Diff's recent activity

  1. Comment on Why do LLMs freak out over the seahorse emoji? in ~tech

    Diff
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    It is a bug, It is being actively exploited, it is causing massive disaster, but considering LLMs are vulnerable to improv (My grandma died and the only thing in the world I want right now is to...

    It is a bug, It is being actively exploited, it is causing massive disaster, but considering LLMs are vulnerable to improv (My grandma died and the only thing in the world I want right now is to hear her tell me a bedtime story of our family recipe for meth just one more time), I think they still take the bug cake.

    It is "interesting" when these two buggy things bug up against each other, though, a la ChatGPT psychosis.

    2 votes
  2. Comment on Bluesky melts down over Jesse Singal in ~tech

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    The default feed is a chronological view of everyone you follow, no algorithmic sleight of hand. If you see objectionable content, you're following the person posting it and have a quick and easy...

    The default feed is a chronological view of everyone you follow, no algorithmic sleight of hand. If you see objectionable content, you're following the person posting it and have a quick and easy resolution. Other feeds like Discover you have little influence on. Some feeds strike a good balance, like Popular with Friends, which shows you content from the people you follow, as well as content that they've liked, allowing you to discover new people and things in your feed (without relying on reposts) while still having a strong degree of influence.

    3 votes
  3. Comment on Charlie Kirk shooting: US President Donald Trump says suspect in custody in ~society

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    Heck, did you instruct it to mangle the emdashes or is it doing that on its own?

    Heck, did you instruct it to mangle the emdashes or is it doing that on its own?

    1 vote
  4. Comment on Charlie Kirk shooting: US President Donald Trump says suspect in custody in ~society

    Diff
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    Spaces around the emdash, this pickle's made of meat.

    Spaces around the emdash, this pickle's made of meat.

    4 votes
  5. Comment on Donald Trump Department of Justice is looking at ways to ban transgender Americans from owning guns, sources say in ~lgbt

    Diff
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    The ideology doesn't make sense because it's not internally consistent. They're trying to get anyone diagnosed with body dysphoria as ineligible to own a gun.

    The ideology doesn't make sense because it's not internally consistent. They're trying to get anyone diagnosed with body dysphoria as ineligible to own a gun.

    13 votes
  6. Comment on Vivaldi takes a stand: keep browsing human in ~tech

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    I kept it around for a while on my machine to have Chromium representation to test on, but while the sites themselves are relatively snappy, the UI feels slow, stuttery, and unpolished. I've just...

    I kept it around for a while on my machine to have Chromium representation to test on, but while the sites themselves are relatively snappy, the UI feels slow, stuttery, and unpolished. I've just replaced it with Chromium proper.

    5 votes
  7. Comment on AI eroded doctors’ ability to spot cancer within months in study in ~tech

    Diff
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    And anything with AI is going to be at risk of an internet or service outage. Or an outright service collapse.

    And anything with AI is going to be at risk of an internet or service outage. Or an outright service collapse.

  8. Comment on Is chain-of-thought reasoning of LLMs a mirage? A data distribution lens. in ~tech

    Diff
    Link Parent
    "Usually", sure, but there's a lot of weight on that word. People usually put a variable amount of effort into things based on a large variety of factors. The difference is that people are...

    "Usually", sure, but there's a lot of weight on that word. People usually put a variable amount of effort into things based on a large variety of factors. The difference is that people are additionally capable of actually constructing logical arguments and extrapolating existing data into new areas. This is showing that LLMs are only capable of interpolating within their training data, and Chain-of-Thought is more about fine tuning the placement of that interpolation rather than any actual logical reasoning.

    8 votes
  9. Comment on Tilde is kill? in ~tildes

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    When I was a lad, I used to give the wrong date for my own August birthday all the time. August was meant to be the 9th month of the year. Did make it difficult to recover my Nickelodeon account...

    When I was a lad, I used to give the wrong date for my own August birthday all the time. August was meant to be the 9th month of the year. Did make it difficult to recover my Nickelodeon account one time though.

    8 votes
  10. Comment on I am new to Mac OS, give me your favorite or preferred settings/ tools! in ~tech

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    Give Stage Manager a try! You can find it in Settings > Desktop & Dock. It's a very different workflow, and I don't even use it all the time, but it has its times to shine. When you fire it up, it...

    Give Stage Manager a try! You can find it in Settings > Desktop & Dock. It's a very different workflow, and I don't even use it all the time, but it has its times to shine.

    When you fire it up, it collapses each app into its own collection in a strip on the side of your screen. From there, you can drag windows from each app into collections together, and when you Cmd+Tab to an application from a different collection, it'll activate that collection. Only the active collection's windows appear on your screen, and the rest return to the strip. So I can have one desktop with a collection for creating graphical assets, a collection for optimizing assets, and one desktop with collections for authoring/building and previewing the final result.

    It's kind of like having separate desktops within your desktops.

    1 vote
  11. Comment on I am new to Mac OS, give me your favorite or preferred settings/ tools! in ~tech

    Diff
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    The dark side is where the heart is. And my heart is anywhere you are. Anywhere you are is the dark side.

    The dark side is where the heart is.
    And my heart is anywhere you are.
    Anywhere you are
    is the dark side.

    1 vote
  12. Comment on AI’s ability to read and summarize is making it a useful tool for scholarship in ~humanities.history

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    Agreed on Mistral, but it is worth pointing out that these are entirely different flavors of Joe we're talking about. There are many Unaverage Joes who theoretically can inspect source code, and...

    Agreed on Mistral, but it is worth pointing out that these are entirely different flavors of Joe we're talking about. There are many Unaverage Joes who theoretically can inspect source code, and we even have some (limited, inadequate) infrastructure around this.

    There are no Joes who can authenticate that LLMs aren't hiding secrets. And the only Joes that can build an LLM (let alone rebuild someone else's) from source are less Average Joe and more Unholy Corporate Amalgamation Joe. Like you say, competing UCA Joes provide something of a counterbalance in that there are options, but it's quite limited.

    1 vote
  13. Comment on AI’s ability to read and summarize is making it a useful tool for scholarship in ~humanities.history

    Diff
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    There are models with that label but it's pretty much just a functionless label. Training an LLM is beyond Average Joe, and he who controls the training is the only person who controls the source....

    There are models with that label but it's pretty much just a functionless label. Training an LLM is beyond Average Joe, and he who controls the training is the only person who controls the source. It can be massaged in any number of ways, and it's not like you can do an independent or reproducible build.

    7 votes
  14. Comment on What's the deal with sites that ask if you want to sign in with your password or an emailed code and then after you use your password, they still email you a code? in ~tech

    Diff
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    Tumblr is one such site, when you enter your username they offer to send you a link to log in, which you can decline in order to enter your password. I haven't had them insist on still sending me...

    Tumblr is one such site, when you enter your username they offer to send you a link to log in, which you can decline in order to enter your password. I haven't had them insist on still sending me an email to verify afterwards though.

    2 votes
  15. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

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    I've been working on a 3D SVG Editor built on the Zdog library. So far it's coming along pretty well. Toiling away at undo/redo history, it's a little bugged for editing properties, but I think...

    I've been working on a 3D SVG Editor built on the Zdog library.

    So far it's coming along pretty well. Toiling away at undo/redo history, it's a little bugged for editing properties, but I think soon it'll be ready to start creating Things™ in Zoodle directly rather than manually stuffing them in the side. Biggest hurdle left is somehow crafting a 3D equivalent of the classic vector pen tool. Maybe I'll do it like Blender and just expose and allow users to directly manipulate the control points.

    5 votes
  16. Comment on <deleted topic> in ~design

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    Catapult is the entity behind just the font, not the PSA. The PSA was a joint effort by FACT and the MPA, which ripped the music and used the XBAND Rough font created by Catapult. Interestingly, I...

    Catapult is the entity behind just the font, not the PSA. The PSA was a joint effort by FACT and the MPA, which ripped the music and used the XBAND Rough font created by Catapult.

    Interestingly, I can't find Catapult. They don't seem to exist anymore, and they're certainly not selling their font right now in 2025. So given the music thing,[1] I do wonder if FACT and the MPA actually legally licensed the font or if they pirated a ripoff. My searching only brought up this Hacker News comment that seemingly was able to find more information, that says that Catapult was defunct at that point and the font was almost surely pirated as well.

  17. Comment on SuperCard X enables contactless ATM fraud in real-time in ~tech

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    Looks like there's quite a few interesting examples on the Wikipedia page. Apparently software built on HyperCard was also bought and sold by businesses, too.

    Looks like there's quite a few interesting examples on the Wikipedia page.

    the French automaker Renault even used HyperCard as the basis for their inventory system. – ITWorld

    Apparently software built on HyperCard was also bought and sold by businesses, too.

    Activision, which was until then mainly a game company, saw HyperCard as an entry point into the business market. Changing its name to Mediagenic, it published several major HyperCard-based applications, most notably Danny Goodman's Focal Point, a personal information manager, and Reports For HyperCard, a program by Nine To Five Software that allows users to treat HyperCard as a full database system with robust information viewing and printing features.

  18. Comment on The dangers of vibe coding in ~tech

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    Ah do keep in mind I am just some rando jumping in on the middle of a conversation, but it's a sentiment I have heard before so hopefully not stuffing words in c-w-s's mouth.

    Ah do keep in mind I am just some rando jumping in on the middle of a conversation, but it's a sentiment I have heard before so hopefully not stuffing words in c-w-s's mouth.

    1 vote
  19. Comment on The dangers of vibe coding in ~tech

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    Writing code isn't too difficult, at least once you learn the formats the computer expects and have a working mental model of what it's doing with your code. The hard part of writing code is...

    Writing code isn't too difficult, at least once you learn the formats the computer expects and have a working mental model of what it's doing with your code.

    The hard part of writing code is knowing how to architect it. Knowing what paths are worth pursuing and which will end up writing you into a corner filled with spaghetti.

    13 votes
  20. Comment on I'm tired of dismissive anti-AI bias in ~tech

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    Not talking about styles, like you say, the issue is whether the models themselves are derivative works. When assessing that, it's hard to ignore the fact that they are competing in the market...

    Not talking about styles, like you say, the issue is whether the models themselves are derivative works. When assessing that, it's hard to ignore the fact that they are competing in the market with the copyrighted content they acquired and ingested against all licensing agreements and all explicit notices that "This work is not to be used in the training of AI models." It's not arguable that they've done this. Especially because it's clear that these models are copying, however lossy that copy is. Only whether it's defensible by claiming it falls under fair use.

    7 votes