Silver Needle

you should drive because eating pollutes more

Effective altruist style of reasoning 😹

When done replacing your smoke detector, be sure to give me the spent one.

Mmm, yummy americium.

Google Translate feels more natural even if it’s not as “precise” than DeepL. I wouldn’t rely on it for communication, or any machine translation for that matter.

As someone who speaks more than two languages I am often dumbfounded by the sheer acceptance of these, I don’t want to call them this, tools.

Use of this stuff always leads to misunderstandings and inefficiencies down the line because you actually need to comprehend a sequence of words’ meaning in order to translate. But ANNs for translation do not understanding anything. They make a relation from a source to a target of some sort purely by way of statistics. That is basically rolling the dice with weights and patterns of distribution, where how you shake the dice is your input/source and the eyes on top is the output.

Now for a short lesson in biology. While it is true that synapses are indeed badly approximated by most ANNs, this is the only thing that ANNs really derive from biology with interesting reproducible properties that can be marketed to people who need to offload responsibilities. There is a complete disregard for internal dynamics of cells and dynamics that happen at a scale larger than the synaptic makeup of an organism. We do not really have the means to regard the interactions between organism and environment as objects that shape perception. We still don’t know how a thought forms and how meaning is generated from a perspective that is not purely philosophical, meaning we definitely do not know how this happens at a biological level. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either lying or misinformed. As long as the biological bases aren’t crystal clear, we will never translate effectively.

A great man of history once said that all science would be superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of things directly coincided. Of the tens of millions strings of words I’ve heard in my lifetime, this easily ranks as one of the most elegant. Let’s apply this to neuro-“science” in its computerized application. We know very little about the brain. Do you think that whatever devices we make with our current state of knowledge can even come close to what we do as aware beings?

Again, translation is an involved process that uses every function of the nervous system. Using statistical methods to very badly approximate our process of reading > contextualizing > imagining > [any step that could be necessary] > output, where reading is followed by vibes and then nothing before outputting will inevitably degrade information. A short paragraph could be handled when you’re conscious about Google Translate, etc. being used, but a book, something that happens in a very specific and exact environ like a README file or a manual, or god forbid, political philosophy, leads when put through DeepL to consequences that can’t be foreseen. I think of all the times I had difficulties reading descriptions of items on AliExpress due to the site’s translator use. This is not a productivity gain, this is a degradation of quality that will have to be fixed one day eating up precious time.

Amen

It’s like a drug that not only it’s bad for you, it’s also not fun to do.

Cigarettes after a week?

“AIs” can’t even operate vending machines, let alone recognize handwriting reliably or translate text. I know a few people that work in archives with (pre-)medieval manuscripts and I myself have bitten my teeth out on Google Translate™ and DeepL™. That’s how I know. There was also a study done on that vending machine thing. Come to think of it, you could make a simple vending machine that collects usage statistics and sends reports via radio that just works using a few scripts. Emphasis on “works”.

My my my

😹 How are we concerned with statistical systems being vulnerable (which is shitty, sure) when they don’t even lead to productivity increases, that is they cannot even do the jobs they’re made to do? Get real. What a clownshow

LET’S GOOOO, TO EARTH’S INNER CORE 📉 📉 📉 📉

unprecedented insights in this research.

That is what we in the professional world would term the “poop” scenario.

Read/write cycles are absurd with RAM. One good way to break SSDs if I am getting this correctly.

And they told me I was crazy for putting 64 gigs into my machine back in early 2021. I “only” paid about 200 USD

Absurd stuff in Blender

generally intelligent one.

What does this word mean? Does this refer to something that does not exist? If so why are we using it as a practical benchmark or distinction to make statements about the world?

but they should actually get credit for how often they get it right too.

My text compression algorithm for tape gets the facts right to the exact character. Beat that.

It’s a convenient way of looking at things. Saying that it’s good at one thing and bad at others. What I have come to realize with LLMs is that anywhere where experts deal with them, they are very aware of their shortcomings with respect to someone’s area of expertise. Sure, you might say they’re good at producing text, yet a journalist or someone who simply writes a ton might be able to spot generated text in an instant. The same way a photographer or painter can spot these statistical methods instantly. Rinse and repeat for coding, translation, medicine and all other tasks specific to current societal roles. That is not to say that you need to be an expert to spot LLMs or other generative ANNs, it comes down to attention and what you condition yourself to be attentive to. Of course pictures or code, or whatever will be convincing if you treat these things as secondary, like a doctor would treat creative writing as secondary to their job though necessary or a biologist would treat writing python scripts.

Fascism is back in fashion I see. Rimshot.

I wouldn’t place too much trust in Bandcamp. It was acquired by Epic Games and then sold to Songtradr shortly after, it’s waiting to enshittify. It might also be better to buy off of labels and artists directly if you want to “support” an artists or a label. Used CDs and vinyls are great too.

Spiralling

Spotify’s functions have not changed a bit since 2016. It is literally the same application, what has changed are the tiny things they’re doing for compatibility but that is not really worth mentioning. Intentionally leaving UX out.

Honestly what code is there to write for this glorified web browser? They’re probably also outsourcing most of their data collection and recommendation algorithms.

Buy physical media, rip CDs, share shit and that’s it