One time, I was shopping for a specific item. I couldn’t find it on ebay, Amazon, walmart or etsy. Then I went to some smaller retail site (they also didn’t have it), and an Amazon ad for that item popped up. I clicked the ad, and it took me to the item page.
Amazon search (at least at the time) was so ineffective that I couldn’t find it, while their ad data gathering was so complete they knew that I wanted that specific thing.
Inflation is wild. Just a few decades ago, you could get this kind of thing for just an arm and a leg.
This and systemctl cat $unit are my favorites.
The problem when photon containment breaks like this is that we can never be 100% sure which photons were SUPPOSED to be there, and which ones leaked out. We’ll need a dedicated team of particle physicists with very small tweazers to have any hope of sorting out this mess.
So you’re saying my proposed imperial units depend on where you are, and who is using them, for what purpose? That just sells me on them as imperial units even more. :)
Thank you for the details.
From smallest to biggest:
Bits (basic unit)
Bytes (8:1 reduction)
Words (4:1 reduction)
KiB (32:1 reduction)
MiB (1024:1)
GiB (1024:1)
TiB (1024:1)
PiB (1024:1)
A normal amount of porn (237:1)
I counted twice. It didn’t match.
Cheddar saltine crackers. Premium made them, but I think it was only for a year or two.
What we have done is invented massive, automatic, no holds barred pattern recognition machines. LLMs use detected patterns in text to respond to questions. Image recognition is pattern recognition, with some of those patterns named things (like “cat”, or “book”). Image generation is a little different, but basically just flips the image recognition on its head, and edits images to look more like the patterns that it was taught to recognize.
This can all do some cool stuff. There are some very helpful outcomes. It’s also (automatically, ruthlessly, and unknowingly) internalizing biases, preferences, attitudes and behaviors from the billion plus humans on the internet, and perpetuating them in all sorts of ways, some of which we don’t even know to look for.
This makes its potential applications in medicine rather terrifying. Do thousands of doctors all think women are lying about their symptoms? Well, now your AI does too. Do thousands of doctors suggest more expensive treatments for some groups, and less expensive for others? AI can find that pattern.
This is also true in law (I know there’s supposed to be no systemic bias in our court systems, but AI can find those patterns, too), engineering (any guesses how human engineers change their safety practices based on the area a bridge or dam will be installed in? AI will find out for us), etc, etc.
The thing that makes AI bad for some use cases is that it never knows which patterns it is supposed to find, and which ones it isn’t supposed to find. Until we have better tools to tell it not to notice some of these things, and to scrub away a lot of the randomness that’s left behind inside popular models, there’s severe constraints on what it should be doing.
As the President and CEO of a fortune 500, and a neurosurgeon that does rocket surgery as a side project, there are many people relying on me to be an upstanding member of the community at all times.
In reality, most of the ways I misrepresent myself are to obscure my identity, and mostly it’s by leaving things out.
In my mind, the line is that an engineer is someone that can commit a crime by doing their job incompetently. If the only things at risk are your job and your pride, that’s a different thing.
“I program all day, so there’s a lot of trial and error. My friend is a negligent civil engineer, so there’s a lot of error and trial.”
I’m a Senior Computer Software Developer Programming Engineer, or SCSDPE (which is pronounced Skuzz-Deep), and I will be irreparably miffed if you get it wrong.
For your convenience, I also accept “that guy that sits weirdly close to the water fountain”, “hey”, and “paid keyboard user”.
When we get to this Saturday, next Saturday moves a week beyond our grasp. In some sense, when we die, our own timeline ends, and we can finally arrive at next Saturday for the first time.
Because the longest lives are around 110 years, and children start speaking around 3, the furthest in the future “next Saturday” can be is abouy 107 years.
Yeah, but then you have to limit your fashion selection! Imagine restricting yourself to wearing a hat over some silly fear of death.
I appreciate numbers.
“You wouldn’t put on a tricorn hat, would you?”
I actually would, if I could find a nice one…
“…and leave your job to sail the seas?”
… That’s an option? I didn’t even consider-
“And you certainly wouldn’t drink rum, and fire cannons, and carry a saber and tell silly parrot related puns.”
buys a tricorn hat
I almost get 100,000 pis. Almost, but not quite :'(
I’m… uhh. I think I’m screwed here.
There’s a crucial distinction between someone that wants to have sex, but cannot, and someone that chooses to identify as that. To really become an “incel” in the negative sense, you lose the desire to have sex because being denied sexual contact by others is part of your identity now.
People that merely don’t find others that are sexually interested in them can do things to help themselves, learn better grooming habits, dress nicer, practice approaching and talking to people, etc. Someone that has adopted the identity of “incel” can only help themselves by changing their perception away from the toxic void they found.
I’d describe it as sort of 3 layers. The first is practical/everyday things, which are mostly much nicer than being alone, but require attentiveness and communication (learn what your SO doesn’t like doing, and do it. Learn what things are work together projects, and what things are stay out of my way type things for each of you, probably other aspects too) - but once you know how to take care of each other, almost everything is less work, takes less time, and costs less money. Cooking, laundry, cleaning, gardening, repairing things, painting the house are all improved. Decorating and having guests over are harder, at least for me. You have to not fall into the trap of taking the things they do for granted, even when those things are routine.
The second layer I’d describe is lust/romance, which is sort of easier, except that you must avoid letting things coast too long. You have to dedicate time and effort to discovering new things about each other, and new things you enjoy together. You should still be dating, no matter how long it’s been, and ideally you should both be planning things most of the time. In my relationship, this is usually 1-2 things per month, each.
The final layer is the emotional/support layer. Almost any time, my wife can seek comfort and support from me in a variety of ways for all kinds of things, and I get the same from her. All the big problems in life are easier when you can share them, so here the benefits are huge. This is the only thing I got basically none of from having roommates or a best friend, or dating. For my situation, there’s basically no downside to this.