skybrian's recent activity
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Comment on On progress and historical change in ~humanities
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On progress and historical change
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Comment on What is Metamodernism? The era that follows postmodernity in ~humanities
skybrian Link ParentYep. I know this happens sometimes and implied that we should reject it. But my question was more about the specifics of this case.Yep. I know this happens sometimes and implied that we should reject it. But my question was more about the specifics of this case.
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Comment on What is Metamodernism? The era that follows postmodernity in ~humanities
skybrian Link ParentI haven't heard of Brunham before and haven't listened to this song, so I'm wondering why someone would think they need to apologize to their fans. Did they make a promise they couldn't keep?I haven't heard of Brunham before and haven't listened to this song, so I'm wondering why someone would think they need to apologize to their fans. Did they make a promise they couldn't keep?
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Comment on Why are red states hiring so much faster than blue states? in ~finance
skybrian LinkFrom the article: It goes on to describe several possible explanations why this might be.From the article:
Bewildered, we called Nick Bunker, economic research director at the job site Indeed. Bunker is the world’s second-most-prominent fan of job-opening and hiring data, behind only Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen, and he had a ready explanation for the seeming disconnect.
“It’s churn,” he said. Those red states weren’t creating jobs faster. They were just hiring more often because folks were bouncing around more. Red states don’t have more layoffs or job openings than blue ones, they just have more quits and hires.
As Bunker points out, quits and hires track each other closely. They both reflect how fast businesses churn through workers. When you combine quits and layoffs, then chart them against hires, you can’t tell the two lines apart.
It’s also why the ever-genial Bunker becomes uncharacteristically agitated when he discusses the “Great Resignation.” Yes, everybody was quitting, but they weren’t giving up. They were getting rehired elsewhere.
When we ran the numbers using the Bureau of Labor Statistics biennial job-tenure survey, we quickly verified that red states see more job-hopping than blue ones.
It goes on to describe several possible explanations why this might be.
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Why are red states hiring so much faster than blue states?
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Comment on Megathread #10 for news/updates/discussion of AI chatbots and image generators in ~tech
skybrian LinkProduction AI systems are really hard (Kevin Fischer)Production AI systems are really hard (Kevin Fischer)
Geoffrey Hinton was one of the loudest voices decrying the decline of radiology 5 years, and now he’s crying fear for new AI systems.
There's a lot to unpack for both why Geof was wrong, and why his future predictions should not be taken seriously either. Geoff made a classic error that technologists often make, which is to observe a particular behavior (identifying some subset of radiology scans correctly) against some task (identifying hemorrhage on CT head scans correctly), and then to extrapolate based on that task alone.
The reality is that reducing any job, especially a wildly complex job that requires a decade of training, to a handful of tasks is quite absurd. Here's a bunch of stuff you wouldn't know about radiologists unless you built an AI company with them [...]
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Comment on ROT13 + base64 on GPT4 = reliable hallucinations in ~tech
skybrian Link Parentrot13 and base64 are both simple substitution cyphers. LLM's are good at finding appropriate substitutions to make based on the many examples they see on the Internet. Compared to translating...rot13 and base64 are both simple substitution cyphers. LLM's are good at finding appropriate substitutions to make based on the many examples they see on the Internet. Compared to translating different human languages (like English to French), this is a pretty easy task.
Although, it's a bit harder because an LLM doesn't see letters; they are trained on tokens. So, there's another layer of decoding in there.
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Comment on Novel 4-axis 3D printing process to print overhangs without support material in ~hobbies
skybrian LinkHere's the abstract: Via Prusa's blog post.Here's the abstract:
This paper describes a novel 4-axis FDM printing process with a newly designed printhead, for the printing of overhangs without support structures. With conventional FDM printing, overhangs of more than 45–60∘ must be supported.
For this novel printing process, the printhead is rotated 45∘ around a horizontal axis and equipped with a vertical, rotational axis. The printhead no longer follows layers parallel to the build platform, but moves on the surface of a 45∘ cone. The printing cone increases in diameter from layer to layer. With this cone-shaped layers, the printable angles increases by 45∘, which leads to printable overhangs of up to approximately 100∘.
New slicing strategies for this printing process have been developed to slice the parts for the novel printing process. The feasibility of the concept has been prototypically demonstrated. The novel design achieves the advantages of higher speed and quality with lower cost at the same time.
Via Prusa's blog post.
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Novel 4-axis 3D printing process to print overhangs without support material
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Comment on Disney is staring down the barrell of a no good, very bad year in ~movies
skybrian LinkAre movies more expensive worldwide? Also, compare with alternatives. I suspect that for many people, watching movies at home has gotten better. TV's have improved, people have better Internet,...Are movies more expensive worldwide?
Also, compare with alternatives. I suspect that for many people, watching movies at home has gotten better. TV's have improved, people have better Internet, and they have had practice figuring out whatever streaming issues they might have had during the pandemic. It seems like that raises the bar for venturing out?
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Comment on Catch up quick: COVID-19 in ~health
skybrian LinkFrom the blog post:From the blog post:
SARS-CoV-2 is nosediving across all metrics in all regions of the U.S.: hospitalizations, deaths, emergency room departments, and wastewater. Wastewater is still higher than in 2020 and 2021, though.
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Catch up quick: COVID-19
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Comment on ROT13 + base64 on GPT4 = reliable hallucinations in ~tech
skybrian LinkI wonder what would happen if you asked it to decode it one step at a time?I wonder what would happen if you asked it to decode it one step at a time?
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Comment on A few final links before signing off for the year in ~talk
skybrian LinkI spent a fair bit of effort yesterday writing a reply that got nine upvotes and an exemplary, but he deleted his post and exited the site. Possibly not directly related, but I can't help but...I spent a fair bit of effort yesterday writing a reply that got nine upvotes and an exemplary, but he deleted his post and exited the site. Possibly not directly related, but I can't help but think I screwed up.
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Comment on Tally of covid-19 cases after CDC conference climbs to 181 in ~health
skybrian LinkFrom the article:From the article:
The tally of people infected with the coronavirus after attending a high-profile Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conference in April has risen to at least 181, the agency reported Friday. No one was hospitalized.
The CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service officers and alumni — the disease detectives deployed to identify and fight outbreaks — met April 24-27 at an Atlanta hotel. The conference drew 1,800 in-person attendees, the first in-person Epidemic Intelligence Service gathering in four years. Like many conferences, it was crowded, with much face-to-face contact, many events held in small rooms and lots of socializing, according to attendees. About 70 percent of participants who responded to a CDC survey said they did not wear masks at the event.
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Tally of covid-19 cases after CDC conference climbs to 181
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Comment on Reflections on ten years past the Snowden revelations in ~tech
skybrian Link ParentThat quote is from Bruce Schneier. It's not all bad news, though. The Internet did change. Stephen Farrell writes: [...]That quote is from Bruce Schneier. It's not all bad news, though. The Internet did change. Stephen Farrell writes:
The work to develop TLSv1.3 [...] aimed to encrypt more of the handshake so as to expose less information to network observers - a fairly direct result of the Snowden revelations. Work to further improve TLS in this respect continues today [...]
[work on DNS encryption] started as a result of the Snowden revelations. Prior to that, privacy hadn't really been considered when it came to DNS data or (more importantly) the act of accessing DNS data. The trend towards encrypting DNS traffic represents a significant change for the Internet, both in terms of reducing cleartext, but also in terms of moving points-of-control. The latter aspect was, and remains, controversial [...] Work on HTTP version 2 [RFC7540] and QUIC [RFC9000] further demonstrates the trend in the IETF towards always-encrypting protocols as the new norm, at least at and above the transport layer.
[...]
In 2013, the web was largely unencrypted despite HTTPS being relatively usable and that was partly due to problems using the WebPKI at scale. The Let's Encrypt [LE] initiative was established in 2015 to try move the web towards being fully encryted and has been extremely successful in helping achieve that goal. Subsequently, the automation protocols developed for Let's Encrypt were standardised in the IETF's ACME [ACME] working group.
In 2013, most email transport between mail servers was cleartext, directly enabling some of the attacks documented in the Snowden documents. Significant effort by major mail services and MTA software developers since then have resulted in more than 90% of email being encrypted between mail servers and various IETF protocols have been defined in order to improve that situation, e.g., SMTP MTA Strict Transport Security (MTA-STS). [RFC8461]
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Comment on Megathread #10 for news/updates/discussion of AI chatbots and image generators in ~tech
skybrian LinkAll the Hard Stuff Nobody Talks About when Building Products with LLMs (honeycomb.io) Apparently lots of things look like they work in demos, but if you try to build a product, they don't actually...All the Hard Stuff Nobody Talks About when Building Products with LLMs (honeycomb.io)
Apparently lots of things look like they work in demos, but if you try to build a product, they don't actually work very well.
(Via Simon Willison; I'm getting a lot of good links from his blog these days.)
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Comment on Megathread #10 for news/updates/discussion of AI chatbots and image generators in ~tech
skybrian LinkLawyer cites fake cases invented by ChatGPT, judge is not amused (Simon Willison) The blog post has a detailed timeline.Lawyer cites fake cases invented by ChatGPT, judge is not amused (Simon Willison)
A lawyer asked ChatGPT for examples of cases that supported an argument they were trying to make.
ChatGPT, as it often does, hallucinated wildly—it invented several supporting cases out of thin air.
When the lawyer was asked to provide copies of the cases in question, they turned to ChatGPT for help again—and it invented full details of those cases, which they duly screenshotted and copied into their legal filings.
At some point, they asked ChatGPT to confirm that the cases were real... and ChatGPT said that they were. They included screenshots of this in another filing.
The judge is furious. Many of the parties involved are about to have a very bad time.
The blog post has a detailed timeline.
From the article:
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(Much has changed since this blog post was written. There's a little bit that's dated, but the lessons of history seem about the same.)