First, I am emphatically not talking about LLMs.

Just a shower thought kinda question. For most people, the primary issue is anthropomorphizing too much. But I think programmers see it differently.

Let's say someone comes up with something that seems to walk and talk like a self-aware, sentient, AGI duck. It has a "memories" db, it learns and adapts, it seems to understand cause and effect, actions and consequences, truth v falsehood, it passes Turing tests like they're tic-tac-toe, it recognizes itself in the mirror, yada.

But as a developer, you can "look behind the curtain" and see exactly how it works. (For argument's sake, let's say it's a FOSS duck, so you can actually look at the source code.)

Does it ever "feel" like a real, sentient being? Does it ever pass your litmus test?

For me, I think the answer is, "yes, eventually" ... but only looong after other people are having relationships with them, getting married, voting for them, etc.

My understanding of how large language models work is rooted in my knowledge of statistics. However a significant number of people have never been to college and statistics is a required course only for some degree programs.

How should chatgpt etc be explained to the public at large to avoid the worst problems that are emerging from widespread use?

I'm a member of a hacker space. In the last few months two different people have came in desperate for help because they have a relentless hacker after them. In each case they are a completely mundane person who would have little reason to earn the focus of a dedicated expert in device infiltration. They claim that no matter what they do, what device they use (new phone, new laptop, hardened security OS, even their blueray players) it will get hacked as though they have an aura about them. When pressed for any kind of evidence they have none. The previous events they claim as evidence are always shaky. Often their claim is just that something didn't work right on their computer - thus it is hacked. It's never anything concrete like their bank account getting emptied.

One is a middle-aged woman who thinks that her upstairs neighbor is seeking revenge after she put in a noise complaint. Another is a woman in her 20s who has no understanding of what initiated it. The older woman is at the point where she believes every TV has a camera in it that can get hacked to watch her. When we look up the model numbers and see they have no camera in the specs she waves it off - to her those were just exceptions. In both cases they've turned to technological solutions they don't understand in a blind hope for refuge. Secure DNS (like Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1), GrapheneOS, stateless Linux laptops, etc.

I don't feel like these people are schizophrenic. We've had such people show up before and their delusions are on a different level. One guy thinks a well known actor stole his UFO designs and is trying to get him put in jail. These other people feel more like they're in self-imposed conspiracy theories, not unlike what happened to that ChatGPT user. At first I felt like this was a technological form of FDIS (to be clear I have no training in psychology). But there have been no attempts from either person to factitiously create devices that appear compromised. So I suppose this is more of a delusion, perhaps founded on a desire to be more important than they really are.

Does anyone know more about this kind of situation? I don't think there's much I can do for them. But I'd love to understand more about this topic if anyone has seen stuff like this before or has formal training.

I have updated the Portuguese section of my blog with many posts that I scavenged from past blogs I've had since 2005. In order for everyone to be able to go through them chronologically, I gave them their original dates. In the end of each of these posts there is a link to the original publication, many of which came from the Internet Archive itself.

One of my oldest blogs was removed from blogspot decades ago either by a hacker or something obscure about blogspot. So I had to use the archived version to reconstruct my history. I was very surprised to find it there because it was seemingly archived a decade after blogspot removed it. I have no idea what happened but I was so glad to find it!

I have been trying to archive that page for days. The posts within that page are archived but not the page itself. The current August 2025 snapshot is not shown, and if I click on the link that they give me after the archiving process is done, I am directed to a snapshot I did back in May. I have no idea why this is happening, and the "help" section of Wayback Machine doesn't seem to have anyway for me to talk to someone.

Can someone help?

This is the page: https://daviramos.com/br/. It is also available at https://daviramos.bearblog.dev/br/, and yes, I tried archiving that one too.

Thanks!

I'm a big fan of IMDB's Advanced TItle Search but it is kinda useless for finding movies that are primarily comedies. By which I mean films with a main focus on producing laughter or comedic amusement. The problem is that the genre/tag "comedy", while often present, rarely means that a movie is a comedy first and foremost. For example: technically Marvel movies are comedies, but they are really more like action with jokes. There are also many comedy dramas and "dramedies" and that is not what I am look for at all.

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia is maybe one of the few "almost pure" comedies on TV today.

I miss watching movies that put comedy first even if they are a mix of different genres.

Any suggestions?

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!

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like artificial intelligence, bubbles.ai and den store havfrue. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was deep diving.

But one of my favourite tags happens to be offbeat! Taking its original inspiration from Sir Nils Olav III, this thread is looking for any far-fetched offbeat stories lurking in the newspapers. It may not deserve its own post, but it deserves a wider audience!

I think things are going to get a lot worse until they get better (if they do). I’m not talking about US politics (I dont live there), I’m thinking more about climate change: food and water might not be as readily available anymore, never mind other things we take for granted like medicine, transportation, communications, a retirement pension.

It’s hard to articulate but I feel like our future is bleaker than the previous generation’s for the first time in modern history because of factors beyond our control (i.e. neither geopolitical nor economic). Not sure how to prepare for it so I’m wondering how other Tilderinas and Tilderinos deal with it, especially if you have or are planning on having children?

In light of the stated desire of group members to also read books reflecting minority or disadvantaged perspectives, here is a second book nominations thread.

I'm drawing the boundaries of the category as broadly as I can and feel free to include a book (within the length limit of 600 pages) that you think fits within these parameters. Also, diverse or minority or disadvantaged can apply to either or both of author or main character. Of the books of this type we have read so far, Born a Crime and Kindred were the most popular.

Here are some examples of what we might choose. This is not meant to be a set of hard boundaries, just a descriptive exploration.

Books that qualify include but are not limited to: being from a poor or formerly colonized country, being an immigrant or refugee, being a political/ethnic minority such as basque, tibetan, romani or catalan or kurdish, being indigenous, being poor or ethnic minority in a dominant country, being a sexual/gender minority, being disabled etc.

See device recommendation thread from 2019.

It's been a few years: tech has further matured, and we've gotten more things enshittified. With that in mind, I am asking these questions :

Edit: new comments very welcome as well! I wasn't on this site yet in 2019

(0) Did you find the device worth the money, what was surprisingly helpful or unhelpful? What was the tipping point into getting one and did it fulfil its promise?

(1) If your existing one broke today, would you still buy a new fitness tracker today?

(2) If yes, which one?

(3) Else no, why not, or what lessons have you learned since owning one, or what technological considerations do you have today that you didn't before?

Bonus: for folks who never had one, did you ever wanted one and if so what stopped you?