot of translation and summarisation. ChatGPT is extremely good in absorbing a whole mix of comments in different languages and summarising them in English (or whatever other language).

For programming I don't use it so much anymore because it hallucinates too much, calling APIs that don't even exist. And when I lower the temperature the output is too sparse.

I'm also trying to build an assistant that can also communicate proactively (I intend to auto-prompt it when things happen and then evaluate if it should cause a message to me). But I need to get a local LLM going for that because running that through the ChatGPT API will be too costly.

Also, a replacement for some of my web searches. Sometimes I just want to know something and it's refreshing that it can give me an answer (even though it does need to be validated, it's much easier to do that when you know what you're looking for!)

Zworf , (edited )

The LLMs for text are also based on "theft". They're just much better at hiding it because they have a multitude more source material. Still, it does sometimes happen that they quote a source article verbatim.

But yeah basically they're just really good copy/paste engines that work with statistical analysis to determine the most likely answer based on what's written in basically the whole internet :P It's a bit hard to explain sometimes to people who think that the AI really "thinks". I always say: If that were the case, why is the response to a really complicated question just as fast as a simple one? The wait is just based on the length of the output.

In terms of the "theft" I think it's similar ethically to google cache though.

Zworf ,

Media ownership by foreign countries is indeed a worry.

Even in Holland we have this problem: 90% of the media companies (newspapers, magazines, websites) are owned by only two Belgian mediaconcerns. This is not a smart thing to do. But we never hear about that here.

Not that there's an explicit problem at the moment but such a huge imbalance is not smart IMO.

Zworf ,

Well in this case it's not really about the fact that they're Belgian. Because unlike China there is a big separation between state and corporation here. It's more the fact that it's only two private concerns which is hardly competition.

Also, due them being based abroad the local legislation has less grip on them. The exact country they're from is indeed less important as long as it can be considered friendly.

Israel Attack on Iran Is What World War III Looks Like ( theintercept.com )

But this, in fact, is what actual war looks like these days: Sometimes it’s a volley of 300 missiles and drones, and sometimes it is lean, targeted, and carried out covertly. Gone are the days of vast conquering armies and conventional military confrontations between two parties. So long as experts, the government, and the...

Zworf ,

But this, in fact, is what actual war looks like these days: Sometimes it’s a volley of 300 missiles and drones, and sometimes it is lean, targeted, and carried out covertly. Gone are the days of vast conquering armies and conventional military confrontations between two parties.

So, like what's happening in Ukraine right now?

I mean they use drones for some deep strikes causing minor damage but most of the actual advancement is made using artillery and boots on the ground.

Zworf ,

Meh the amount of plastic is minimal and most pens are made from renewable materials these days (Polylactic Acid).

Personally I don't use pens much at all anymore so it never really happens that I empty one of ink. If I throw one out it is because it is all dried up.

Zworf ,

Yeah me too, though for me the ink doesn't stay good that long. I guess because I live in a hot country.

I literally do years with one. I have to say I hate writing with a passion anyway. I can type sooo much faster than I write and my handwriting is terrible. So I avoid it like the plague.

Zworf ,

I love the feel of writing with a fountain pen but they tend to leak. Also it's hard not to smear the ink.

I always use the ones with the plastic capsules, not the real refillable ones. They're more expensive and I don't look after my pens well enough.

Zworf ,

There’s only one situation where a ballpoint is better suited than a fountain pen: writing checks. Fountain pens are not good for situations where you have to press hard enough to create a pressure duplicate.

That, and the ink can handle a bit of water unlike that of a fountain pen (unless you use India ink but then good luck if you have a leak and ruin your bag or shirt because nothing can get that stuff out)

PS The last time I used a check was in the 90s 😆 Do people still use them where you are? I couldn't even get one from my bank if I wanted to.

Zworf ,

Much better for sure.

Also a lot less functionality of course.

Zworf ,

Depends on whether you consider dark-patterns to be “lying”

https://www.apple.com/privacy/ "Privacy. That's Apple.". That and then doing dark patterns, I consider that lying, yes.

Zworf , (edited )

Maybe this research and language is intended to suggest that there is a point past which “confusingly and unintuitively designed” strongly resembles “intentionally deceiving”? We’re probably not going to get internal emails saying “make it complicated so that we can collect users’ data”.

This is Apple that pride themselves on UX as you mention. They mainstreamed opinionated design. If they do it a certain way there is a reason, which is not always with the user's interests in mind. It's not because Bob in development couldn't think of a better way. Other brands might get away with that excuse but not Apple.

Zworf ,

In Holland the government just said they dropped all plans to do this 🤬 The plans were basically ready to be signed off.

Of course in the last election the extreme-right won 25% of the votes so the cause is clear 😭

The race to decarbonise the world’s economy risks repeating the mistakes of the colonial era by building industries on forced and child labour, rights advocate warns ( www.smh.com.au )

Almost 90 per cent of the global supply for polysilicon, a common raw material in electronic devices and solar panels, comes from China, and about half of that comes from Xinjiang, the north-western province that is home to the Uyghurs, says Grace Forrest, founder of Walk Free, a charity dedicating to fight forced labour....

Zworf , (edited )

most personal trips can be done safely and easily using an E-bike (much smaller batteries that can be produced en mass with existing supply chains) and cars should be reduced in usage outside of particularly rural areas where they truly are a necessity (which is a tiny portion of the overall population).

E-bikes are often not an option for many reasons. Needing to bring cargo, bad weather, danger from other traffic. If they were actually such an amazing option everyone would be using them because they are hella cheaper than cars. Even in the netherlands where bike infrastructure is great, people are extremely car-centric.

Personally I think subsidised public transport is a much better option.

And nuclear is not cheaper and it doesn't even factor in waste storage and decommissioning otherwise it would not have been viable. Right now when a nuclear plant is closed the operator walks off scot free and the cleanup costs are borne by the public. The mining of the uranium is also pretty polluting. There's a lot of this externalisation to make it viable.

The only reason it worked in the past was that the governments were building nuclear arsenals and invested in nuclear industry (note that this industry was not necessarily capable of producing weapons-grade plutonium but still, it was about building up an industry). It's no coincidence that most countries relying heavily on nuclear power are also nuclear armed.

Also, environmental pollution is also a safety issue. Don't just look at human deaths. Even Fukushima was a major disaster despite not leading to many deaths. The regulation is there for a reason and that still didn't manage to prevent Fukushima (not talking about Chernobyl there because that was just human idiocy fucking up at its worst). And other first-world countries have also had meltdowns.

Personally I also feel bad about dumping our waste problem on future generations. That kind of thinking is exactly what led to the climate crisis. But admittedly this is a lesser issue for nuclear in particular because we do this with pretty much everything (as this article also mentions)

Zworf ,

True, nobody should ever have billions. There's simply no need for that much money, you can't ever use it up.

Zworf ,

The Netherlands is extremely docile to big business interests.

Zworf ,

Yeah me either. It spies on your computer, they ban third-party clients. It's owned by bytedance. When I use the web version it kicks me out every day and I have to log in again.

I don't mind it being around but I really hate the way open source projects (e.g. Home Assistant) use it as their only platform for collaboration. The make me give up my data just to collaborate with them on a privacy tool.

Zworf ,

In other words: Matrix.

Zworf ,

Yes but it's a small effort to sign up for somewhere else. Matrix is just as good and they do care about your privacy.

I find it really weird for a project like Home Assistant where the whole goal of the package is to wrestle control of your home from the big tech clouds. Only to put their own comms data in a big tech cloud... :X

Zworf ,

All these maintainers of all these lemmy servers would have to do the exact same thing if Nintendo came to them.

yes but then the community would move to another lemmy host and it would turn into a game of whack a mole for Nintendo. There is no other Discord host.

Zworf ,

It's not as snazzy as Discord but it's fully open-source and federated. So everyone can run their own server (I do, too). If you don't care about running your own you can just sign up at https://app.element.io/ . It's free of course. It basically is for chat what lemmy and mastodon are to social media.

It also offers many "bridges" to other protocols, like WhatsApp, Telegram, even Discord. Those are not quite as mature and mostly third-party provided but they generally work well.

There's a really great ansible playbook for installing your own. If you would like to have the full bridged experience, beeper is probably best.

Zworf ,

Actually the ansible playbook creates a bundle of docker containers so you get the best of both :)

Zworf ,

Yeah for sure. I run the server + a bunch of bridges (whatsapp, signal, telegram, chatgpt) on an old atom NUC with 8GB RAM and it only actually uses 2 GB.

Here's the documentation for the playbook: https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy

I can really recommend it. It takes some reading to set it up because it's insanely configurable. But in the end I have a config file with like 20 statements in it and that sets it all up and keeps it up to date.

Zworf , (edited )

That's true. They actually stopped supporting Nginx recently which really bothered me too because I want to keep using self-signed certs (my server is only reachable internally and I do not want to expose it to the internet). And the new server they use (I forgot which) didn't really have that option. So right now I'm locked out from updating until I fix that.

And yes it is totally feasible to use upstream! Not a problem at all.

I would recommend to use the dockers though, as the whole debian thing becomes a bit of a mess with different python requirements for some of the bridges. I tried that in a long forgotten past and there is a reason I'm trying to forget that 🤭

Like you I know the ansible playbook has its limits (for example one other thing I run into is that I want to run several instances of the same bridge to bridge eg. 2 whatsapp accounts!) but I do think docker is the way to go. I'm interested to hear how you're faring though as it's a long time ago since I tried that.

Zworf ,

On telegram it's one of the many things you get if you pay for premium.

I really like Telegram, they are really thinking about what the user wants. Live translations, icon packs, bots that can add amazing features to channels. I gladly pay for it because I use it so much, most of the communities here use Telegram.

Whereas the signal devs are just sitting on their high horse and doing nothing but stupid cryptoscams.

Zworf ,

Well the third-party launchers is extremely annoying, I have to say. Buying a game on Steam and then it forcing you to install yet another launcher (I have like 8 on my gaming PC now) really pisses me off.

I tend to buy on GOG now if I have the choice because they don't stand for that kind of shit nor DRM either.

I also really love the overview of GOG of the games you have in different launchers. Before that it happened to me multiple times that I bought a game on sale without realising I had already bought it on another platform years ago on another sale. Oops.

Ethics, features that are actually great for me instead of stuff that's just great for them. Love it. Reminds me a lot of a company that used to be like that. It was called Valve I think.

Zworf , (edited )

The problem about doomism is that it promotes inaction in the less educated "because things are fucked anyway".

To be honest I think the doomers are right, not because there isn't still time to fix most of it (there probably is) but because the political will to actually do it isn't there. Which is an uphill battle because the more we delay the more drastic measures are needed which require even more political will to actually do. Those two things are getting ever more out of sync. The political will has been slowly increasing but not as fast as as the urgency and need for measures.

But the sentiment that results from doomism makes this political will even worse.

Zworf ,

But politics is us. This is what democracy is all about.

The problem is the population at large still doesn't understand the gravity of the situation.

Zworf ,

Yes but the outcome is just as bad.

Zworf ,

Which on its own will help to mitigate the problem. This is why it's not an extinction event.

It's just that it's not really a very good "solution" because of all the misery it causes.

Zworf , (edited )

It's in the UI on the Engines tab. However, you can only see it there, you still have to use the config file to actually change it, sorry. That's not hard at all though.

https://beehaw.org/pictrs/image/91a0bb2f-6ba4-4374-8f26-06cbd5424dbb.webp

If you don't see this option, perhaps you're running an older version? I'm running the latest docker.

Zworf ,

Not infallible truth. But very often it's something that is just for personal use.

Some things I've asked it recently were like "Which torch is smaller out of these 5 models?". Once I find which one I want it's easy to verify. Or "what does this Spanish expression mean?" or "how do I do ...".

Not everyone uses it to try and write authoritative stuff. And Google is full of clickbaity "comparison sites" that are nothing but fake advertising.

Zworf ,

Yep I hosted it on my VPN server so I can reach it from all my devices. Love it. Learned about it here and I'm really happy I did.

Zworf ,

I put in the name of my home town and the first 2 links were escort sites offering ladies in that town... Seriously.

Not really impressed so far.

Zworf ,

I know. But I'm often not really looking for accuracy. I just need to know something for myself. Most of the stuff I look up is absolutely not critically important. It's not like I'm trying to write a PhD dissertation or something.

I know it can be inaccurate but I can verify the results (and they usually are totally fine).

Zworf , (edited )

Yeah but accuracy isn't a given with the other methods either. If I ask some randos on reddit I won't get a perfect answer either. If I google specs or reviews online they are often biased, wrong (think the magical Chinese lumens of torches) or even literally fraudulent paid reviews too.

So yeah for me the LLM output is more than good enough with a bit of verification if necessary.

I don't really understand why people are suddenly hung up about holding LLMs up to this lofty ideal of an unbiased super-truth. Where did that requirement come from all of a sudden? It's not really realistic and not something we've ever had in the past.

I feel the same about self-driving systems. People get all hung up if they crash once in a while, expecting them to be 100% perfect in all situations. But ignoring the concept that they already might be a hell of a lot safer than human drivers. They fail in different situations generally but why do we suddenly demand perfection?

Zworf ,

Ah I see. I didn't really understand the requirement. That would indeed be a nice one though pretty hard to configure for general search because the results can come from so many sources.

As well as that, for special-purpose things like movies it does in fact have a ranking for those by querying common sites like IMDB directly as an engine. So in that case you can use the weighting system to show preference. It doesn't seem to support letterboxd as a source but it does some others:

https://beehaw.org/pictrs/image/1262d75e-e421-4b87-9f4f-97998d916ff7.webp

Zworf ,

Yeah I understand, Kagi is a good service!

Zworf ,

Yeah me too. Drinking way way way too much. Playing games in the middle of the night. Seeing weird stuff in other tents like a fullblown orgy. Fun competitions. I really miss it.

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