I received an email this morning from the good folks at the WHE entitled: Perplexity AI Partnership to Improve History Education

In it, their CEO Jan van der Crabben, writes:

As the most-visited history encyclopedia globally, World History Encyclopedia is pleased to announce a strategic partnership with Perplexity.ai.

…

As artificial intelligence (AI) tools based on large language models become increasingly accessible to the public, growing concerns have emerged regarding the quality of information provided by these tools. These AI systems are typically developed and trained using publicly available internet information, often without robust verification processes, and frequently generate inaccurate results.

There are also significant concerns about the business models of AI companies, which utilise content developed and meticulously checked by providers like World History Encyclopedia —a non-profit organisation— without obtaining proper consent, without providing compensation, and without offering appropriate attribution.

Perplexity.ai is an AI-powered search and answer engine that combines the capabilities of a search engine with artificial intelligence. Unlike most other AI systems, Perplexity clearly cites its sources, providing users with an easy way to verify the accuracy of its answers.

In alignment with our goal of being a trusted resource of accurate and objective historical information, we are excited about this partnership. It will allow us to develop tools based on the Perplexity API to make the content in World History Encyclopedia easier to find, browse, and access. We aim to develop educational AI tools for history learning in close collaboration with teachers to augment the World History Encyclopedia website for students.

The partnership will also enable World History Encyclopedia to use artificial intelligence to enhance our human review processes more efficiently. This includes improving tasks such as fact-checking and plagiarism detection.

Additionally, Perplexity is the first AI service that allows providers of information like World History Encyclopedia to be compensated fairly for the AI use of that information. We will receive a share of advertising revenue generated on the Perplexity platform whenever Perplexity cites World History Encyclopedia to answer a question.

I have worked with Jan and his staff many times over the last six years and I find them eminently trustworthy and dedicated to education.

What does everyone think of this kind of partnership moving forward? I understand Perplexity might have a slightly different approach that certain folks find promising.

And what kind of content do we think this might be able to generate? I look forward to your comments.

Does anyone have any experience making miniatures? I'm looking to get started and there just seems to be an absolute overload of options for sculpting material: Sculpey, Milliput, Green Stuff, Scultamold... The list seemingly goes on and on. I've seen some great videos by Miscast or Bill Making Stuff, but they can be a little all over the place.

Does anyone have any suggestions or point to any video/written tutorials on getting started?

Thanks!

I do hope one of you thinks of a better title or a more coherent structure for the overall post.

This question was inspired by a comment chain about PFAS in Gore-Tex jackets under a different post here, but it's been a bit of a simmering question for me.

When reading through that thread, my immediate reaction was something along the lines of the following.

Unless you're directing traffic in Seattle or Scotland, wouldn't the amount of time you'd wear the jacket be too little to have meaningful exposure? It's not like you're walking into an oven where the polymers would break down from heat. Further, if it's GoreTex-appropriate weather, you'll near-certainly have additional clothing between your skin and the GoreTex.

I was bored at work today, so I had plenty of time for rumination and introspection. What I found so far is that my instinctive skepticism toward health-conscious rhetoric has these primary sources:

1. I listened to Stronger by Science's six-hour deep dive on aspartame. Their eventual conclusion is that aspartame does cause bladder cancer in rats & mice, but the equivalent doses for humans make fears over its use into a major nothingburger. A human would need to spend a year chugging down five gallons of Diet Coke each day for the elevated cancer risk to be statistically meaningful.
2. When I catch someone trying to be convincing in an area where I lack domain expertise, I judge them by their overall demeanor and (if I can catch on) general rhetorical logic [in that order] long before I consider the truth of their specific claims. The IRL people I've met who are most stridently into wholesome natural living have fervency and lack of appreciation that it's the dose that makes the poison to the degree that it makes RFK discussing vaccine policy sound grounded in reality by comparison. Perhaps if they were born in a different society, they'd make excellent temple priests who ensure no lazy shortcuts or "it's all we have available" excuses are made when it's time to ensure a full harvest. Instead, they're the kinds who play 50 million questions and have genuine concerns that the radio waves that connect my wireless headphones are giving me brain damage or control. [To be fair, there is some large selection effects here. My hobbies have a habit of attracting those who are so open-minded that their brains fell out. Since online interactions strip the majority of demeanor and previous interactions, I judge online strangers with strange opinions way less harshly than IRL contacts unless they've gone out of their way to be obnoxious. IRL, I'm exposed to a lot more generic chemicals bad rhetoric than in my usual online bubbles. ]
3. Based on 1, unless I have preexisting trust with a particular journalist, layman's science journalism—when it's performed by journalists dabbling in science rather than scientists trying their hands at public communication—is far too likely to overblow a headline or misrepresent the research conclusions. "Here are 30 links to news articles" doesn't appeal to me because 25 of them are probably copying each other (that's just how internet journalism works). It's highly unlikely that all 5 of the remaining links misread the original paper, but I'm not reading through all those (perhaps AI summarization could help here—at the very least it could identify commonalities and outliers for manual examination later).
4. Related to 2, two additional SMBC comics that share my attitude: Vitamin Water v. Butter and Pronounceable Ingredients Only

That said, sometimes the health nuts are correct. As it turns out, all the coughing smokers do is a strong sign that smoking is bad for your lungs.

What are some heuristics to sort health tips that get passed around without citation into one of the following buckets?

1. You'll notice the improvement within a week once you've finished withdrawal. Smoking, boozing, eating meat or alliums at dinnertime, and heroin are in this bucket.
2. The effect is real and significant, but you may not notice the impact until at least a year has gone by, if ever. Seatbelts and bike/horse helmets are the two examples that immediately pop to mind.
3. Technically non-zero, but ultimately trivial. The opening aspartame example would fit. In a similar line to doctors who recommend against treating prostate cancer because the treatments would shorten your lifespan by more than letting that cancer run its course and waiting for a heart attack or totally unrelated cancer to do you in, these interventions are meaningless to anyone who uses motor vehicles regularly.
4. Playground rumors or outright disinformation. Vaccines causing autism and yellow 5 as an HRT supplement b/c it shrinks your testicles belong in this wastebin.

Circling back to the impact of PFAS in Gore-Tex that inspired today's thinking, my layman's estimate that the effects on the factory workers who make a career out of working with the stuff is a low 2 when following proper safety procedures. Without them, a definite 1. For wearers of the stuff, a solid 3.

One final reason I may have been so fired up on this topic is that I listened to a highlight reel from a Congressional hearing round table on food & pharmaceutical safety last week. During the testimony, I had a nagging feeling that at least half of what they said was true, but the truth percent is below 75, and I had no idea which was which because all claims were presented with the same urgency.

Today's problem description: https://adventofcode.com/2024/day/5

Please post your solutions in your own top-level comment. Here's a template you can copy-paste into your comment to format it nicely, with the code collapsed by default inside an expandable section with syntax highlighting (you can replace python with any of the "short names" listed in this page of supported languages):

<details>
<summary>Part 1</summary>

```python
Your code here.
```

</details>

Today's problem description: https://adventofcode.com/2024/day/6

Please post your solutions in your own top-level comment. Here's a template you can copy-paste into your comment to format it nicely, with the code collapsed by default inside an expandable section with syntax highlighting (you can replace python with any of the "short names" listed in this page of supported languages):

<details>
<summary>Part 1</summary>

```python
Your code here.
```

</details>

So we can sort the new page by new activity, but I do not see any way to reference when that "new" is. The only reference on the front page I can see to there being new content is in threads I've already accessed - where I get a notification there are new comments in the thread. If I didn't access the thread, but come back later, there is no notification that there has been activity within that thread. The only date listed is when the thread was created, and not when last activity was had. Is there more I'm potentially missing to see when a thread was last active from the front page?

In that same vein, is there a way to mark a thread as "read" besides going into it after new comments have been made?

Asking for what I'm looking for in a different way: Is there a way to filter out comments since last visit? Eg on old forums, there were "activity since your last visit" links - basically exactly like how the notification system works here, but a thread-based system for all comments instead of a comment-based system that are only responses to you (and in both to get the notification gone, either you interact with it or mark it is read). Is there anything like that?

The wiki only seems to have how to find new comments within a thread itself, and not new comments site wide: https://tildes.net/~tildes.official/wiki/instructions/navigating_tildes

What you got:

Top 5 Artists

1. Billie Eillish
2. Lana Del Rey
3. Addison Rae
4. Sabrina Carpenter
5. Dua Lipa

Top 5 Songs:

1. Aquamarine - Addison Rae
2. CHIHIRO - Billie Eillish
3. LUNCH - Billie Eillish
4. Espresso - Sabrina Carpenter
5. National Anthem - Lana Del Rey

Minutes listened: 52,691

Here were my predictions from a month ago

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

I've been researching internet privacy and fell down the rabbit hole of...well, internet privacy. I started with deleting Facebook/Instagram and switching to fire fox + plugins. I would like to make more improvements but I really have no idea how, it started with deleting socials and next thing you know I'm looking at LineageOS and de-googling.

If anyone has any suggestions on where to go next while staying realistic/not going crazy, i would love to hear them. I am not really sure where to set my expectations, basically I would like to have more control of my data. The other day Google photos gave me a memory recap which kind of creeped me out! I am suddenly not fond of whatever is going on under the surface of Google photos that's making collages and trying to sell my photo books. Also g-board giving me a pop up in the text prediction row asking me to rate the app??? Ew.

I am a fan of self hosting and run a small NAS (open media vault) but this too quickly turns into the privacy spiral and leaves me thinking I should throw my phone into a river and live in the forest. Would love to hear your thoughts/advice/opinions!