I think they meant people don’t know how these models work in practice. On a theoretical level they are well understood. But in practice they behave in a chaotic way (chaotic in the math sense of the word). A small change in the input can lead to wild swings in the output. So when people want to change the way the models acts by changing the system prompt, it’s basically impossible to say what change should be made to achieve the desired outcome. And often such a change doesn’t even exist, only something that’s close enough is possible. So they have to resort to trial and error, trying to tweak things like the system prompt and seeing what happens.

Yeah these are the dicks that cried terrorism when Tesla was “attacked”

Oi Ue, it’s fooking diabolical mate. Omelander topped me wife and now more ads on the tele, diabolical.

You are right in how wasteful it is, especially since it turned out a lot of those satellites don’t even make it to 4 years.

However there is zero risk of space trash with Starlink. They orbit so low, it’s basically within the atmosphere still. They need to constantly boost themselves, otherwise they fall down and burn up. So these satellites are coming down within years all on their own, even without any controlled disposal.

It’s insanely wasteful, but it keeps SpaceX in business launching every week, which is kind of the point. But at least there isn’t a Kessler syndrome waiting to happen.

Thanks for the suggestion. It’s my laptop from work, I have zero say in what software it runs, I don’t even have admin rights on it. None of my personal stuff runs Windows. But it might help other people on their own machines.

Please let them also remove all the XBox nonsense. The other day my laptop from work that runs Windows 11 Pro gave a big ass prompt if I didn’t want to try XBox Game Pass with the new Doom game. It’s basically an ad for games on a Pro machine, ridiculous.

Ah you are from the US? No then it probably won’t be available. The US is very slow to make changes in retail. You only recently got those digital price tags that update constantly, we’ve had those for 10 years or so. In Europe the hand scanner or app self scan thing is very common.

Yup, that’s the one.

I think where I live it’s a company that offers the whole thing white label to supermarket and other shops. The systems are very similar across a bunch of different stores, but the branding is specific to the store. So their logo, their colors. Not just on all the UIs (both the scanner and the checkout), but also the physical hardware colors.

The hand scanners all run Android, the other day I got one that said Google Play Services had crashed. The scanner itself is probably made by Zebra and then customized by the company providing the scan and checkout solution.

It has become super common around here, to the point where I’m annoyed when it isn’t an option and I have to use the self-checkout where you need to scan at the checkout.

No, the hand scanners aren’t connected to the kiosks. They are at the entrance, you pick them up, scan all you want to buy. Then at checkout you place the scanner into a kiosk, it knows what you bought and you can checkout as usual. Every once in a while a store employee takes the scanners and puts them into the holders in the entrance. Depending on the size of the store there can be up to a hundred of these scanners available.

Other stores do the same, except your phone is the scanner with an app you can download. It works basically the same way. Most stores that offer the app also offer the hand scanners, which I prefer.

For me personally, the self checkout is just a way better solution to the problem. It’s for me much faster and more efficient. It’s also easier for the store itself. The best kind of self checkout for me is where you can scan everything with a hand scanner or app whilst shopping. Then just pay at the self checkout and walk out. That way I just put the stuff in my bag directly, instead of from the shelf into the basket or cart. Then from the cart to the checkout and then from the checkout into my bag. It also spreads out the action of scanning the products, which means avoiding a slow and repetitive task scanning it all in 1 go. I’m also not blocking a checkout whilst scanning. I hate it when stores that offer the hand scanner have people scanning a whole cart full of stuff at the checkout. And then bagging it of course, which blocks a checkout for ages. Just go to the regular checkout if you want to do that, the cashier is faster than you are and you can focus on bagging exclusively.

However the lack of human contact is an issue. I’ve seen a lot of stores that offer self checkout recently make one or two lines available for chatting. It’s just the regular oldskool cashier, but they are relaxed about it and chat with the customer. This means people in a hurry or that don’t need contact right then can go fast through the self checkout. And people who like to chat can use the chatty checkout with a good old human being.

This for me is the best way to apply new tech, all of the benefits for all parties involved and hopefully none of the downsides.

I hate how IDEs with error checking check the code at every character. Like my dude, we got this shit right with text editors having spell check back in 1997. Wait just a moment before checking please. All the time when I’m typing the editor freaks the fuck out, this is wrong, this is wrong, here is an error, wtf is this supposed to mean? And then when I type the ) or whatever, all is well. Just give me a freaking second to work and think.

And for the most part this is true. People who don’t do little calculation puzzles for fun often have trouble with basic arithmetic without getting a calculator (or likely the calculator app on the phone). I know when I’m doing something like wood working and I need to add and subtract some measurements, I use a calculator. I could do it without, but chances are I would make a simple mistake and mess up my work. It’s like a muscle, if you use it, it will become stronger. If you don’t use it, it becomes weaker.

However there is a huge difference between using a calculator for basic arithmetic and using AI. For one thing, the calculator doesn’t tell you what the sums are. It just tells you the result. You still need to understand each step, in order to enter it. So while you lose some mental capacity in doing the sums, you won’t lose the understanding of the concepts involved. Second of all, it is a highly specific tool, which does one thing and does it well. So the impact will always be limited to that part and it’s debatable if that part is useful or not. When learning maths I think it’s important to be able to do them without a calculator, to gain a better understanding. But as an adult once you grasp the basic concepts, I think it’s perfectly fine not to be able to do it without a calculator.

For AI it’s a bit different, it’s a very general tool which deals with all aspects of every day stuff. It also goes much further than being a simple tool. You can give it broad instructions and it will fill in the blanks on its own. It even goes so far as to introduce and teach new topics entirely, where the only thing a person knows is what the AI told them. This erodes basic thinking skills, like how does this fit into my world view, is this thing true or false and in what way?

Again the same concept applies, where the brain is a muscle which needs to be given a workout. When it comes to a calculator, the brain isn’t exercising the arithmetic part. When it comes to AI it involves almost all of our brain.

So about half of it is Intel? And that has nothing to do with AI, it’s because Intel is struggling bigtime right now.

The EU can do a lot more than fine them. With the whole USB-C port issue the EU threatened to straight up ban all Apple products from being sold in the EU. That’s a hit Apple won’t be willing to pay.

I’ve looked into Revolt and it isn’t there quite yet. But the road map is extremely promising. I’ll keep my eye on it and as soon as they finish up a couple more features I’m going to use it.

Its profits are plunging, as is its share price.

Looks at share price: Up 10% in the last month…

I don’t even know how they managed this. I regularly create test repos to reproduce bugs in open source software, to go with the bug report. When it contains some random generated credentials only used within that repo, Github freaks out and I need to tell it it’s just testing shit and perfectly fine to publish.

You’d have to be intentionally publicing shit like that.

HOW CAN SHE SNAP?

Windows 11 has changed this, many many people now warn other people about not using Windows 11 because it is such shit. Doesn’t matter what you run, just don’t run Windows 11.