lelio's recent activity

  1. Comment on A skeptical overview of AI and consciousness in ~humanities

    lelio
    Link Parent
    Do you think the core logic of an LLM resides in the code that humans wrote? Or do you think the core logic lives in the weights? You're right to push back on "program themselves". That is a...

    Do you think the core logic of an LLM resides in the code that humans wrote? Or do you think the core logic lives in the weights?

    You're right to push back on "program themselves". That is a semantic stretch that is not only factually inaccurate. But as you said it paints a false recursive picture that is not what I intended to mean.
    I was thinking along the lines of the system as a whole programs itself. but really, that's not the case. The training system is fundamentally a different thing than the model itself. so it doesn't program itself. The model weights are programmed by a training algorithm though, not by a human.

    My limited understanding is that the human written code is simple routing of strings and looking up tokens in a vector dictionary. Humans then design a relatively simple mathematical structure that multiplies those values in various ways with the weights, which are the core of logic. They process the input values into output values. We (not me, but some humans, I assume) fully understand the training math. It will nudge the weights so they create outputs values closer to the training data.

    Any human who is tasked to "troubleshoot" why an LLM outputs something will easily find their way through the human made layers and quickly arrive at the black box of the models weights. That black box can only be programmed by this other machine, the training algorithm, which is well understood. But its inner workings have nothing to do with language or whatever the model is doing, its just math.

    There is no fundamental reason that we cant understand the logic of the weights. If you train a network against half of a multiplication table. it will probably just memorize that half. but if you keep training, under the right conditions, the weights can find a combination that just outputs multiplication results accurately, even for data it wasn't trained on.
    At that level, smart humans can dig into those weights, and figure out the actual logic of how it does "simple" multiplication. But its a separate academic project undertaken for the sake of understanding.

    They can find some weird symmetries in word meanings. Like the "king" and "Queen" token vectors are close to each other and their relationship might be similar to the one between "man" and "woman". But only roughly? sometimes?

    There are projects like golden gate claude

    To me that paints a picture of a field (interpretability) that is just barely scratching the surface of how these things work. Are they just memorizing? or are they actually multiplying? Or did it find something even more efficient, but fundamentally different from multiplying that just happens to give you the right answer most of the time? Unless we dig in and understand what its doing at the weight level, we cant know.

    I read this book: Out of Control several times in the 90s and early 00s when I was a teenager. It blew my mind and is probably why I am seeing things from this perspective now. Its out of date, but I feel like it has a certain objectiveness because of that? I highly recommend it.

    Another interesting idea on this subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room

    Another way to frame what I am trying to say:

    I don't think we can use somethings fundamental structure as a reason that it can't possibly be conscious. It seems hubristic when we cant define what consciousness is. Our own seeming self awareness could easily be fake.

    If someone has their skull caved in and Doctors say they don't understand how they are alive let alone conscious. But the person is speaking and asking for something, its worth weighing the evidence of their actual output and behavior rather than ignore them because they cant possibly be self aware. I think most doctors would agree and just explain that there are things about the brain that we don't understand so we shouldn't take anything for granted.

    We don't have to make such a leap of faith here. That is not our scenario. LLMs now show no credible sign of consciousness from their output. Right now all that is required to refute their consciousness is to point out the lack of credible output. Any time they say anything that sounds self aware, I assume most people could read the full transcript and understand how it was lead there. No reason to start worshiping these things. I am not saying we have done anything all that special at this point. There is a huge AI bubble brought on unregulated capitalism, etc. We cant trust anything the tech companies are saying right now. Also bullshit, agreed. Which is unfortunate because almost all the academic research on interpretability I can find is funded by some tech company. Bubbles seem to be an unfortunate side effect of any novel new technology lately. I think there is still 'something' interesting here though.

    Since humans are into language models right now, it seems plausible that one day we will make something that starts making output that seems self aware and its not as obvious why. The most likely possibility at that point will be that it is just some quirk of the logical structures it uses. Probably, it was subtly "asked" to pretend to be conscious within its training data. But we would need to understand the structure of its weights to be sure. If we build that machine before we can understand it, we cant debug it, we cant troubleshoot, we cant follow a chain of logic through the machine and confirm why it does what it does.

    Its a layer beyond designing a machine and not being sure that it will work as intended. In that case there was an intention, a theory of how this machine will work. If the timing or friction, etc. is off, the engineer can quickly find the fault by following their design. Now the engineer is just setting up the conditions for a pattern of logic to emerge to solve a given problem. The engineers aren't stopping to examine and understand the pattern they create. They are skipping that part and just using it and selling it. They are iterating to make more complicated machines in similar ways and then experiment with connecting them together.

    Its like vibecoding. I've vibe coded a ton of self hosted websites for my own use. Ive gotten some of them working pretty great for now. But I know I cant trust any of it unless I take the time to directly go through the code and confirm its doing what I want it to. so I just use it for myself and I inherently know its limitations and risk. My trust for these tools is a sliding scale that I base on experience rather than understanding. which is an inherently a weaker basis for trust in my opinion. To actually ship something vibecoded and have other people use it without knowing that its code is literally unknown to any human, seems unfair. We should at least be transparent about it. This code could be known, A human could take the time to read through all the vibecode, or all the weights of a model, to understand it before it shipped. I believe 99% of all the "AI" neural network type products being shipped right now have not had a human read through their logic and understand how it works.

    It feels like an important threshold. that we should make everyone aware we have passed a point where the actual logic of these machines are not currently understood by any human. For better or worse, it seems like the world is racing full speed to try and keep the technology ahead of human understanding. That might not always be the case, but its where we are now.

    Its not unprecedented, we've been there for thousands of years with breeding other life for farming. we use trial and error and we understand some of its mechanisms. Now we can manually splice chunks of DNA around to make GMOs and achieve goals that way. We can't put a full DNA strand into a simulator and grow it virtually to see how it behaves though. we don't understand enough of its mechanisms. I feel like that is generally understood about organic tools, they do their own thing and cant be trusted to always behave in predictable ways. If they were able to GMO up some new organism that could speak any language and pretend to be a conscious being. I think it would be an equally scary moment. Even if we knew the bacteria matrix had been bred to act like that.

    I think we have been past the understanding threshold with machines for only a few decades and in more niche places that most people don't come into contact with often. So most people haven't made that transition of thinking about machines the same way we do with organisms. LLMs aren't organisms, to be clear, but they share the same quality in that we don't build them as much as we grow them. We use them without fully knowing how they work, its a different relationship. Now that the machines we don't understand can talk to us. I think we should try to make people aware of our ignorance. Not so that they think it is something more than it is, so they understand that in the coming decades, we cant predict what these things will do.

  2. Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games

    lelio
    Link Parent
    I like to play factorio on default settings except no growth for the enemies. that way they are a little bit of a challenge in the beginning, but as your tech progresses they are satisfyingly...

    I like to play factorio on default settings except no growth for the enemies. that way they are a little bit of a challenge in the beginning, but as your tech progresses they are satisfyingly easier to deal with. eventually just one small design consideration that's never stressful to manage.

    I never tried satisfactory because I couldn't imagine how the FPS view could work for a game like this. It doesn't seem like it would be comfortable. Like building stuff in minecraft is fun for a minute but gets tedious real fast for me.

    1 vote

  3. Comment on A skeptical overview of AI and consciousness in ~humanities

    lelio
    Link Parent
    I think in general its good to err on the side of open mindedness, when addressing our knowledge of consciousness. The books theme seems to be " The experts do not know, and you do not know, and...

    I think in general its good to err on the side of open mindedness, when addressing our knowledge of consciousness.

    The books theme seems to be " The experts do not know, and you do not know,
    and society collectively does not and will not know, and all is fog"

    That feels like my definition of the word skepticism.

    More detail on my above post

    6 votes

  4. Comment on A skeptical overview of AI and consciousness in ~humanities

    lelio
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    Do we know that? I would think we don't know enough about "feelings" or intelligence to say anything like that. Ive heard it argued intelligence is a side effect of feelings. what do any of these...
    • Exemplary

    Feeling is a complicated biochemical process rather than a side effect of intelligence. Intelligence and feeling do not somehow spontaneously come in the same package.

    Do we know that? I would think we don't know enough about "feelings" or intelligence to say anything like that. Ive heard it argued intelligence is a side effect of feelings. what do any of these things mean?

    I "feel" like LLMs are no where near consciousness at this point.
    I feel like they might be as intelligent as just the language center of a brain, cut out and dropped in a vat.
    That seems like a good place for me to stop and realize that I cant trust my judgement on this at all, because ultimately, I don't understand how that language center works, or what consciousness or intelligence or feelings are.

    "The experts do not know, and you do not know, and society collectively does not and will not know, and all is fog"

    I think that's the exact right thing that everyone needs to know right now. Nobody knows what consciousness or intelligence is. Any tech companies confidence in anything at this point is all bullshit. The insistence that any large neural network running in vram is definitely NOT conscious, or x, y, or z, is also bullshit because no one knows how they work. Same as some one insisting that slime mold isn't conscious. Its smarter than we are at "some" stuff.

    To be clear there are experts we should listen to and consider their knowledge. People who understand neurology or linear algebra way better than I do. but the engineers that are working on this will tell you the actual mechanism within these matrices is a giant black box. We understand how slime mold or humans send signals around their thinking systems, and maybe a little bit about their general structure. We cant follow the actual program that runs on any of this stuff.

    We are running neural networks that program themselves with code that is more complicated than we can currently understand. We should treat all this stuff like an alien organism we found on an asteroid. Or a GMO slime mold that we can somehow train to talk to us. We cant know what it is yet. We know it can do some novel stuff we haven't seen before, they are probably mostly parlor tricks, but how can we be sure?

    How is it possible that some pink slime in my skull that is just self replicating chemical reactions thinks the way humans do? So confident of self awareness? As far as we can tell it just self organized that way over billions of years of trial and error and dense memory storage.

    Can we recreate something similar by forcing petabytes of data into machines that cycle 2 billion times a second for years? Probably not. Especially when the goal is a product like the current assistants. But it feels like the base models themselves might have a depth of knowledge that is just barely scratched by this current post-train assistant, run once architecture.

    We connect up our "language centers" to other neural networks, let them save active memories and spawn new agents to act on them on regular cycles. we'll keep adding layers and connections and experimenting. It will still probably be nothing like humans. But what will it become? (What rough beast?) I think nobody knows. Its exciting and terrifying at the same time. And its at least plausible that all this will play out in our lifetimes. I think its worth examining now.

    9 votes

  5. Comment on Control the ideas, not the code in ~comp

    lelio
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    When I think about code becoming a hidden layer. I wonder, doesn't it make sense to have it write things as close to metal as possible? why have all this high level stuff that was designed to make...

    When I think about code becoming a hidden layer. I wonder, doesn't it make sense to have it write things as close to metal as possible? why have all this high level stuff that was designed to make it easier to develop if were aren't doing that anymore.
    One day maybe can we just bake the website into the server, in assembly.

    2 votes

  6. Comment on Tildes Book Club - Have you started A Psalm for the Wild Built by Becky Chambers? in ~books

    lelio
    Link Parent
    My first read, 3 was at the bottom. On my second read I realized it might the "best" in some ways but its the least "cozy" because it has so much more going on. The whole series is still a comfort...

    My first read, 3 was at the bottom. On my second read I realized it might the "best" in some ways but its the least "cozy" because it has so much more going on. The whole series is still a comfort read, but 3 is always little bit of gut punch for me.

  7. Comment on Microsoft PowerToys in ~tech

    lelio
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    I just learned power toys existed this year. A few months before I decided it was time to switch to Linux anyway lol.

    I just learned power toys existed this year. A few months before I decided it was time to switch to Linux anyway lol.

  8. Comment on The end of reading is here in ~books

    lelio
    Link Parent
    Wow, that's funny our jobs are so related. I had assumed you were a building electrician. And we both like reading/scifi! Yeah, I'm kind of a millwright. But I feel a little imposter syndrome...

    Wow, that's funny our jobs are so related. I had assumed you were a building electrician.
    And we both like reading/scifi!

    Yeah, I'm kind of a millwright. But I feel a little imposter syndrome whenever that terms comes up, it sounds so official and I never had any formal training.
    I started in 2004 working for a small company that rebuilt machines. I learned how to hand scrape and align axis ways, like on bridgeport mills to start and then bigger stuff. But I kind of sucked at scraping, it would take me twice as many hours to finish as everyone else.

    I found I was better at diagnosing electrical issues and fixing weird, old, or custom machines that no one understood. CNC and manual mills/lathes, presses, shears, etc. a little bit of everything. I also got into retrofitting old machines with PLCs, VFDs etc. We had a sister company that did fanuc retrofits on CNC machines. I helped with those back in the day but still haven't gotten to do a full CNC retrofit on my own yet. I modify machines to add features or automate things. And I built a few custom machines from scratch.

    I've been working for myself for 5 years now. I still do basic repairs, alignment and relocating machines. Anything that doesn't have factory support anymore, either cause it's too old or it was built in house by a guy who retired in the 80s, etc. That can be rewarding sometimes. But I am thinking about how to transition away from basic repair and only do the fun custom stuff. I'm afraid to let the repair work go as the custom stuff can be fickle and I don't want to be caught without customers.
    I'm in Los Angeles and I think that is a part of my success. most people are surprised to hear how much manufacturing is in LA . Lots of aerospace and space stuff, plus the regular misc. But there is barely anyone in this area that knows how to work on machines. It seems like the east coast/rust belt has a lot more technicians like me.

    Because you might be the only one on tildes who could appreciate it, I PMed you an album of my latest project.
    10+ years ago I built two custom machines for this customer in Altadena that makes these tiny wooden parts. Last year they lost their building to these huge fires we had. So we had to scramble to get production back up. Rather than start from scratch again I had them buy a CNC mill(Tormach 1500mx). I designed a fixture that could mount on the table to make their parts. I used the mill itself to make the fixture. Then because its a linuxCNC control, I was able to dig into the code and reroute the IO so I can have Gcode operate the fixture along with the other axes. The time crunch was stressful but otherwise it was a really fun project. This year they bought a 2nd mill to increase production. I get to design v1.1 and fix all the mistakes I made on the first one.

    3 votes

  9. Comment on The end of reading is here in ~books

    lelio
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    Yep. That is getting better though. The last decade or two of scifi and genre in general seems to have really expanded past its normal white dude authorship and I think its brought it to a whole...

    very poorly written female characters

    Yep.
    That is getting better though. The last decade or two of scifi and genre in general seems to have really expanded past its normal white dude authorship and I think its brought it to a whole new level. Try Becky Chambers, either Long Way to a Small Angry Planet for a chill space opera with real characters talking about their cultural differences. Or A Psalm for the Wild-Built for a chill post apocalyptic meditation.

    Not new or chill, Another one I thought of: Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. That one got me thinking a lot about the nature of humanity.

    Stephenson is a favorite but the last two baroque cycles are the only books I haven't read yet. I read Quicksilver and thought it was great but needed a break it was so long, and I never went back.
    I loved all the Hyperion books but I keep meaning to go back for a reread as there was so much and I can barely remember it all
    I read most of the Asimov Heinlein Clark golden age stuff when I was teenager. I think its great but wouldn't have recommended any of that to someone who is interested in characters.
    I haven't read any Zelazny, where should I start?

  10. Comment on The end of reading is here in ~books

    lelio
    Link Parent
    We used to tell stories with epic poetry. Handed down from each generation and memorized with the aid of rhyme . Then we invented this new fangled technology (reading, writing, paper, etc.) and...

    We used to tell stories with epic poetry. Handed down from each generation and memorized with the aid of rhyme .
    Then we invented this new fangled technology (reading, writing, paper, etc.) and modern humans can't even recite Beowulf anymore! Surely that signals the decline of human civilization.

    4 votes

  11. Comment on The end of reading is here in ~books

    lelio
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    Embrace working in a trade! I say ignore the haters, tell them exactly what you do for a living and then after tell them who you really are. I repair industrial machinery for a living. I literally...
    • Exemplary

    Embrace working in a trade!
    I say ignore the haters, tell them exactly what you do for a living and then after tell them who you really are.

    I repair industrial machinery for a living. I literally have 2 weeks worth of uniforms with blue collars.

    I don't mind telling people at all. For one I'm proud that I do something real and don't just go to meetings and send emails all day. I'm also proud because I'm good at it.

    I like being underestimated. I don't have a degree, and will be up front about that if it comes up. I read a lot and have a lot of surface level knowledge in all kinds of niche, intellectual type stuff. I'm happy to organically demonstrate my knowledge or value and surprise people if they stick around. If they silently judge and move on that's fine. If they ask more questions I can tell them all kinds of stuff they probably don't know about how things are manufactured. Or we could talk about Steinbeck or linear algebra, or whatever they do for a living or hobby.

    Dynamic people like us who can do a hard dirty job AND engage in abstract intellectual interests are the best of both worlds IMO. "Renaissance men" (Or rather Renaissance people).

    Also, I work for myself/freelance, and I make a pretty decent income.

    I think most tradesmen earn well in our current economy, at least relative to office jobs. Electricians have unique skills that are undeniably valuable to human civilization. A lot of trades are likely be the last jobs to get replaced by AI. They require intelligence, creativity, flexibility, and dexterity.

    2 votes

  12. Comment on The end of reading is here in ~books

    lelio
    Link Parent
    I read to understand humanity too. I feel like my brain is too slow to achieve empathy while speaking to people in real time. But If I read, fiction or non, It helps me imagine other people's...

    I read to understand humanity too. I feel like my brain is too slow to achieve empathy while speaking to people in real time. But If I read, fiction or non, It helps me imagine other people's perspectives.

    Mostly I read science fiction. I would push back on genre as only entertainment and "literature" focusing on the human condition. I like to think about different civilizations, from different conditions or tech, or just alternate ways of living. And how real humans would and could interact with each other in ways that our current globalized culture might have arbitrary blind spots to. So many social experiments are not possible/moral outside of our imaginations. I think genre fiction is a great way of thinking about human nature.

    Of the top of my head, some of my favorite 'human condition' genre writers are Ursula K Le Guin, Kim Stanley Robinson, Kurt Vonnegut. Becky Chambers.

    It's baffling to me that people don't think about the past and future more. How can we understand and manage our civilization without thinking about where it was 1000+ years ago and where we'd like to be in 1000+ years? I think It's crazy that politicians almost never talk about anything more than a few years in the future. We don't need to predict the future. But we at least need to talk about what we want for the future of humanity If we want to have any mindful effect on it.

    6 votes

  13. Comment on Give me your culture clash stories in ~travel

    lelio
    Link Parent
    In general your right. I'm an American who tends to not care about obeying rules. My moral guide is: "how would I want everyone else to act in this situation?" That tends to keep me in line with...

    In general your right. I'm an American who tends to not care about obeying rules. My moral guide is: "how would I want everyone else to act in this situation?"
    That tends to keep me in line with most rules. But allows me to break the ones that I don't agree with. Convenient!

    The bus example is gray area to me. Everyone getting on an empty bus a few minutes earlier probably wouldn't hurt. On the other hand if everyone everyday asked the driver for special treatment it might get annoying for them. my social anxiety would probably shut this down.

    I want to use this opportunity to say: if everyone would just stand back at the baggage carousel and wait until they see their bag to step forward. then we could all easily see and access our bags when they come!

    2 votes

  14. Comment on Longshot - anyone has DVD or Blu ray of Convoy (1978) starring Kris Kristofferson, Burt Young and Ernest Borgnine in English? in ~movies

    lelio
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    I sent a pm with links. I sent 10 and 12. because I think 10, the 1 hour 51 (111 minutes) runtime might be what you are looking for. frame rates are 25 vs 23.976 25/23.976 = 1.0427 1.0427 * 107 =...
    • Exemplary

    I sent a pm with links. I sent 10 and 12. because I think 10, the 1 hour 51 (111 minutes) runtime might be what you are looking for.

    frame rates are 25 vs 23.976

    25/23.976 = 1.0427

    1.0427 * 107 = 111.5689

    so my guess is your 107 min is the standard version in pal . The pal 104 is the censored version like you said. If so then I guess you will need to take the 111 min audio and somehow speed it up by 4.2% and pitch correct to match your 107 video file.
    Let me know if you change your mind and want me to just upload any version of the whole movie video and all. It might take a day or so to shuffle it around, but I have a cloud server I can leave it parked it on, same as the audio is now. So its no trouble really. and if your watching on a PC its easier. if you are trying to burn a regional disc of some kind then this Frankenstein strategy probably makes sense. Good luck!

    I've never seen Convoy before but I'll probably check it out now. It looks like an interesting time capsule from the 70s!

    3 votes

  15. Comment on Longshot - anyone has DVD or Blu ray of Convoy (1978) starring Kris Kristofferson, Burt Young and Ernest Borgnine in English? in ~movies

    lelio
    Link
    I can grab any of the following and send you a link if you want: Convoy.mkv — 2.75 GiB DVD rip, x264, 702x430, 25.000 fps, runtime 1h43m English AC-3 2.0 @ 192 kbps...
    • Exemplary

    I can grab any of the following and send you a link if you want:

    1. Convoy.mkv — 2.75 GiB
      DVD rip, x264, 702x430, 25.000 fps, runtime 1h43m
      English AC-3 2.0 @ 192 kbps

    2. Convoy.1978.576p.BluRay.x264.mkv — 1.90 GiB
      576p Blu-ray rip, 1024x436, 23.976 fps, runtime 1h51m
      English AC-3 2.0 @ 192 kbps, English SRT subs

    3. Convoy.1978.PAL.DVD9 (full disc, VIDEO_TS) — 6.37 GiB
      PAL DVD, 720x576, 25.000 fps, runtime 1h43m
      Audio: English AC-3 2.0 + Spanish AC-3 2.0
      Subs: Portuguese/Spanish/Norwegian/Danish/Finnish/Swedish/Dutch

    4. Convoy.1978.Kino.Lorber.NTSC.DVD9 (full disc, VIDEO_TS) — 7.79 GiB
      NTSC DVD (Kino Lorber), 720x480, 23.976 fps w/ pulldown, runtime 1h50m
      Audio: 2x English AC-3 2.0 (second track unlabeled), 2 subtitle tracks

    5. Convoy.1978.720p.BluRay.FLAC.2.0.x264-ThD.mkv — 5.33 GiB
      1280x544, 23.976 fps, runtime 1h51m06s
      English FLAC 2.0 (24-bit), English + English SDH subs
      (source: the FULLSiZE 1080p Blu-ray below)

    6. Convoy.1978.1080p.BluRay.X264-AMIABLE.mkv (+ idx/sub) — 8.77 GiB
      1920x816, 23.976 fps, runtime 1h51m07s
      English DTS 2.0 @ 768 kbps, English + SDH subs in mkv, English/French/German vobsub

    7. Convoy.1978.1080p.BluRay.FLAC2.0.x264-CtrlHD.mkv — 15.82 GiB
      1920x818, 23.976 fps, runtime 1h51m (NFO says 111 min)
      English FLAC 2.0 (16-bit), English + English SDH subs

    8. Convoy.1978.1080p.UHD.BluRay.FLAC1.0.DoVi.HDR10.x265-WiLF.mkv — 19.05 GiB
      1080p encode of the 4K restoration, x265, Dolby Vision + HDR10, 24.000 fps, runtime 1h51m
      English FLAC 1.0 (mono) + 2 commentary tracks (Seydor/Simmons/Redman; Peckinpah/Siegel)
      12 subtitle languages. KNOWN FLAW: video glitch at 00:46:02.

    9. Convoy.1978.BluRay.Remux.1080p.DTSHD.AVC.mkv — 24.42 GiB
      Untouched Blu-ray video, 1920x1080, 23.976 fps, runtime 1h51m
      English DTS-HD MA 2.0

    10. Convoy.1978.MULTi.COMPLETE.BLURAY-FULLSiZE (full BD50 disc) — 35.60 GiB
      1080p AVC, 23.976 fps, main playlist 1:51:06.701
      Audio: English / French / German DTS-HD MA 2.0
      Subs: English / French / German PGS. Includes extras (50Hz content).

    11. Convoy.1978.Extended.Edition.1080p.BluRay.REMUX.AVC.FLAC.1.0-STATiK.mkv — 27.04 GiB
      Untouched video from the Imprint (Australia) Blu-ray, 1920x1080, 23.976 fps, runtime 1h56m
      English FLAC 1.0 (mono)

    12. Convoy.1978.Extended.Cut.1080p.Blu-ray.AVC.LPCM.2.0-MKu (full BD50 disc) — 35.37 GiB
      Imprint "115 minute Extended Cut" disc, main playlist 01:56:19.931, 23.976 fps
      English LPCM 2.0 @ 2304 kbps (24-bit)
      Extras incl. "The Lost Convoy" (Mike Siegel on Peckinpah's lost version, w/ deleted scenes)

    EXTRAS

    1. "1978 - Convoy/Extras/" — 207 MiB total, x264, English AC-3 2.0
      Injokes, Friends And Cameos.mkv — 5m44s (83.7 MiB)
      Three Lost Scenes.mkv — 5m33s (79.8 MiB)
      Trucker Notes From Norway.mkv — 3m04s (43.9 MiB)
    14 votes

  16. Comment on I'm looking for an adage or "law" (like Conway's law), but for dealing with AI slop in ~tech

    lelio
    Link
    We definitely need to figure out social norms for this. It is counter productive to have to read though something that someone else generated with an LLM, when you could just generate the same...

    We definitely need to figure out social norms for this. It is counter productive to have to read though something that someone else generated with an LLM, when you could just generate the same thing.
    You could use an LLM to read their AI slop and condense it down to the actual facts. but that is ridiculously wasteful and unclear way to communicate.
    It would be more efficient if they just sent the prompt with with whatever data they collected to feed to the AI. Then you could add or change things as needed before you feed it to your own LLM (or, you know, just think about it in your own brain like a savage). Raw human data seems like it would be more dense with useful information just because of laziness. If everyone starts accepting that we all have access to the same tools, then its usually pointless to send LLM output for one on one human communication. LLM output should be for our own use, code, or products/reference docs that many people will read, in which case the output needs to be carefully vetted.

    "we use books as reference points for knowledge, is because they are difficult to make, and therefore we trust that the author put real work into ensuring their work was credible. If we knew they did not, their work would not be credit worthy. "

    I kind of see the point, but you as you hinted, human output is often just as flawed as AI slop. even high effort human output. I think everything a human encounters in their life has to approached with critical thinking and skepticism, even things written by other humans.
    I guess the issue with AI is that now humans that we work/live with can make a lot more content with no real effort, drowning everyone else in their slop.

    I would use the AI forwardness of your organization and couch this in those terms. Explain that every token they send you to process is more work. Ask them to lower the token output of their docs so that you can process them more efficiently. Or tell them to send their raw notes/ prompt so you can add it to your context pool for direct processing.

    I asked claude, and it came up with this for you to say. ;) :

    "Since we're all using the same AI tools now, the long generated docs are kind of redundant on my end, I just re-condense them anyway. Send me the bullet points or the raw notes you fed in and I'm good."

    5 votes

  17. Comment on Why carbon capture can't solve climate change in ~enviro

    lelio
    Link
    Obviously we have to stop putting more CO2 into the atmosphere. That's the priority. Even if it was somehow feasible to keep burning fossil fuel and capture its emissions, we will run out of...

    Obviously we have to stop putting more CO2 into the atmosphere. That's the priority.
    Even if it was somehow feasible to keep burning fossil fuel and capture its emissions, we will run out of fossil fuel eventually. The whole thing is a dead end.

    There might be some future in creating synthetic hydrocarbon fuel for airplanes and such. Then we could harvest carbon for that fuel from the air and it would be a sustainable loop. But we would need a large carbon neutral power source to make the fuel. And it would be a tiny percentage of the carbon based fuel that humans use now.

    But, no matter what, we still have to capture enough carbon from the atmosphere to get us back <280 ppm right? I don't think there is any way around that.

    Isn't carbon a useful element? Wouldn't it be better to spend the energy (from carbon neutral sources) to break CO2 apart, bringing oxygen levels back up at the same time.

    Photosynthesis uses energy from the sun to break apart CO2 right? If we can figure out how to recreate that at massive scale we would have a dial we could turn that would draw down CO2 and leave us with more oxygen and stacks of solid carbon bricks or whatever that don't have to be pressurized and pumped into sketchy containment.

    Then we just have to figure out how to mass produce carbon nanotube type structures and we could make a space elevator out of the extra carbon in the air.

    That's a bit of fantasy, but it really seems like the problem isn't physics. It's human civilization getting its priorities straight and realizing we have to put significant resources into maintaining the atmosphere we live in.

    2 votes

  18. Comment on ‘Backrooms’ sends Hollywood running to Reddit for new ideas in ~movies

    lelio
    Link
    Maybe we can finally see a Rome, Sweet Rome movie.

    Maybe we can finally see a Rome, Sweet Rome movie.

    14 votes

  19. Comment on A Parade of Horribles - Matt Dinniman (Dungeon Crawler Carl #8) in ~books

    lelio
    Link Parent
    https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/books-and-authors/kindle-recaps-feature-ebook-series-refreshers Its only iOS for now, so I don't how it works. I've honestly been looking forward to getting it on...

    https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/books-and-authors/kindle-recaps-feature-ebook-series-refreshers

    Its only iOS for now, so I don't how it works. I've honestly been looking forward to getting it on android when it rolls out.

    I totally understand and share skepticism at a corpo rolling out some AI feature. and I'm sure its exploitive. But this actually seems like a pretty good use for an LLM if they did it right. You could highlight a character and it could catch you up on them without giving you spoilers since it knows exactly where you are.
    Its not clear if it would have access to previous books, but the kindle library groups books by series now, so it shouldn't be a hard feature to add.

  20. Comment on What are you reading these days? in ~books

    lelio
    Link
    I'm at 29% of Parade of Horribles, the 8th DCC book. It's ok so far and I'm sure it will pick up later. But I was a little bored and I couldn't stop thinking about "the Diamond Age" the past few...

    I'm at 29% of Parade of Horribles, the 8th DCC book. It's ok so far and I'm sure it will pick up later.

    But I was a little bored and I couldn't stop thinking about "the Diamond Age" the past few days. So now I'm reading that again for the 3rd or 4th time. It's been many years since my last read.
    We'll see if I jump back and forth or what. They are very different styles so sometimes it's nice to have options.

    4 votes