MagicShel

@MagicShel@lemmy.zip

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨get sum⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Graduated in 91. Can’t confirm first time for anyone but me and one girlfriend but I will confirm we were getting laid. I was almost 15 and she had recently turned 15. Can also confirm post virginity high school sex with another girl. I really only had two serious girlfriends in high school. I had a few other near misses but I don’t recall any others that sealed the deal off the top of my head. I wasn’t swimming in it, but I did pretty well for a nerd with self-confidence issues.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨A Second Tea Breach Reveals Users’ DMs About Abortions and Cheating⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Go on?

  It would be a combination of InternetToughGuy, ThatHappened, and a bathroom stall?

  It would be used for “no homo” meetups?

  It would herald an era of men sharing their feelings?

  It would be covered with porn and axel grease and sound like a Harley with a rough idle?

  I have no idea where you are going with this.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨A Second Tea Breach Reveals Users’ DMs About Abortions and Cheating⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I feel like this would be unconscionable if it was only employees with access to everything unencrypted. To just leave all this stuff open to the world is beyond the pale.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨robot slurs⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  The number of times I find myself using that quote is a lot higher than you’d expect.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It really works!⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Now do “gif”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Valve gets pressured by payment processors with a new rule for game devs and various adult games removed⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  If Steam or someone went to crypto just to kick the processors out, that might be one thing that would actually make me look at crypto with something other than derision.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Host Your Own Bluesky PDS: A Complete Azure-Powered Guide⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Then you’re just going to be at the mercy of the people that do run these things. I realize maybe my response was taken as disagreement or argument but it really wasn’t meant that way.

  As a product owner I’d want a way to contact or validate a user for customer service or service management reasons. Self service password reset, etc.

  But I’m interested in anonymity and if there were another good solution I’d be all ears. I’m not trying to defend email, just curious what mechanism could take its place. Some sort of cryptographic signature might work, though I would have to think carefully about no separate communication/ confirmation channel. I could see offering someone to use any identity of their choosing which would allow them as much anonymity and freedom of choice as they wanted. It’s an interesting challenge.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Host Your Own Bluesky PDS: A Complete Azure-Powered Guide⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s all of the above at once. It’s hard to think of another identifier that hits them all.

  4093rnbgv3q09vn032

  It’s not a communication method outside of the platform it’s on. It’s also not platform agnostic if it’s your identity on a service.

  I have several email addresses that are not remotely associated with any legal identity that I could transfer to someone that took over associated projects should the need arise.

  It looks like your complaint is as a user, not the service owner? I wouldn’t run a project like that, but feel free to start one up. Lots of people would appreciate that, I’m sure.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Host Your Own Bluesky PDS: A Complete Azure-Powered Guide⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
  • It’s a communication tool
  • It’s a unique identity
  • You can have more than one
  • It is platform agnostic
  • It’s anonymous

  That’s a fairly nice set of attributes.

  What would you propose instead? I’m not arguing or anything just genuinely curious what it would be replaced with. Maybe some kind of cryptographic identity, I guess?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can't fool me⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It was a joke. Until the arrival of people who didn’t know that. Much like Trump, himself

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨irresistable⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I love Douglas Adams and HHGttG probably did more to inform my politics than any other single source, and it feels completely relevant today. If anything, Adams wasn’t cynical enough when writing Zaphod.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Planck units⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You can what? You mean I can put down this bread knife and just have my house built for me? I think I’ll keep my sense of pride and accomplishment, sucker…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨is homophobia associated with homosexual arousal⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve had that exact reaction many times at BDSM events. (Technically, that first comma needs to move one word to the left.)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Xbox Producer Recommends Laid Off Workers Should Use AI To 'Help Reduce The Emotional And Cognitive Load That Comes With Job Loss'⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Don’t be that shocked. Humans make their minds up based on instinct and emotion and then justify it later. It is common for all of us to use flimsy excuses (when better ones don’t present themselves) to rationalize our ideals.

  I call out people who support the same things I do for flimsy reasons for that reason. I doubt I’m any more immune to it than anyone else, it’s just easier to spot it in others than ourselves. Shit sometimes I spot flaws in my own reasoning only when someone else gives voice to it. That’s fucking aggravating.

  That being said, it’s completely self-serving and upsetting to me because the people affected are more like me than him, and I could easily be next on the chopping block, and people like that dude will give not a single shit.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I want to leave tech: what do I do?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Stay in it anyway because you want a 75% pay cut even less. Only put in 40 hours. Enjoy the rest of your life outside of work.

  That’s my solution, anyway. Though, I actually love tech itself, it’s the people and processes I hate, so changing industries isn’t actually a solution.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Xbox Producer Recommends Laid Off Workers Should Use AI To 'Help Reduce The Emotional And Cognitive Load That Comes With Job Loss'⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  “Let them eat AI.”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Fake, AI-generated videos about the Diddy trial are raking in millions of views on YouTube⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t agree both sides do it to nearly the same degree, but yeah on the occasion I catch the left doing it, it frustrates me. So much stuff to legitimately be upset about and people are posting Teslas dropping folks off in a no parking zone.

  I’ll even acknowledge that an unmanned electric car standing to drop someone off or pick them up is indistinguishable from parking but still it’s pointless splitting of hairs compared to gestures at everything.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Fake, AI-generated videos about the Diddy trial are raking in millions of views on YouTube⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I think we are in an era where people don’t care what’s real and what’s a lie as long as the lie is entertaining enough and validates their own thoughts.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Gaming Swan Song⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I have a different relationship with gaming, so in a lot of ways I relate and in some ways I don’t, but the important thing is you looked for ways to improve your situation and found something that works, and I think that’s great. Good job, mate!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨A US law firm is taking NordVPN to Court over "deceptive" auto-renewal pricing – here's what we know⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  They were trying. I couldn’t believe the shit they had added to my plan. Even if I wanted that shit (I don’t), how am I supposed to take advantage of it when I don’t know to set up and configure it? Completely changed my opinion on Nord. I don’t have a VPN currently. Any recs? I only need it for two things: very rarely when I want to torrent something (normally I just pay but there are certain exceptions when I’ve already paid for something but want no DRM shit, or bought a physical copy of and need digital) and because I’m not in favor of the current political regime and status quo. Not that I think I’m good enough to really hide myself from the govt, but I’d like to make it take more effort.

  iPhone and Linux.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Behind the Curtain: The scariest AI reality⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Sure but that’s really the fault of the moron, not the AI for existing. Definitely could blame the AI sellers who would be happy to say AI can do it.

  It’s a useful tool but like fire, if idiots get their hands on it bad things will happen.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Behind the Curtain: The scariest AI reality⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Our purpose with this column isn’t to be alarmist

  [x] Doubt

  The amount of math that goes into training an AI and generating output exceeds human capacity to calculate. So does the Big Bang, but we have some pretty good ideas how that went.

  when given access to fictional emails during safety testing, threatened to blackmail an engineer over a supposed extramarital affair. This was part of responsible safety testing — but Anthropic can’t fully explain the irresponsible action.

  Because human writing, both fiction is full of this sort of thing, and all any LLM is doing is writing. Why wouldn’t it take a dark turn sometimes? It’s not like it has any inherent sense of ethics or morality.

  Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, in an essay in April called “The Urgency of Interpretability,” warned: “People outside the field are often surprised and alarmed to learn that we do not understand how our own AI creations work. They are right to be concerned: this lack of understanding is essentially unprecedented in the history of technology.” Amodei called this a serious risk to humanity — yet his company keeps boasting of more powerful models nearing superhuman capabilities.

  Is this true? Don’t we have drugs that we don’t fully understand how they do what they do? I’m reading that we don’t fully understand all the mechanisms of aspirin.

  I get that this is a quote and not the author of the article, but this quote is just included without deeper analysis. Also, a car has superhuman capabilities; a fish has superhuman capabilities. LLMs are not superhuman in any way that matters. They are not even superhuman in ways different from computers of 40 years ago.

  But researchers at all these companies worry LLMs, because we don’t fully understand them, could outsmart their human creators and go rogue.

  This is 100% alarmism. AI might at some point outsmart humans, but it won’t be LLMs.

  ---

  None of this is to say there are absolutely no concerns about LLMs. Obviously there are. But there is no reason to suspect LLMs are going to end humanity unless some moron hooks one up to nuclear weapons.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨ChatGPT 'got absolutely wrecked' by Atari 2600 in beginner's chess match — OpenAI's newest model bamboozled by 1970s logic⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  You probably could train an AI to play chess and win, but it wouldn’t be an LLM.

  In fact, let’s go see…

  • Stockfish: Open-source and regularly ranks at the top of computer chess tournaments. It uses advanced alpha-beta search and a neural network evaluation (NNUE).

  • Leela Chess Zero (Lc0): Inspired by DeepMind’s AlphaZero, it uses deep reinforcement learning and plays via a neural network with Monte Carlo tree search.

  • AlphaZero: Developed by DeepMind, it reached superhuman levels using reinforcement learning and defeated Stockfish in high-profile matches (though not under perfectly fair conditions).

  Hmm. neural networks and reinforcement learning. So non-LLM AI.

  you can play chess against something based on chatgpt, and if you’re any good at chess you can win

  You don’t even have to be good. You can just flat out lie to ChatGPT because fiction and fact are intertwined in language.

  “You can’t put me in check because your queen can only move 1d6 squares in a single turn.”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨'No Man's Sky' Just Made You Mayor Of An Alien Planet⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Most tedious part I’ve seen so far is there is so fucking much to upgrade. At least 20 buildings and probably a fair bit more with construction, and they all go C, B, A, S and every upgrade takes time and can only be done one at a time, so getting your town built up is pretty tedious. Time will tell if the rewards are worth it. At least you can get your rewards from all settlements (max 4 I think) just stopping at one. So once you’re built up maybe it’s fine?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Discord CTO says he’s “constantly bringing up enshittification” during meetings⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I signed up with Matrix and it was not seamless but maybe a private server would be great and they could go from there (but that feels like a long term commitment to supporting those users). I haven’t really played much with it. Tried getting the folks in my discord server to give it a try but they haven’t and they are tech folks. I would say it’s not ready for normies, but I really wish it was.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Epic’s AI Darth Vader tech is about to be all over Fortnite⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I appreciate this in return. Online I tend to throw around colorful epithets and I know that can come across as aggressive, and a couple of time I might’ve phrased things more enthusiastically than I aspire to. I appreciate that you were able to look past that and stay engaged on the topic.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Epic’s AI Darth Vader tech is about to be all over Fortnite⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I think it’s fair to discuss the energy. I’m not sure where the math comes from that 100 words takes .14kWh. My video card uses 120W pegged and can generate 100 words in let’s say a nice round 2 minutes. So that works out to 4W or .004kWh. But of course they are running much more advanced and hungry models, and this is probably generating the text and then generating the voice, and I don’t know what that adds. I do know that an AI tool I use added a voice tool and it added nothing to cost, so it was small enough for them to eat, but also the voices are eh and there are much better voice models out there.

  So that’s fine, I can pretty well define the lower bounds of what a line of text could cost, energy-wise. But this strategy doesn’t get us closer to an actual number. What might be helpful… is understanding it from EA’s perspective. They are doing this to increase their bottom line through driving customer engagement and excitement, because I haven’t heard anything about this costing the customer anything.

  So whatever the cost is of all the AI they are using, has to be small enough for them to simply absorb in the name of increased player engagement leading to more purchases. The number I just found is $1.2 billion in profit annually. Fuck, that’s a lot of money. What do you think they might spend on this? Do you think it would be as high as 2%? I’ll be honest, I really don’t know. So lets say they are going to spend $24million on generative AI and let’s just assume for a second that all goes to power.

  I just checked and the average for 1KWh nationally is $0.1644 but let’s cut that in half assuming they cut some good deals? (I’m trying to be completely fair in these numbers so disagree if you like. I’m writing this before doing all the math so I don’t even know where this is going.) That looks like about 291 million KWh (or… that’s just 291 GWh, right?)

  I read global energy usage is estimated at 25,500 TWh, and check my math that works out to about 1/87,000th of the world’s annual electricity consumption. Kinda a lot for a single game, but it’s pretty popular.

  But the ask is how that compares to video cards and… let’s be honest this is going to be a very slippery, fudge-y number. I was quoted 1.5 million daily players (and I see other sources report up to 30 million which is really wide, but lets go with the lower number). So the question is, how long do they play on average, and how much power do their video cards use? I see estimates of 6-10 hours per week and 8-10 hours per week. Let’s make it really easy and assume 7 hours per week or 1 hour per day.

  I have a pretty low end video card, but it’s probably still comparable to or better than some of the devices connecting to fortnight. I don’t have a better number to use, so I’m going to use 120W. There should be a lot of players higher than that, but also probably a lot of switches and whatnot that are probably lower power. Feel free to disagree.

  So 1.5m players x 1 hour per day = 120MWh x 365 = 43.8GWh.

  By these numbers the AI uses about 6x the power of the GPUs. So there is that. But also I think I have been extremely generous with these numbers everywhere except maybe the video card wattage which I really don’t have any idea how to estimate. Would EA spend 2% expecting to recoup that in revenue? What if it’s 1%? What if it’s .5%? At .5% they are getting pretty close.

  Or if the number of daily players is 15 million instead of 1.5, that alone is enough to tip the scale the other way.

  And device power is honestly a wild-ass guess. You could tell me the average is 40W or 250W and I’d have no real basis to argue.

  If you have any numbers or suggestions to make any of this more accurate, I’m all ears. The current range of numbers would lean toward me being wrong, but my confidence in any of this is low enough that I consider the matter unresolved.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Epic’s AI Darth Vader tech is about to be all over Fortnite⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  You start by saying no, but your elaboration says yes.

  Maybe I’m wrong. I don’t think so. shrug

  Not sure what else there is to say at this point. AI uses energy. So do lots of things—video cards in this example. My point is really to put things into perspective here. If the number of video cards running Fortnite weren’t cause for worry 3 years ago, why would this use of AI be concerning today?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Epic’s AI Darth Vader tech is about to be all over Fortnite⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Okay. So, your position is that 6 year olds are going to join Fortnite to spam the funny-man-speak button and because of that AI energy usage will be higher? Okay. Maybe. I’d argue the novelty of AI wears thin really quickly once you interact with it a lot, but I’ll grant you some folks might remain excited by AI beyond reason.

  So now they are logging into Fortnite and rather than playing the actual game they are just going to talk to characters? It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. But once we throw out the other commenter’s numbers and suppose it’s not 7 generations to equal 30 minutes of play, maybe it’s 20. Maybe it’s 40. Maybe it’s 100. I honestly don’t know. But we’re definitely in the realm where I think betting the video card uses more energy than the AI for a given player (and all video cards use more energy than AI for all given players) is a perfectly reasonable position to take.

  I bet that is the case. I don’t know it. I can’t prove it right or wrong without actual numbers. But based on my ability to generate images and text locally on a shit video card, I am sticking with my bet.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Epic’s AI Darth Vader tech is about to be all over Fortnite⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  And they used 1.4 million video cards. The scale is a wash. And yes, when it’s brand new folks are going to sit there for a bit appreciating how cool it is to talk to Darth Vader. And then he’s going to say some stupid out-of-character stuff, and the novelty is going to wear off, and the AI usage is going to go down, but the video card usage will stay the same.