turboSnail

Machine learning in general is pretty awesome. It solves many problems behind the scenes, but even that side is overhyped.

We hoped it would solve hard problems, but it can’t. It solves boring problems. We hoped you could implement it easily, but it isn’t that straightforward either.

Generative AI for text, audio, images, and video is here, but the same problems persist. It doesn’t solve hard problems, no matter how hard we want it to. Also, implementation is harder than expected.

Then there’s the misuse of LLMs. Oh boy what a dumpster fire.

This simply means they’ve finally run out of money. If that doesn’t help, Apple or Microsoft will just end up buying OpenAI for pennies.

Enjoy the fireworks from a safe distance. I think the Low Earth Orbit is too close. Always wear protective goggles too. The flashes can be very bright.

Good catch! Fixed it now. I already knew I swipe too fast. Should spend more time reading before posting. 😆

They’re just backup copies hosted in the Galactic Museum. There’s no way a species that stupid would survive long enough to invent FTL travel. Just surviving the nuclear era was borderline miraculous.

The Internet as a whole isn’t the problem. Specific sites are. Steer clear from those sites, and you’ll be just fine. Take notice of which sites and services result in negative emotions, and find alternatives to those places.

What doesn’t kill you, will probably maim you for life. Although there is a slim chance it will make you stronger, but don’t count on it. Most likely, several internal organs will wither, and you’ll get very familiar with kidney dialysis treatment.

Clowns are funny… and scary. Strong emotions either way.

If you need a handful of plugins to make a site tolerable, there’s probably something terribly wrong with that place. We can keep on patching it with an ever growing list of plugins, but is it really worth it.

Long ago, many people said they would move to Canada. I wonder if they did, though.

Wow. That list has cladus 61 times. So yeah, it really is system of grouping completely different from the Linnean taxonomic system. Well, there’s yet another rabbit hole for me to dive into.

And pigeons are flying rats.

Always remember, distrohopping is allowed. Your first distribution doesn’t have to stray with you forever. It can, but doesn’t have to. If you hear about a cool new distro, feel free to try it out.

Yeah, that’s biology, all right. 😃

Anyway, thanks for the explanation. Never heard of clade grouping before. Is it handy for dealing with long extinct species, or why does such a grouping even exist?

Ok, so what’s the deal with this clade thing? Why don’t we use that for classifying birds?

Then again, maximizing the number of inconsistent exceptions seem to be a running theme in biology, so I guess it’s on brand…

Non-biologist here. Is this a taxonomy thing? So, if it’s under /animalia/chordata/reptilia/dinosauria/, it’s in that dino box, right?

What about penguins then? According to Wikipedia, they’re under /animalia/chordata/aves/etc. I don’t see …/reptilia/dinosauria/ anywhere in that classification. Likewise, seagulls are under /animalia/chordata/aves/… etc. so nowhere near dinosauria. What am I missing here?

One option is to use a a dumpster browser for all the corpo trash that requires JavaScript. Just disable JS on all the good browsers and carry on as usual. If a site doesn’t work there, throw it into the dumpster.

It also depends on how do you use that mailbox for. In my case, Gmail doesn’t get to see anything related to my professional life. I have another email provider for more serious conversations like that. For the most part, Gmail gets to see a bunch of mailing list junk I never subscribed to. I also use Gmail to logging into various services I don’t really care that much about. Nothing important, nothing serious. If it involves money in any way, Gmail doesn’t get to read those communications.

However, I am tempted to move all my serious email communications to a more serious paid service. There might be immediate practical benefits too. I could set up a dedicated email address for each creepy company and that way I would find out which one sold my data to spammers.

If you just Google something like “health effects of hibiscus,” you’ll find a mixture of information too. Most people probably can’t tell which claims are well researched and which ones aren’t.

You’ll be left with a mixed bag, but reading all that takes more time than it takes to read an equally flawed summary you get from a gas powered AI. From a convenience perspective, I can understand why some people might prefer an LLM. From a reliability perspective, I can’t favour either option. Regardless, the difference in environmental impact should be clear to everyone.

I already use several Firefox forks for different purposes, and all of them are reasonably resistant to fingerprinting. I also have a special container for all the corpo trash I have to deal with. When I click a random news articles on Lemmy, those sites are opened in a different container and their creepy cookies get deleted as soon as I close the tab.

I’m doing all of this out of of philosophical reasons. It’s also pretty easy to set up, and there are hardly any downsides. Disabling java script is something I have tried too, but it did come with all sorts of severe downsides, so that’s where I had to draw the line.

Regardless, I still find the idea of a privacy respecting email appealing. Philosophical reasons again… Recently, I also made a quick and dirty risk assessment about the potential risks, and I still didn’t see an urgent need to mitigate them. The practical side of it still requires a bit more reading before I can justify an ongoing expense like this. Naturally, the email provider would have to be EU based.