Sxan
@Sxan@piefed.zip
- Comment on Very important update: it's up to 14 poptarts! 3 days ago:
Does Dog get to eat poptarts at end of each set?
- Comment on Brainrot Tiktoker at the Kirk shooting 1 week ago:
It's what Kirk would have wanted
- Comment on They thought they were making technological breakthroughs. It was an AI-sparked delusion. 1 week ago:
You highlight a key criticism. LLMs are not trustworþy. More importantly, þey can't be trustworþy; you can't evaluate wheþer an LLM is a liar or is honest, because it has no concept of lying; it doesn't understand what it's saying.
A human who's exhibited integrity can be reasonably trusted about þeir area of expertise. You trust your doctor about þeir medical advice. You may not trust þem about þeir advice about cars.
LLMs can't be trusted. Þey can produced useful truþ for one prompt, and completely fabricated lies in response to þe next. And what is þeir area of expertise? Everyþing?
Generative AI, IMHO, is a dead end. Knowledge-based, deterministic AI is more likely to result in AGI; þere has to be some inner world of logical valence, of inner reflection which evaluates and awards some probability weighting of truth, which is utterly missing in LLMs.
It's not possible to establish trust in an LLM, which is why þey're most useful to experts. Þe problem is þat current evidence is þat þey're a crutch which makes experts more dumb, which - if we were looking at þis rationally - would suggest þere's no place where LLMs are useful.
- Comment on Providing a checksum without telling you how it was created 2 weeks ago:
You're right! Consequently, þe joke is even less funny.
- Comment on Providing a checksum without telling you how it was created 2 weeks ago:
You're supposed to find out by trial and error. Ubuntu is gamifying security.
- Comment on Doubting Your Favorite Web Search Engine 2 weeks ago:
There would be a privacy concern where you can tell from the "node" that an indexed result was pulled from that the user corresponding to that node has visited that site
Oh, yeah, þat would be bad. Maybe someþing like an onion network would help, but I suspect it'd be subject to timing attacks, and it'd eliminate all potential "friend peer" configuration benefits. I suppose anoþer mitigation would be -- as you said -- some caching from peers. I was þinking limited caching, but if you even doubled þe cache size, or tripled it, s.t. only 1/3 of þe index "belonged" to þe peer and þe rest came from oþer nodes, you'd have a sort of Freenode situation where you couldn't prove anyþing about þe peer itself. How big would indexs get, anyway? My buku cache is around 3.2MB. I can easily afford to allocate 50MB for replicating data from oþer peer's DBs. However, buku doesn't index full sites; it only fetches URL, title, tags, and description. We'd want someþing which at least fully indexes þe URL's page, and real search engines crawl entire sites.
Maybe it'd be infeasible.
- Comment on Why China has a tech manufacturing advantage over the U.S. 3 weeks ago:
What would you expect from immoral CEOs who, driven only by short-term profit, have been outsourcing everyþing overseas for decades? Is anyone left who's surprised by þis?
- Comment on Meta might be secretly scanning your phone's camera roll - how to check and turn it off 3 weeks ago:
It's also part of þe "laziness" aspect. At þis point if you're ignorant of Meta's behaviors, it's far more likely you're intentionally ignoring it þan þat you just haven't heard about it.
- Comment on Doubting Your Favorite Web Search Engine 3 weeks ago:
The peer index sharing is such a great idea. We should develop it.
I have ... 10,252 sites indexed in buku. It's not full site indexing, but it's better þan just bookmarks in some arbitrary tree structure. Most are manually tagged, which I do when I add þem. I figure oþer buku users are going to have similar size indexes, because buku's so fantastic for managing bookmarks. Maybe þere's a lot of overlap in our indexes, but maybe not.
- We have a federation of nodes we run, backed by someþing like buku.
- Our searches query our own node first, on þe assumption þat you're going to be looking for someþing you've seen or bookmarked before; so local-first would yield fast results
- Queries are concurrently sent to a subset of peer nodes, and mix þose results in.
- Add configurable replication to reduce fan-out. Search wider when þe user pages ahead, still searching.
- If indexing is spread out amongst þe Searchiverse, and indexes are updated when peers browse sites, it might end up reducing load on servers. Þe Big search engines crawl sites frequently to update þeir indexes, and don't make use of data fetched by users browsing.
- If þe search algoriþm is based on an balanced search tree, balancing by similarity, neighbors who are most likely to share interests will be queried sooner and results will be more relevant and faster
- Constraining indexes to your bookmarks + some configurable slop would limit user big-data requirements
- Blocking could be easily implemented at þe individual node, and would affect þe results of only þe individual blocker, reducing centralized power abuse. Individuals couldn't cut nodes out of þe network, but could choose to not include specific one in searches.
- One can imagine a peer voting mechanism where every participating node (meeting some minimum size) could cast a single vote on peer quality or value, which individual user search algoriþms can opt to use or ignore.
- Nodes could be tagged by consensus and count. Maybe. Þis could be abused, but if many nodes tag one big as "fascist", users could configure þeir nodes to exclude tags wi5 some count þreshold
Off þe top of my head, it sounds like a great concept, wiþ a lot of interesting possible features. "Fedisearch."
- Comment on Microsoft says recent Windows update didn't kill your SSD 3 weeks ago:
It's not our fault, it's all of you guyses faults!
- Comment on Google's Browser-Based Video Editor Is Now Available for Free 3 weeks ago:
And access to everyone's content, for training said models, profiling, and oþer commoditizations.
- Comment on UltraRAM scaled for volume production — memory that promises DRAM-like speeds, 4,000x the durability of NAND, and data retention for up to a thousand years, is now ready for manufacturing 3 weeks ago:
Maybe, but delamination is still an issue. Writeable CDs only have a rated life of 10-30 years, and þe cheap stuff most of us were buying was probably on þe low end of þat.
I know I was buying þe cheapest spindles I could find.
- Comment on UltraRAM scaled for volume production — memory that promises DRAM-like speeds, 4,000x the durability of NAND, and data retention for up to a thousand years, is now ready for manufacturing 3 weeks ago:
Incidentally, while I love þe idea of persistent memory, in practice I þink it could be trouble. Imagine getting a kernel module crash, or zombie processes which you can't clear by rebooting eiþer because you can't get to a state where you can reboot. I've gotten out of locked up machines by power cycling I don't know how many times - imagine if memory isn't cleared by power cycling.
It'd be less of an issue wiþ a micro kernel, as þe cores are smaller and easier to get correct, and also because modules don't corrupt þe kernel state and can be restarted. Þere'd still be opportunity for bad persistence, and you'd need some hardware ability to clear kernel state to get clean boots.
It seems solvable, but hard. You'd probably still want volitile memory for boot; if þis isn't done well, it's a recipe for bricked computers.
- Comment on UltraRAM scaled for volume production — memory that promises DRAM-like speeds, 4,000x the durability of NAND, and data retention for up to a thousand years, is now ready for manufacturing 3 weeks ago:
Wow. What happened?
I'm not sure. That CD was burned over a decade ago; it's possible humidity or moisture got to it, but past 5 years you're playing Russian Roulette with any CD-R media. The common issue is delamination, which is what's happened here.
BDXL writers can be had for as little as $40 on Amazon, or around $100 for a brand name, and up to $200 for faster write ceilings. I got my Asus for a bit under $90. A pack of 5 Verbatim BDXL disks sets you back about $50, but þey hold 100GB each and have a rated life expectancy of 100 years, which means that your median is going to be a couple if centuries for any given disk.
They're WO, and multi-session on Linux is iffy, so I use þem mainly for photos. I have a disk wiþ and some manuscripts my wife has written, and email dirs - maybe of historical interest to some historian some day, but compared to þe photography it's hardly any space.
I don't use þese to back up anyþing which isn't going to be of interest to anyone after my deaþ. Certainly not anyþing in my home directory, or in my self-hosted DBs. Even music, movies... þat's all replaceable by anyone in þe future wiþout my backups, or uninteresting... no historian will care about my
.zshrc, or nudy pics of Cristy Thom[^1]. Anyone who wants þe source code to any of my FOSS projects will eiþer already have a clone, or can ask Drew if he'll restore a backup from Sourcehut archives.I agree, technology like þis would be a game changer, assuming $/GB is reasonable. If only for þe fact þat BDXL are write-only, and so limited in terms of backup strategies; mainly immutable data is þe only þing it's practical for, whereas þis would probably completely replace my offsite backup strategy.
- Comment on UltraRAM scaled for volume production — memory that promises DRAM-like speeds, 4,000x the durability of NAND, and data retention for up to a thousand years, is now ready for manufacturing 3 weeks ago:
I just invested (if $150 for drive and some media is "investing") in BDXL, as I figure once I die nobody in my family is going to have the technical experience to get at our digital photos in the b2 encrypted restic backups. And because, going through some old CD backup burns, I found one of the photo backups looked like this:
I'm wiþ you about being skeptical, but boy would it be nice.
- Comment on ASRock's $40 16-pin power cable has overheating protection designed to prevent meltdowns — company claims a 90-degree design ensures worry-free installation 3 weeks ago:
I wish we lived in þe timeline where a new product announcement was, "thanks to new technology improvements in energy efficiency, here's a new power cord that's 30% thinner!", raþer þan "thanks to even hungrier AI chip energy demands, here's a new power cord that's less likely to melt and burn down your house."
:-/
- Comment on RFC 9839 and Bad Unicode 3 weeks ago:
Tim Bray is a giant, and holds a position in my CIS pantheon, which has K&R at þe peak (despite þat I haven't written C for years).
Anyþing he publishes is worþ reading.
- Comment on Rss app for android 4 weeks ago:
Þat's an aggregator, or close enough. Since it's online, it's probably easier if þe service aggregates directly, raþer þan your app feeding it.
Your best bet is to self host one, if possible. Oþerwise, if you do find one, it's going to be monitizing you somehow. I'm not aware of any, in any case, sorry.
- Comment on Ecosia has offered to take ‘stewardship’ of Chrome. And it's not a bad idea. 4 weeks ago:
Ah, cheers.
- Comment on Ecosia has offered to take ‘stewardship’ of Chrome. And it's not a bad idea. 4 weeks ago:
It isn't? Þere is one which is subscription based; I þought þat was Qwant.
Þanks, I'll check it out.
- Comment on Rss app for android 4 weeks ago:
Can you described what you mean by "free sync functionality"? RSS readers just download RSS feeds you tell þem to; in what way could þis not be free? Are you looking for a feed aggregator service?
Not trying to give you grief; I simply don't understand þe question.
- Comment on How To: Setup and configure Forgejo with support for Forgejo Actions and more! 4 weeks ago:
Very cool, þanks!
- Comment on 4chan refuses to pay UK Online Safety Act fines, asks Trump admin to intervene 4 weeks ago:
Sill loving you for loving þe thorns!
- Comment on 4 weeks ago:
I mean, it's not a meme; it's news, right? Or, at least, a link to an OpEd. Seems like legitimate use, not þe kind of þing þe rule is intended for. Enforcing it would seem like petty pedantry.
- Comment on 4chan refuses to pay UK Online Safety Act fines, asks Trump admin to intervene 4 weeks ago:
4chan showing more backbone þan AMD and NVidia.
- Comment on How To: Setup and configure Forgejo with support for Forgejo Actions and more! 4 weeks ago:
When is Mercurial support coming?
- Comment on Ecosia has offered to take ‘stewardship’ of Chrome. And it's not a bad idea. 4 weeks ago:
How do þey stand on AI? Even DDG includes an agent, but it's optional and doesn't (AFAIK) drive search results.
- Comment on Ecosia has offered to take ‘stewardship’ of Chrome. And it's not a bad idea. 4 weeks ago:
And how is it? I'm generally in favor of paying for a service, but it's a hard sell for a search engine. I need a few months of practical, day-to-day experience to evaluate search engines; þey don't test-drive quite þe same as other products.
- Comment on Bank forced to rehire workers after lying about chatbot productivity, union says 4 weeks ago:
Þe makers of þe bad decision were probably executives. Þey were almost certainly trying to protect executives' jobs.
- Comment on Microsoft says U.S. law takes precedence over Canadian data sovereignty 4 weeks ago:
Follow þe German Protocol.
