ThrowdoBaggins's recent activity

  1. Comment on Around twenty drown in France as French seek relief from heatwave in ~enviro

    ThrowdoBaggins
    Link Parent
    When I saw it was a YouTube link about awnings, I really should have guessed it was from that channel, of course that would be the place to find an incredibly deep dive into something so mundane

    When I saw it was a YouTube link about awnings, I really should have guessed it was from that channel, of course that would be the place to find an incredibly deep dive into something so mundane

    2 votes

  2. Comment on Around twenty drown in France as French seek relief from heatwave in ~enviro

    ThrowdoBaggins
    Link Parent
    What you’re describing matches what I would expect for late Summer in Melbourne, Australia. You know, that country that’s like 80% uninhabitable desert? Where we’ve expected those kinds of...

    28 degrees at 9am, then shoots up to 40 around 2-3pm. Multiple days in a row now.

    What you’re describing matches what I would expect for late Summer in Melbourne, Australia. You know, that country that’s like 80% uninhabitable desert? Where we’ve expected those kinds of temperatures such that it’s literally illegal to rent out a house without air conditioning? Where we’ve had decades and decades of experience with that kind of weather and still struggle with those temperatures?

    And it’s only June? In Melbourne I would be genuinely startled to have those kinds of temperatures in December or fairly surprised in January, and maybe start to expect maybe a week of that kind of heat in February, once the land has had a whole two months of summer to bake and hold onto heat before it can finally reach those kinds of temperatures.

    2 votes

  3. Comment on I almost got hit by a car in ~life

    ThrowdoBaggins
    Link Parent
    You describe it like you’re breaking in brand new leather shoes and waiting for them to soften up a bit! 🤣

    It's going to hurt when I have to get a new car, at least for the first few years until it's worn in.

    You describe it like you’re breaking in brand new leather shoes and waiting for them to soften up a bit! 🤣

    1 vote

  4. Comment on ‘How the Grinch Stole Christmas’ sequel in the works with Jim Carrey, Ron Howard in ~movies

    ThrowdoBaggins
    Link Parent
    With a decent budget, I’m sure they could do most of it with CGI these days. It’s difficult to imagine because so much recent CGI has been cutting costs in different ways, but look how well Davey...

    With a decent budget, I’m sure they could do most of it with CGI these days. It’s difficult to imagine because so much recent CGI has been cutting costs in different ways, but look how well Davey Jones looks compared to anything more recently, and you can see that it’s possible but just a matter of resources

    4 votes

  5. Comment on Why emoji picker default on? in ~comp

    ThrowdoBaggins
    Link Parent
    …is that a “tildoes” reference...??

    …is that a “tildoes” reference...??

  6. Comment on AI is bringing my friend out of retirement in ~comp

    ThrowdoBaggins
    Link Parent
    I can’t imagine any AI data centre being willing to accept fluctuating power supply at any scale, isn’t that exactly why some of them are building their own on-site gas power plants? And while...

    I can’t imagine any AI data centre being willing to accept fluctuating power supply at any scale, isn’t that exactly why some of them are building their own on-site gas power plants? And while solar is cheaper than gas, I don’t know if industrial scale solar and battery is also cheaper than gas turbines or how hard you’d need to tax in order for the choice to push in that direction.

    1 vote

  7. Comment on Does generative AI have a natural limit without a major innovation? in ~comp

    ThrowdoBaggins
    Link
    This has been a vomit of words and thoughts, barely structured, so I urge the potential reader to exercise agency when choosing whether to read further. On my lunch break, I decided this has been...

    This has been a vomit of words and thoughts, barely structured, so I urge the potential reader to exercise agency when choosing whether to read further. On my lunch break, I decided this has been worth my time to quickly write but wasn’t worth my time to edit further, so you, dear reader, should consider whether it’s worth your time to read.

    My personal view is that current LLMs are incapable of becoming AGI because of their fundamental structure, in the same way that a propeller aeroplane won’t work in space. Sure, the plane can move fast through air and generate lift, and you could make the assumption that if you just give it more and more powerful engines and more and more efficient lift surfaces, eventually it can go infinitely up, but eventually you run up against the fact that propellers can’t work in a vacuum, and no matter how powerful your engines or how astonishingly efficient your lift, that doesn’t change the fact that it structurally requires air to function.

    I view LLMs as having similar limitations. If you look at the very early models, you can see how they’re a very sophisticated word prediction machine, and that as it gets more and more powerful and absorbs more and more information from the wider internet, it will get more and more advanced. But by definition of being a word prediction machine, it will never be particularly great at novel ideas unless those ideas can be described by existing words.

    You could argue the same applies to humans, but I believe humans are capable of much more complex thoughts than a language machine because we can think in concepts rather than exclusively in words, and therefore we can push new boundaries where words do not yet exist.

    Additionally, where LLMs have struggled with non-language concepts, they have been given tools and harnesses to guide them, but I think these solutions hide the underlying problems. For example, if your entire universe is words, even words about mathematics, you will still struggle with maths. You can be given mathematics tools and when someone asks you a maths question, you can remember to use this tool to get you the answer, but fundamentally you still struggle with the maths if not for the tool.

    Likewise I think there is a substantial limitation of the fact most LLMs are designed for a question-answer structure. There are millions of thoughts I have which aren’t questions, and aren’t answers to questions, but which still help me gain a better understanding of the universe around me. I wonder how much this lack of just “thinking thoughts” that LLMs can’t really do on their own which limits their final form.

    4 votes

  8. Comment on Commodore Callback flip phone in ~tech

    ThrowdoBaggins
    Link Parent
    It took me a few re-reads to spot that you’re looking for past tense of “seek out” — I think “sought out” might be the words you’re looking for?

    I sook out T9 soft keyboards for years

    It took me a few re-reads to spot that you’re looking for past tense of “seek out” — I think “sought out” might be the words you’re looking for?

    5 votes

  9. Comment on Website is unhappy in ~tildes

    ThrowdoBaggins
    Link Parent
    Alas this kind of phrasing has been forever broken in my brain. Any time I hear “(thing) person” I always immediately expand that into “half-(thing) half-person, like a weird centaur” My favourite...

    Caveat: not a computer person.

    Alas this kind of phrasing has been forever broken in my brain. Any time I hear “(thing) person” I always immediately expand that into “half-(thing) half-person, like a weird centaur”

    My favourite is “I’m not much of a people person”

    1 vote

  10. Comment on Website is unhappy in ~tildes

    ThrowdoBaggins
    Link Parent
    “Your kind”...? You mean totally standard normal humans, right? (Anakin Padmé meme)

    “Your kind”...? You mean totally standard normal humans, right? (Anakin Padmé meme)

    1 vote

  11. Comment on What's a game you're dying to play that doesn't exist? in ~games

    ThrowdoBaggins
    Link Parent
    When I read you wanted the opposite, for a brief moment I was thinking about Viscera Cleanup Detail but that’s very much after the disaster, not patching up during. I really like your idea, and...

    When I read you wanted the opposite, for a brief moment I was thinking about Viscera Cleanup Detail but that’s very much after the disaster, not patching up during.

    I really like your idea, and there’s a lot that could be borrowed from real life emergencies! Maybe you’re one of the first responders for the Haiti earthquake (2010, too soon?) or in NYC for 9/11 (2001, too soon?) or at the Chernobyl disaster (1986, too soon?) or on the lower decks of the Titanic (1912, too soon?) or the Great Fire of London (1666, too soon?)

    2 votes

  12. Comment on Our workplace LLM mass delusion in ~tech

    ThrowdoBaggins
    Link Parent
    Oh gosh, I just imagined you using an LLM to automate your replies and corrections to the boss’ post, and then realised that would be creating dead internet theory directly in your own company!

    Oh gosh, I just imagined you using an LLM to automate your replies and corrections to the boss’ post, and then realised that would be creating dead internet theory directly in your own company!

    4 votes

  13. Comment on Our workplace LLM mass delusion in ~tech

    ThrowdoBaggins
    Link Parent
    It is also that, but I doubt it’s exclusively that.

    It is also that, but I doubt it’s exclusively that.

    4 votes

  14. Comment on "Teachers are going to hate it": How social media apps hooked teens at school in ~tech

    ThrowdoBaggins
    Link Parent
    I sometimes take a few days to slowly read through a comments section, and sometimes I forget what I was looking at when I come back. I read this sentence without context and immediately thought...

    We really shouldn’t be limiting the damages to children.

    I sometimes take a few days to slowly read through a comments section, and sometimes I forget what I was looking at when I come back. I read this sentence without context and immediately thought you were advocating for open slather damage for children, for just the briefest moment.

    /noise

    1 vote

  15. Comment on "Teachers are going to hate it": How social media apps hooked teens at school in ~tech

    ThrowdoBaggins
    Link Parent
    While I’m not part of the above conversation chains, I’d like to contribute my own thoughts here too. For me, the question about changing Section 230 would not be about whether a...

    While I’m not part of the above conversation chains, I’d like to contribute my own thoughts here too.

    For me, the question about changing Section 230 would not be about whether a platform-controlled algorithmic feed would lead to a “good” or “bad” outcome, instead my own thoughts dig deeper into whether actively shaping the feeds of users counts as the business flexing their free speech. To me the answer is clearly yes, it feels like pretty comprehensive editorial control even if it’s not producing the content itself.

    If I was involved with developing policy, I might suggest that everything else from Section 230 stays in effect but consider an addition for identifying platform-controlled algorithms and feeds, and that content served via these algorithms counts as the organisation’s speech.

    Of course nuanced policy is more complex than anything a Tildes conversation might be able to capture, but in general I think if the platforms have a toggle where on one hand, the user has full control of what they’re shown (e.g. timeline based, only from subscribed/followed users) versus fully platform-controlled (the current paradigm on most platforms) then what the user sees on their controlled feed would be immune under section 230 but what the platform controls would not have the same broad immunity.

    Note that Section 230 still exists where a platform chooses to moderate their own content e.g. removing content it deems objectionable, this is already a carve-out. So I would hope that any change to 230 was carefully crafted to still allow content moderation, but more specifically target when the platform essentially chooses what you see in your feed.

    4 votes

  16. Comment on "Teachers are going to hate it": How social media apps hooked teens at school in ~tech

    ThrowdoBaggins
    Link Parent
    I’m probably an outlier in holding a pretty extreme belief, but if these rules mean fewer users for these social media sites (regardless of age), I’m okay with that extraneous outcome too....

    And I'd rather not have to prove my identity everywhere on the internet, too. "Think of the children" is once again being used as an excuse for mass surveillance.

    I’m probably an outlier in holding a pretty extreme belief, but if these rules mean fewer users for these social media sites (regardless of age), I’m okay with that extraneous outcome too. Teenagers aren’t the only people negatively affected by social media.

    Edit to add: especially since you’ve already pointed out the network effect, maybe as more people decide it’s not worth the effort and/or privacy risk to access social media, this could help unravel their grip as even more people continue to leave and decide it’s not worth it.

    2 votes

  17. Comment on What are your gaming idiosyncracies? in ~games

    ThrowdoBaggins
    Link Parent
    Oh gosh I completely missed that, and I’m a bit embarrassed 😅 Condolences to your free time, your loved ones, and your obligations in life. I know how this usually goes

    Well, to tell you the truth I thought I was going along with a gag

    Oh gosh I completely missed that, and I’m a bit embarrassed 😅

    This conversation made me reinstall it

    Condolences to your free time, your loved ones, and your obligations in life. I know how this usually goes

    1 vote

  18. Comment on What are your gaming idiosyncracies? in ~games

    ThrowdoBaggins
    Link Parent
    I got used to a TKL keyboard at work over the last few years, so I’ve enjoyed being able to have the mouse closer to the centre rather than so far over to the side. So when I accidentally lost an...

    I got used to a TKL keyboard at work over the last few years, so I’ve enjoyed being able to have the mouse closer to the centre rather than so far over to the side. So when I accidentally lost an entire glass of wine on my keyboard last month, I ended up replacing it with a keyboard where the numpad can be detached and reconnected on the other side. (And then found out about standalone numpads you can buy so they’re not physically required to be next to the keyboard 100% of the time)

    2 votes

  19. Comment on What are your gaming idiosyncracies? in ~games

    ThrowdoBaggins
    Link Parent
    Oh wow, I was just making up numbers based on vibes and my general understanding of how the factory scales! I don’t think I’ve ever been able to push my own factory to less than 50 UPS or so, I...

    Oh wow, I was just making up numbers based on vibes and my general understanding of how the factory scales! I don’t think I’ve ever been able to push my own factory to less than 50 UPS or so, I get burned out well before achieving that kind of megafactory.

  20. Comment on GOG apologies for emailing Nazi runes to its followers in ~games

    ThrowdoBaggins
    Link Parent
    I can also see the difference (Three Cheers, iOS26, iPhone 16)

    I can also see the difference (Three Cheers, iOS26, iPhone 16)

    3 votes