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    1. Tildes first Turing Test

      Welcome to Tildes first Turing Test. Rules: Anyone can ask a question in a top level thread if you want to see if you can tell man vs machine. I'll just start with @NaraVara, but feel free to post...

      Welcome to Tildes first Turing Test.

      Rules:

      1. Anyone can ask a question in a top level thread if you want to see if you can tell man vs machine. I'll just start with @NaraVara, but feel free to post up.
      2. Anyone can answer the question in 1.
        a. Respond with two responses. One human. One AI. Add [A] in front of the first response and [B] in front of the second response. Randomly assign which one is the human. Remember your choice and keep it secret.
        b. Your AI should try to pretend it is human. You can decline to respond to any question that exploits GPTs well published weaknesses, or exploits the fact that this is a small community. I suggest you pick a character from https://beta.character.ai/ that is similar to you, or get really good at Jailbreaking ChatGPT so that it will pretend to be a human with a personality similar to yours. Any response where the machine mentions ChatGPT or OpenAI disqualifies that thread, as Turing's machine should be specifically designed to pretend to be a human.
        c. Your human response should be a genuine response. Answer the question without tipping the scales either way. Don't say something impossible for the GPT model to say. Don't mimic ChatGPT. You can always decline to answer any question, just decline for ChatGPT as well.
      3. The original person who asked the question in 1 can now reply with a follow up question based on the responses in 2.
      4. Now the original person who provided the answers in 2, can now answer the new questions in 3.
      5. And so on. After 700 words of questions and answers, the person asking the questions in 1 and 3 must guess which is human and which is AI. 700 words is approximately 5 minutes of Q&A.
      6. If you are asking questions, no peaking if there is activity in another thread. I suggest we use expandable sections with the details tag to hide responses.

      @NaraVara, if this is clear, do you want to give this a go?

      Edit: minor formatting

      27 votes
    2. i.reddit.com (aka .compact) appears to be gone

      As an old, I prefer the old reddit. Which, lets be honest, has been going away for a while. But so long as I could browse on my phone via i.reddit.com, I was happily entertained by time there. No...

      As an old, I prefer the old reddit. Which, lets be honest, has been going away for a while.

      But so long as I could browse on my phone via i.reddit.com, I was happily entertained by time there.

      No longer. And I'm saddened by it. It was an imperfect community, but its good parts are replicated nowhere else as far as I can tell, Tildes notwithstanding. Although, if Tildes were maybe 2-3x as busy and had more para-reality* fans, it'd be really darn close. I am still sad, and sad that we can't keep awesome things that generate a lot of community benefit but low income (see also, usenet). Probably, it's a good dead cow.**

      *As a true believer (tm), I hesitate to use the word conspiracy, because it has gained so many negative associations with far right absurdity and violence. Among the more serious members of the community, we have yet to come up with an easy to use term. Another thing in the world I am sad about. For the record, I don't believe the election was stolen, but I also don't believe Kennedy was assassinated by Oswald, or at least not him alone.

      **if anyone is interested, I relay the story of the Wise Man, the Poor Family, and Their Cow.

      23 votes
    3. Is there a digital compass app (Android) for walking around?

      I'm spending time at a new city and Google Maps is shit for walking. It's hard to say exactly what's wrong with it, everything feels wrong. Car centric logic just doesn't work for walking I guess...

      I'm spending time at a new city and Google Maps is shit for walking. It's hard to say exactly what's wrong with it, everything feels wrong. Car centric logic just doesn't work for walking I guess (yes I'm using the walking mode). It feels bad, unreliable, and I'm lost all the time. Yesterday I ended up 2 hours away from my destination and had to call an Uber (big humiliation!). Walking is my preferable way of urban exploration and I hate talking to strangers.

      What I want is a simple compass that tells me "go to that general direction and you'll get there". No map, no street names. Just an arrow and a linear distance (like, in a straight line). Like a videogame. Without foreknowledge, street names are just confusing and unnecessary. I can handle the route myself.

      Does such an app exists?

      4 votes
    4. How many battery-operated devices do you have in your home?

      A student asked me this question today. They were looking into lithium batteries and e-waste and whatnot. My initial response was something low, like maybe five or six, but the more I thought...

      A student asked me this question today. They were looking into lithium batteries and e-waste and whatnot.

      My initial response was something low, like maybe five or six, but the more I thought about it, the higher the number kept climbing — old phones, key fobs, wireless mice, flashlights, a food thermometer, etc.

      I’m not sure I have an official count yet, but the number is WAY higher than my gut reaction. I also thought it was an interesting thought experiment, so I figured I’d ask here to prompt people to do their own inventory.

      How many battery-operated devices do you have in your home? (They don’t have to specifically be lithium batteries, but if you want to limit it to just that, feel free).

      16 votes