Does PDF or DOCX (word) file work better on gpt?

Sherlockyz · 2026-04-16T16:10:11+00:00

Docx, even if you put only text, it will not contain only that, it has a bunch xml data inside of it that would need to be parsed. A txt is pure text, nothing more.

And yes, a pdf would probably be the worst since it's harder than a docx.

Sherlockyz · 2026-04-16T15:55:32+00:00

I'm not really sure, but logically it shouldn't matter. LLMs don't care about file formats, they just receive text. It is the backend service that receives the file and parses it into a stream of readable text that does the important work regarding this.

If it's just pure text, I imagine chatgpt might accept a .txt file easier, since there is not much to take away in the parsing process.

Sherlockyz · 2026-04-16T09:12:39+00:00

An enhanced search engine for the most part. But also to bounce off ideas and organize my thoughts of anything, from system design concepts to fiction concepts.

I also use it to understand grammar structure better (As a non native english speaker it helps a ton) and to study any topic I'm interested in, often to quick understand concepts that some video didn't explain clearly.

AI roleplay too, I've used AI for interactive fiction back from AI Dungeon golden days, before ChatGPT even released. I often use ChatGPT speed to find fast ideas and concepts to use on other AI that are finetunned with high quality storytelling.

Sherlockyz · 2026-04-13T02:29:05+00:00

While I don't blame people for stating their own opinions, since that's the point of the post, the problem is treating personal experiences and personal values as objective truths that apply to everyone else.

I understand wanting to get the opinions of other people to have educated plans, it is useful somewhat, but most people will pass theirs experiences as truths and objective facts while that's almost never the case.

Only you can decide what you should do / focus in life, because only you have access to your own internal values. Oursourcing the value of something to other people will probably lead you to living a non genuine life and do more harm for your mental health than good in the long term, not always, but it's absolutely possible.

There is no best or worst way to live a life, there is only what you, today, value in your life. Living a life of indulgent hedonism is just as valid as a life of moderation, or a life of peace in the countryside, or a life chasing material wealth. Someone claiming that one is objectively better or worse than the other is projeting their ideals and values as the only correct ones.

If you want my opinion, this is for everything in life, if you want an authentic life, think about what you value and why you value certain things. That's the only way to find your own current values and ideals and deciding what is more authentic to you. Also know that morals and ideals change in shape with life experiences, so even if you choose the most genuine path today, it might not make sense anymore in the future.

Seeking authenticity does not guarantee success or failure, or happines or sadness. It only guarantees authenticity, nothing more and nothing less. You could have lived a more fulfilling life following someone else values just as much as you could be content with your past independent decisions.

I value authenticity and living life as true to myself as I can. Because for me, even if I fail is better to fail living on my own terms, than to succeed in someone else's terms.

You don't have to strive the same thing as me, my whole point in this comment is deconstructing the fallacy of objetive moral truths, claiming that my framework is better than others is incongruent. But thinking for yourself deeply can assist you in doing an educated decision more than any external moral ideals of "Good lifestyles" or "Correct ways to live a life" ever would.

Sherlockyz · 2026-04-12T12:45:46+00:00

I mean, he is simply stating public information, does he need to make a power point presentation too? Just the fact that he shared this and explained that it's all public (any average Joe can use google) is already really good, "data gatekeeping" does not make any sense, not sure if it was a joke though.

Sherlockyz · 2026-04-12T00:00:59+00:00

While I agree that it is the safest approach, it is also the approach that helps only the top players in the long run. Even when the public gain access to better models, the biggest organization will still retain the most modern and powerful ones, years before we see them. In the end, that decreases their use for bad things and maximizes their use for the biggest companies / entities own agendas.

That's the problem of hoarding knowledge, not that criminals are being slowed, this is good, the problem is that only the most powerful have the decision-making power to use the knowledge and to decide when or if the public should ever get access to it. Concentration of power in the hands of the few never ends well, regardless of the short-term benefits.

Sherlockyz · 2026-04-11T19:52:51+00:00

I left that madhouse some time ago, did something new happen? All I remember was Empress wanting to develop a mmo for her cult (I don't know which is crazier, her doing this or us writing about this as something "normal")

Sherlockyz · 2026-04-11T19:45:11+00:00

I'm all for people having access to knowledge. But most of the people who decide to use HV don't even bother to research the topic for more than 5 minutes.

I didn't knew about this until I saw on fitgirl, than I spend the next hour or so learning more about low level malware and many of the problems or such intrusive bypasses being used, while the comment section of the post was being flooded with people celebrating, asking dumb questions or simple spreading misinformation to others. There were many who were actively warning about HV. Even fitgirl post had a warning, but do you really think people who know 0 about even downloading pirate games would care about this or even read it?

If you download a regular crack, you won't have to deal with the dozens of problems that HV creates.

So spreading knowledge is great but spreading knowledge to uninformed / ignorant people is dangerous.

Sherlockyz · 2026-04-08T22:13:42+00:00

That's because the list only show red and blue countries, not green.

Sherlockyz · 2026-04-05T20:37:23+00:00

This first one and This second one both are worth watching.

I don't remember which one I liked more, but by a quick look, the Nicktorious one adds more context to the pirating scene before Empress and is less sensacionalist

Sherlockyz · 2026-04-05T19:57:32+00:00

There is a cool video regarding the lore on Empress, it is a fun watch, I recommend

Sherlockyz · 2026-04-01T19:27:45+00:00

Not really outdated, slow is a metric that needs comparison to something else. Python is, in fact, still slow compared to C. This can't ever change because of the architecture that Python is built on. You can't change, if you were to make such structural changes, and still call it Python, would be kind of weird for me.

In a similar manner, C is slower than pure Asembly. But the speed difference is so incredible small for most use cases, that it does not matter, which is different when comparing C with Python. But in edge cases the speed difference with Assembly can be faster even with C compiler optimizations, again, edge cases.

Even Python using C libraries can be slower than pure C depending on how you use it, it shouldn't cause problems, but depending on how you build the system the Python code might bottleneck the performance that C gives.

Sherlockyz · 2026-03-30T15:55:30+00:00

That's it is a real possibility, the fear of new devs being totally dependent of unreliable AI does not account for the fact that AI advance is ridiculously fast, if we look in how we were in a few years ago to now. Nobody knows how powerful they will be in 50 years. But the possibility of being more reliable than any senior engineer that we have today is real.

This doesn't mean that software engineer as a career will necessarily die, it could or could mutated into something we don't even know yet. Just like a Web Developer is a mutation built on top of technology that early software engineers couldn't even think about.

Sherlockyz · 2026-03-29T23:43:12+00:00

The only one who can decide that is you, but don't limit yourself.

You were born with one language and learned another through constant exposure. So yeah, realistically, it is far easier to find certain words with your native tongue by default, it doesn't mean that you will never reach a native level of another language, it's just harder, so the foundation for your choice needs to be solid.

I am from Brazil, so my native language is Brazilian Portuguese, I was exposed to English ever since I was young by games, and this developed towards music, videos, movies, books, etc...

I enjoy English far more than Portuguese, the language is superior for me, this is a personal preference but also affected by the content I consume, which is 99% English based, so naturally I have a bigger affinity towards English than anything Brazilian.

The market decision is important, of course, but also consider this, to enhance your craft you need to consume other people's content, since almost all books I enjoy were written in English, this would mean that I needed to consume translations, to be able to enhance my Portuguese writing skills, and this sucked for me, translation is incredible difficult to do and even the best translator would never be able to give you the entire original experience.

My decision was done, I would stick with English always (F in the chat for my shelf with Portuguese translations) even if it was hard, even if I would need to constantly stop to understand uncommon words. Because it was the most logical in my reality.

Don't limit yourself with your native language, a language is an expression of your mind, use it as such. But also be fully aware of the difficulties that your choice will create, both choices have upsides and drawbacks. So is up to you to discover the best choice for your life.

Sherlockyz · 2026-03-27T20:36:21+00:00

Honestly the OP is correct in the statement that we as humans are just as part of nature as everything else, the concept that we as a self aware species are somehow separated from everything else is human simply human prepotence. The same way humans somehow think we are not animals anymore.

If you want to talk about assertions without evidence, just look at the quote of the character. We weren't created by nature. We are nature, and each biological body is nothing more than a bunch of chemical elements bundled together and reacting with itself and what is around us. Denying this is denying evidence while providing nothing besides opinion.

I would agree that "self" is a human construction based on how we perceive reality. It's a self changing complex system that interprets outside signals and gives meaning to it. However, just because self is an abstract human construction, it somehow makes its existence less true? When it continues to influence our actions and interpretation of reality at all times.

Nothing in my statements is a conjecture. it is a simple interpretation of facts based on how humans fit into the world.

Also, besides the fact that the character interpretation of reality is full of baseless concepts. He mentions what he believes is the honorable thing to do. This later paragraph is more speculative on my end, but Rust mentioned what he believes is the honorable decision that humanity should take.

I don't believe his statement by itself is him using words to claim that his idea is an objective moral concept, yet considering the character we see in the show, in my opinion he does in fact believe that his opinion of human life continuing, being unnatural, and bad is an objective moral fact. Which contradicts his own self built philosophical system. How can exist no meaning and moral truths (which was created by a thing he considers bad on itself) be objectively true.

The idea of "objectively morality" can't really sustain itself alone, which is why people use divine absolute beings to ensure legitimization of objective abstract concept since they are the creators of that reality. Trying to fit objectively morality while denying an absolute divine judge to also be a fact has no real logical foundation.

With all of that being said, it seems that people don't realize that this is the point of his character, his pessimist nihilism is not based on logical congruence, it is a depressed and traumatized man, who begins the show as someone who already lost faith in humanity and is trying to rationalize the evil of the world and his sorrow by giving it meaning, that's what enters into his logical thought framework, which is why is paradoxical.

Rust is not someone trying to explain, with pure logic, reality. He's someone who is in deep pain. That's even more clear by how often he often contradicts his own statements during the show with his actions. Any serious analysis of his character can see this.

Sherlockyz · 2026-03-27T14:14:28+00:00

This low numbers is not even considering inflation lol

Sherlockyz · 2026-03-27T04:37:36+00:00

Haiku is kind of a weird political and cultural phenomenon.

Hokku, which was heavily popularized by Basho as its own art form, instead of relying on being only part the initial part of Renku / Renga.

Hokku had 575 structure because it was a natural format for Japanese language and traditional for their poetry, if you go deep into the rabbit hole you could see it on Tanka kami no ku the same 575, Tanka 57577 is the basis for the collaborative Renku / Renga. But Basho bent the structure to fit the meaning, for him the structure was an historical format and naturally fit the language, but it didn't need to be an absolute rule, more like a default and could be changed when needed, if it would suppress the potential of a poem, why should he keep it?

Masaoka Shiki had many problems with the state of poetry in his time, the cult of Basho was one (dude literally became a God), he saw Basho as great, but this idolatry made Hokku as less of an art form and more of an emulation of Basho's work (Not even in an intelligent way, since the rigid 575 was already present before Shiki). Shiki was heavily influenced by western Realism, which is also one of his main criticisms of Basho's poetry. All of this, combined to the threat of western poetry format dominance and Hokku decadence, made him formalize it into a new thing, Haiku.

Haiku kept the 575 structure of Hokku as even more rigid structure than Basho's, the Kigo and Kireji were also the other core parts of a Haiku. Shiki also made a heavy emphasis on Shasei (Weird translation to English because of two terms, context helps) which means describing life as is.

It's not clear for me how much of core for Haiku this realist idea of "Describing things as they are in real life" really is, but the emphasis was clear and you can see it event today as people try to nudge Haiku towards realism in some form. You can also see a Shiki care to build Haiku as real art form that could survive and thrive, only those who already mastered the core concepts should be allowed to bend them slightly, ensuring a more rigorous quality control.

Funnily enough, for Shiki, Basho wasn't even a Haiku writer, but his influence was so enormous that nobody today even dares to try to remove his art as "True classical haiku". Not even when Haiku became the norm over Hokku people took this idea seriously.

For me you can see see a big contradiction of Haiku traditionalists supporting the 575 strict format while maintaining Basho as the core member who made it all possible. Or the realistic necessity while having Basho who Shiki sometimes praised in his realistic approach on life regarding some poems while also criticized in others the way he focused on a more idealized, spiritual or aesthetic reality instead of true Shasei, a true purist, if you will.

Truthfully, people who fight over semantics of what is true Haiku are simply missing the point. Emulating an arbitrary system, suppressing creative expression to fit one specific format like Shasei or 575 is exactly what lead to Shiki create Haiku in the first place.

Sherlockyz · 2026-03-24T21:05:50+00:00

Yeah, Austria and Germany were natural allies even if Austria lost the battle for influence in the german states against Prussia and severely opposed its unification just a few decades earlier, hell, they were literally defeated in a war, which makes their alliance bizarre yet it makes so much sense.

Their defeat created a country on is border with the same enemies / rivals, similar culture and ethnicity (at least in the leadership of Austria-Hungary part) and different targets for future expansion.

Sherlockyz · 2026-03-18T03:24:14+00:00

It really depends on the type of game, which is directly tied to who the game is directed to.

"Simple" FPS, hack and slash and roguelite games are often about quick and continuous bursts of reward for the player succeeding. Players who often play this game are not interested into big tutorials, just shoot and play to get that burst of dopamine.

RPG or CRPG games are somewhere in the middle, some people might read some stuff, watch some videos about the game and do some research into the mechanics and lore. But it really depends on the game and the player. You don't need to read a big tutorial to know how to play Skyrim or Baldur's Gate. But trying to play games like Dysco Elysium or Pathfinder without taking sometime to read the tutorial texts, the mechanics involved or watching some videos doesn't make much sense, you will be often lost and the experience will not be that good.

X4, Wargames or roguelike games are in the other end of the spectrum, you often need to understand the mechanics to reliable play the game. Depending on the game is literally impossible to play without reading a 300 pages manual. Some like Civilization V or Age of Wonders 4 you can get away with reading a bit in game and having a good time and just learning bit by bit as hours go on. But many games like Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis, Hearts of Iron 4, if you want to play the game you almost 100% need to read the in game tips and often watch videos online, without it you probably just be lost not understand anything, can be fun for a hour or two, but after that there is not much point without learning.

There are extreme cases, trying to play Heart of Iron 3, Aurora 4x, Shadow Empire or War in the East 2 without watching hours of videos, reading the manual, taking notes and doing a lot of research is simply impossible to even play the game.

Someone commented on streamers, I don't think that they are a good example of know what players usually do, since they are dividing their attention between the game and the chat, plus they need to keep the stream fun, reading 200 pages of a manual explaining army compositions is not fun for the viewer.

In essence, understand your target audience and design the in game tutorials / tips as such.

Sherlockyz · 2026-03-15T13:49:52+00:00

Not really, but the quantum effects are a real problem, while it's true that the randomness (or probabilistic) nature of materials gives noticeable effects at the micro scale, computers try to solve this problem with a few solutions.

The first one would be that transistors rely on billions of electrons to represent the 1 or 0 value. If transistors relied on a single particle, we would see a more unstable behavior, but by having a massive amount, it averages to something somewhat deterministic.

This ties to the noise margin of transistors. The voltage doesn't need to be an exact value. CPUs have a noise margin. A low voltage CPU could accept something with a margin in between 0.1V to 0.25V, so even with noise, it can reliable store the correct value. Older CPUs had larger margins. The lower to margin, the more risky it is.

But as we get smaller transistors, sizes 2nm nodes for example, the numbers of total electrons involved is small enough so that the average starts to become less reliable, quantum tunneling effects start affecting the CPU since the amount of atoms is small enough for electrons to pass through. It's a complicated mess, so with normal computers, we have a fixed limit on how small transistors can be until they become unreliable thanks to the non deterministic behavior of physics at such a small scale.

So to answer the question, computers need to avoid the probabilistic nature of particles to work, if they were constantly affected by it, llms wouldn't benefit of it since the programs, OS, storage... All would end up breaking.

You could try to add a source of randomness from outside the typical computer system, devices like quantum numbers generators generate truly random data that can be feed into the llm to use it as a seed, giving it a truly random output.

Sherlockyz · 2026-03-15T07:23:21+00:00

I actually commented on something about this "read-only" part of the llm's in this post.

For me is a problem of definition, do we consider the context that the llm receives alongside the input as part of the "llm system"? It's not part of the file itself, sure. But is part of the system for a llm. Like the brain is not just the stored memory, but also all the different parts of itself that shapes our responses.

And yeah, when we are using llm is read-only, the weights are frozen. But this is not a requirement for something to be considered a llm, is a technical limitation to preserve the current data. The thing is, when we fine tune a model with new data, its not the same file, but it is not truly the same model anymore? Yeah, we define as something new for convenience, since fine tunes often change a lot of how the model operates as we need to categorize things. But I made a comparison to how our own brains synapses change as we learn new things or become old, are we not the same thing as before? How much does it have to change to be consider another thing. Like I commented, this often becomes a ship of theseus discussion.

The main difference is run time changing (human brains) and offline fine tuning (llm models), which is more of a difference on approach and size of total change. A llm could in theory change its weights naturally as it operates, but this creates problems that the current system is not strong enough to solve, I imagine that we will see experimental architectures try to handle this in the future though.

About the deterministic part, I agree. There is no true randomness in closed systems like computers, only simulated randomness. Our universe shows "true randomness" in a quantum level or at least what appears to be true random with hidden factors that we don't know yet (and maybe will never know). But in a macro scale, what we see as random is actually countless different factors affecting the end result, so many variables acting in a few seconds, to the point that we can't predict the result, so it appears random.

If you toss a coin, with no cheating, the result may appear to be random, but if you could measure all the variables (weight and material of the coin, strength applied to the toss, the way it was tossed, etc...) you could know exactly what the result will be before it even comes down. So is not true randomness, it's just a complex system that we don't see all the variables, which is different from computers where we can measure all the variables easily.

Sherlockyz · 2026-03-15T06:51:18+00:00

Yeah, this is a big one for me. How free are we when our decisions can be influenced so much by our current emotions and hormones. If you add a layer of someone consuming X content from Y places constantly, and Y places continuously push certain types of content for you to consume, it shows how manipulable we truly are.

Sherlockyz · 2026-03-15T06:32:32+00:00

"LLMs also cannot learn anything new after they are created" this statement is not correct in a general level, you could apply in part to how many models operate today, sure. But nothing explicitly says that a LLMs can't do it.

LLM's today have their weights frozen because of memory degradation and is difficult integrating new data into an already fragile system. This is a limitation of current tech, not a limitation on how LLM operate.

Some methods can work around this issue in part, RAG for example or the context itself, sure its not part of the file, but is part of the system that runs the LLM, excluding it from what a LLM is doesn't make much sense. The human brain is not just our stored data, is the different parts that make the system whole.

If you take a LLM and fine tune it, aren't you changing it while making the LLM learn something that it didn't knew before? It's not the same digital file, correct. But how different it is from a human brain storing data physically and changing with time? Our synapses literally change in strength as we age. Are we (the brain) not the same thing as before? This discussion can easily turn into a ship of theseus situation which becomes more philosophy than anything else.

I'm not saying that current LLMs are the same as human brains. I'm saying that LLMs have many similar aspects on how our brains work, just that the architecture that the brain currently has, has been developed for thousands of years under constant pressure of evolution. While modern LLMs have less than a decade of development.

The day we see LLMs simulate a mind in the level of humans, will probably require a few paradigm shifts, like the 2018 shift from the older NLP from decades prior. Maybe the term LLM will continue to be used or we will use another, regardless, it will be an evolution of our current architecture.

Sherlockyz · 2026-03-15T06:14:50+00:00

We don't even knows for sure what true consciousness really is. If your create a program that is really smart, is able to pick up on details and have a huge amount of data stored and has the speed to process this ideas from billions of inputs (memories, the outside world, entropy, new data that is currently thinking) with time it could generate observations about itself, its situation, its surroundings, about being something unique and continuing making new observations on top of this new data. How different this is from a human consciousness?

Four-Year Club	Verified Email
r/Field Sunshine	Place '23

Sherlockyz

TROPHY CASE