mirshafie

joined 3 weeks ago
[–] mirshafie -1 points 2 days ago

This really is a problem with expectations and hype though. And it will probably be a problem with cost as well.

I think that LLMs are really cool. It's way faster and more concise than traditional search engines at answering most questions nowadays. This is partly because search engines have degraded in the last 10 years, but LLMs blow them out of the water in my opinion.

And beyond that, I think you can generate some pretty cool things with it to use as a template. I'm not a programmer but I'm making a quite massive and relatively complicated application. That wouldn't be possible without an LLM. Sure I still have to check every line and clean up a ton of code, and of course I realize that this is all going to have to go to a substantial code review and cleanup by real programmers if I'm ever going to ship it, but the thing I'm making is genuinely already better (in terms of performance and functionality) than a lot of what's on the market. That has to count for something.

Despite all that, I think we're in the same kind of bubble now as we were in the early 2000s, except bigger. The oversell of AI comes from CEOs claiming (and to the best of my judgement they appear to be actually believing) that LLMs somehow magically will transcend into AGI if they're given enough compute. I think part of that stems from the massive (and unexpected) improvements that happened from GPT-2 to GPT-3.

And lots of smart people (like Linus Tordvals for example) point out that really, when you think about it, what is intelligence other than a glorified auto-correct? Our brains essentially function as lossy compression. So I think for some people it is incredibly alluring to believe that if we just throw more chips on the fire a true consciousness will arise. And so, we're investing all of our extra money and our pension funds into this thing.

And the irony is that I and millions of others can therefore use LLMs at a steep discount. So lots of people are quickly getting accustomed to LLMs thinking that they're always going to be free or cheap, whereas it's paid for by the bubble money and it's not super likely that it will get much more efficient in the near future.

[–] mirshafie 16 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I think that most of all they want you to feel like AI could replace you if you misbehave.

[–] mirshafie 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

This can be fixed by the drivers paying extra attention in front of them when entering a roundabout.

When you enter a roundabout you need to be clear from the left, that's normally all you need to worry about. In this case because the buses are so long, the bus that locks them is in front of them when they enter, and there's another bus to the right. This should be clearly visible.

[–] mirshafie 18 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Honestly I've never heard about a roundabout traffic jam before seeing the picture of the Norwegian four-way bus lock a couple of days ago, followed by this example right here.

I think Cities Skylines is either badly programmed or propaganda for Big Intersection.

[–] mirshafie 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Yeah I think a lot of Apple users get really attached to their gadgets and want to use them forever. Also, there's the resale value that helps the kind of customer that wants to buy the new thing every year. So making sure that the products hold up for a long time is probably a really solid strategy for them.

[–] mirshafie 3 points 4 days ago

This is unironically a huge issue, and it's just fascinating how the psychology of pricing and valuation works.

Semi-large company needs something. They make a budget for €100k and start looking at different alternatives. They find alternatives a) €120k, b) €80k, c) €15k. I bet you they'll try to ask their superiors to expand their budget in order to buy the premium €120k solution, and they will not in any way consider the €15k one.

Come to think of it, it goes beyond software as well.

[–] mirshafie 1 points 4 days ago

You're right, maybe I don't find this to be a problem because I've already filtered out misogynists from my life long ago.

[–] mirshafie 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

My biggest issue with PDF it's hard to read on screens. On top of that PDF forms are notoriously buggy, tables are almost impossible to machine-read without specialized software, and even copy-pasting can be a hassle.

I get that print will continue to be a thing to some extent, but I don't think that business or government documents need to be typeset with static pages. I think it's time we move on to a much simpler standard that is made for free-flowing text.

PDF has also been problematic as a standard format, since it referred to proprietary features up until 2023.

[–] mirshafie 3 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Or, maybe rather than a threat or an implication, it's a vent for what a toxic upbringing many of us had.

[–] mirshafie 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (3 children)

I have a Pixel 9 Pro because when I bought it it had the best camera that you can could in Europe. I tried the best iPhone and Samsung phones at the time and Pixel was for sure better, especially in low-light conditions.

Only Huawei has better cameras (by a fair margin as well). I've never experienced that it feels slow or underpowered, but maybe that's the case on paper.

[–] mirshafie 2 points 4 days ago

I think lots of people would care if it had a fair algorithm. Tinder is hated for several reasons, but that's probably the main one.

[–] mirshafie 17 points 4 days ago

We're supposed to excuse Americans for what they endured in 9/11 but fuck if we show any signs of empathy with Iraqis that lost half a million people because George W Bush threw a tantrum.

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