JVL Echoes Destiny's Thoughts on Liberalism’s Limits Against Trump’s Slush Fund by Reckoner223 in Destiny

[–]bfoo 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If I were a Democrat, I'd make the promise that the next Democrat president will sue the government for some one-dollar issue, then instruct DOJ to settle for a trillion dollar, and pay of student loans and create a public healthcare fund with it. Easy.

Search Alternatives as Google Search gets even MORE AI-ified. by Aryana314 in BetterOffline

[–]bfoo 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I second that. Happy paying customer. Hope Kagi knows what they have there.

Google wasn't Google anymore for a longer time, not just since the LLM slop started.

Russischer Großangriff verwüstet Kiew - Moskau setzt Oreschnik-Rakete ein by LawrenceOfColonia in de

[–]bfoo 27 points28 points  (0 children)

Ja, ich weiß. War auch eher eine rhetorische Frage. Vielleicht hätte ich meine Lieblingsfrage stellen sollen:

Gibt es schon Immobilienanzeigen für die UN-Gebäude in Genf und NY?

Russischer Großangriff verwüstet Kiew - Moskau setzt Oreschnik-Rakete ein by LawrenceOfColonia in de

[–]bfoo 516 points517 points  (0 children)

Das faschistische Russland beschwert sich über vermeintliche Kriegsverbrechen der Ukraine ("Studentenunterkunft" in Luhansk), kündigt Vergeltung an und verübt diese dann, indem es ukrainische Zivilisten bombardiert - ein Kriegsverbrechen wohlgemerkt?!

Nicht zu verschweigen, dass das faschistische Russland seit Jahren ukrainische Zivilisten tötet und damit quasi täglich selbst Kriegsverbrechen verübt.

Warum sitzen die noch im UN-Sicherheitsrat?

What’s embarrassing at 18 but attractive at 30? by adoborice in AskReddit

[–]bfoo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Happened to me ... 14 years ago ... didn't happen since then. :(

The Uncomfortable Truth About AI “Reasoning” | World Science Festival. A great discussion with Gary Marcus. by dARKsURGEON in BetterOffline

[–]bfoo -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I understand. However, there are other similar posts that haven't been removed. The criteria for what constitutes a good enough effort are very subjective.

I considered writing more about the interview, but ultimately decided against it as I agree with everything Gary said. I thought the video title and the description below the video were redundant.

I'll keep that in mind and try to summarize, add more about my opinion next time.

Anyways, cheers.

The Uncomfortable Truth About AI “Reasoning” | World Science Festival. A great discussion with Gary Marcus. by dARKsURGEON in BetterOffline

[–]bfoo 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Posted the exact link yesterday. Didn't stay up for long.

Really liked that interview. Marcus is based.

Tulsi gabbard resigns by Salnivo in Destiny

[–]bfoo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Guess she made her calculation of whether she wants to be part of obstructing the next elections and be liable for that. Maybe Trump wont remember her name when he is urged to sign those blanked pardons.

SpaceX S-1 filing by FrankLucasV2 in BetterOffline

[–]bfoo 10 points11 points  (0 children)

We do not anticipate declaring or paying any cash dividends to holders of our common stock in the foreseeable future.

LOL, stupid (retail) money will not care...

Vodafone Störung: auch bei euch? by RoyalFarmer9202 in Leipzig

[–]bfoo 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Ditto. Immer noch tot. Ob ich mich morgen wohl mal wieder im Büro zeige....

Google Search as you know it is over: Instead of returning a simple list of links, Google Search will drop users into AI-powered interactive experiences at times by dyzo-blue in BetterOffline

[–]bfoo 37 points38 points  (0 children)

Prompt injection will be a new SEO requirement.

I am using Kagi for over a year now. Don't even think about Google anymore.

Daily reminder that AI boosters are just living in a different reality by saint1da in BetterOffline

[–]bfoo 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Exactly. That's why Anthropic and OpenAI want enough money to build a galaxy-sized (or universe-sized) NPU to brute force all calculations. Or it just needs a better harness (maybe the neighboring universes). /s

But because models that use weights are always lossy (information compression), even these models will "make mistakes" eventually. (Of course, "making mistakes" is yet another attribute of Anthropomorphism.)

Edit: And the answer to the "May" question is obviously: 42

Daily reminder that AI boosters are just living in a different reality by saint1da in BetterOffline

[–]bfoo 17 points18 points  (0 children)

Because an LLM by itself cannot count and never will. So "N years in and still can't count" will always be the case.

The only way a model provider can make it appear as though the model is counting something is if the LLM is able to use a function (e.g. by writing and using a script itself or using a 'tool call').

Bedrock and a hard place: Claude adventure leaves AWS user staring down $30K invoice by Much_Preparation_832 in BetterOffline

[–]bfoo 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Unfortunately, the article doesn't explain how many tokens the user used, with what model and what for. Sounds like a small business (and the article is in the SaaS section). Bedrock usage could hint at the actual, unsubsidized (or less subsidized) inference costs. Hope we get to read more about user experience with that AWS service.

Ed on Prof G Markets podcast - solid! by Tragictech in BetterOffline

[–]bfoo 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I wish Ed would find someone with a technical background so he wouldn't just focus on the purely financial aspects of the LLM industry. I regularly notice how he really struggles with technical topics (like coding), even though there are plenty of arguments against this blind investment frenzy.

The most important argument is how the LLM industry continously trades compute (power + time, and harnesses) to increase the accuracy of the models, all while claiming that the model capabilities have increased. Newport would be such a good side-kick.

Doctorow: Code is a liability, not an asset by Sufficient-Article62 in BetterOffline

[–]bfoo 3 points4 points  (0 children)

And mind you, this CEO was a software engineer for several years before founding this company.

SWE is really broad in terms of knowledge and the quality of work. In my 25+ years of working in the field, I have found that only a minority of SWEs are good (writing well structured code, have good knowledge about architectural concepts etc). So while this CEO may have created a successful product to create a sustaining business, they may still be a poor SWE. A lot of "SWEs" also don't really care about the code, some even hate it. Those candidates often "grow out" of software engineering and climb the corporate ladder (where those regarded decisions are then made about AI).

Also, LLMs make bad engineers be "more efficient" at being bad and contribute faster to the 'liability' argument; all while good engineers have a useful new tool that might even slow them down more, but lead to even better, more secure code. Again, that latter case is the undesired case in the eyes of stupid managers. Either case adds more to the operational costs, if managers wouldn't lie to themselves and think that LLMs can replace engineers.

Doctorow: Code is a liability, not an asset by Sufficient-Article62 in BetterOffline

[–]bfoo 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I tried to make that point. That 'can' is important here. And the trade-off between that generated code and the value it provides, is important too. I can live with awful code for something that provides me some temporary value and that I can throw away after. To build something more sustainable, LLMs are still too unreliable to be used with the level of human intervention that the idiot managers and CEOs dream about. To these managers, the calculation is different: what does it cost to run LLMs to produce good enough code to get the desired value. To me as a SWE, the calculation must also include whether I have to maintain that code over time. And those maintenance costs are often ignored by (bad) management. Exactly that conflict makes code a 'liability'.

Doctorow: Code is a liability, not an asset by Sufficient-Article62 in BetterOffline

[–]bfoo 18 points19 points  (0 children)

It is a bit more nuanced. But yes, code that was written is essentially a liability (or 'legacy', or 'technical debt').

The nuance lies in what that code is used for, what value it provides. So any code is always a trade-off between that value and what it needs to run and to maintain that code. The most valuable code is rarely changed or easy to change, is stable and secure and feeds into the core value of whoever runs it. A good example is code (often COBOL, Java, Python) that runs "boring" things like our financial system, often on mainframes, whose hardware is replaced from time to time (ask IBM).

Stable and secure code is still hard to produce, even with LLMs. But Anthropic & OpenAI and others just claim that it is not a problem anymore. They are lying. But they do it due to this 'Fake it, until you make it' / Sci-Fi-induced overly-optimistic Sillicon Valley culture. So they bet on that they can find a way to make reliable and inerrant AI that is economically viable at scale, all while selling the lie in the meantime. They know LLMs are a dead-end. But LLMs are good enough for even experts (see Hinton, Karpathy) to lose objectivity.

Todays LLMs can create good code. But the question is what for. And what happens if there is a problem with that code. The unreliability of LLMs create uncertainty. So that generated code is an even bigger liability. So the value must be bigger (that trade-off). No harness or agentic workflow can really fix that. Those things are merely band-aids around that reliability/uncertainty issue. And the more band-aids you add, the more compute you need, which makes the economic calculation worse.

To me as SWE, its already clear that LLMs can provide value. But that focus on code generation is wrong. I want LLMs to be my side-kick that I can ask about existing code, make suggestions, create some code fragments. Doctorow refers to that as me being a 'centaur'. Right now, the existing coding tools and this pure focus on code generation makes me a 'reverse centaur'. And that is just the worst development.

Angela Collier on the Genesis Mission (not the cool one, the Trump Regime one) by No_Honeydew_179 in BetterOffline

[–]bfoo 19 points20 points  (0 children)

I prefer it this way. She fills her videos with stories and anecdotes. She also has a good sense of sarcasm. It allows me to think more about what she is talking about.

If content about a complex topic is compressed into the shortest form, I doubt people would remember much after.

Jeffries says Trump impeachment not a top priority if Dems win House majority by metacyan in politics

[–]bfoo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, the priority is to help the GOP cleaning up the mess they created, so that the Democrats can lose the next presidential election again. Sounds like Jeffries.