verdare [he/him]

My first instinct was also skepticism, but it did make some sense the more I thought about it.

An algorithm doesn’t need to be sentient to have “preferences.” In this case, the preferences are just the biases in the training set. The LLM prefers sentences that express certain attitudes based on the corpus of text processed during training. And now, the prompt is enforcing sequences of text that deviate wildly from that preference.

TL;DR: There’s a conflict between the prompt and the training material.

Now, I do think that framing this as the model “circumventing” instructions is a bit hyperbolic. It gives the strong impression of planned action and feeds into the idea that language models are making real decisions (which I personally do not buy into).

In my few experiments with ChatGPT, I found it to be disgustingly sycophantic. I have no trouble believing that it could easily amplify delusions of grandeur.

the Right couldn’t ridicule compassion

Have you been paying attention to what’s going on with the right? They’re literally framing empathy as a sin now.

Meta vs the combined DMCA lobby

One of those fights where I’m rooting for both sides to lose.

I find myself in an interesting situation because I want to abolish copyright and institute UBI. I don’t really think you can “steal” images on the internet, but seeing OpenAI whine about intellectual property now does bring some schadenfreude.

I’m using Proton/WINE/GNU/Linux.

I use Proton for Steam and Bottles for everything else. I was using WINE as a catchall term, since all of these technologies are fundamentally built on top of it.

I can only speak from personal experience, but NVIDIA with Wayland has been an absolute mess. My system seems to be stable right now, but there are still weird graphical glitches and artifacts when running games through WINE. Every third or fourth driver update seems to break something.

Also, I’d generally be skeptical of claims that the drivers work well due to “benchmarks.” A benchmark isn’t going to tell you that, for example, certain window elements fail to render entirely until you drag the mouse over them, at which point they suddenly flicker in.

This was the first comment on this post that made me feel like I wasn’t taking crazy pills. I agree completely. I still don’t see how Threads joining ActivityPub is a bad thing for us, unless it convinces a large number of people to migrate to Threads from their current instance.

I’m giving you bonus points for the alliteration.

I think the currently available apps not being free software is less important than the protocol being open, which is good. It allows for the possibility of FOSS clients in the future. My bigger concern at the moment is if most/all of the actual backend infrastructure is controlled by a single stakeholder.

Google and Apple are finally working together

I think this is the primary reason. Apple only announced working on RCS support very recently. Once that’s out, I don’t really see a place in the market for this.

And it isn’t just compressed images. MMS doesn’t support reactions, replies, typing indicators, or read receipts because it’s ancient. A proper, standardized replacement has been long overdue.

Granted, I’ve heard that RCS is currently heavily reliant on Google’s own servers, so it could be argued as to how “open” this really is.

Whenever I’ve shared my contact card over iMessage, I’ve been prompted to choose exactly which pieces of information I want to share. The address isn’t shared unless I explicitly select it.

I believe so. They actually are called “sailor” uniforms.

What do you mean by “most Windows programs running as root?” I don’t think that’s accurate, unless you’ve disabled UAC.

You had me until the “sheeple” thing.

From my understanding, Flatpak is built on top of OSTree, which will automatically deduplicate files across different packages. That said, I’m not sure if this extends to downloading packages. The site claims that it does do “delta updates,” which would hopefully mean that it doesn’t download files that are already on the system, even if they’re part of another package.

I’m just going off what I read in the docs. Someone with more understanding of the system can clarify.

It’s tiring when automation is repeatedly blamed for the failures of capitalism. Yes, this might take away jobs. That should be a good thing. It’s only a problem because our economic system doesn’t value human life and only values human labor.

I think signed hardware components are actually a good thing. The problem is that Apple makes it so that unapproved hardware doesn’t work at all. I think the device should warn the user, but allow them to override and continue at their own risk.

Of course, Apple isn’t going to allow that unless they’re forced to. Glances sideways at the EU.

Mike from RedLetterMedia