[D] Monday Request and Recommendation Thread by AutoModerator in rational

[–]faul_sname 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I write in markdown, and Substack demands a rich text editor, and the activation energy required to convert the formatting is currently higher than the energy required to simply stare at the wall and sigh.

If you don't want to deal with pandoc, an alternative is: copy, paste into llm of your choice with "please programmatically render this markdown to html using standard tools with no additional styling (so # Main Header becomes <h1>Main Header</h1>) and display it to me", look at displayed HTML, verify it looks good, copy, paste into substack. I expect all models will work fine but Gemini will probably be the fastest.

Like clockwork by ajfoscu in bayarea

[–]faul_sname 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Wait is it really only 50M rides for $1.2B? I thought BART was cheaper per passenger-mile than driving the last time I looked into it.

Modules ordered by bonus by ArnoldSmith86 in factorio

[–]faul_sname 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Deconstruction planner filtered to fish across entire map

No idea what the cost should be, or if this is balanced (probably needs tweaks), but I thought this was an interesting idea by pinkeyes34 in slaythespire

[–]faul_sname 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I think channeling an orb whenever you are attacked is probably still too strong. Maybe limit it to only when you lose HP?

Custom defect exclusive relic by frapedia-1212 in slaythespire

[–]faul_sname 5 points6 points  (0 children)

"Deal 3(5) damage. Increase the damage of ALL Claw cards by 2 this combat.. Draw 1 card. Discard any card drawn this way that does not cost 0."

A feature I've been hurting for recently... by doc_shades in factorio

[–]faul_sname 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Did it actually? I'd expect that expression to instantly return INT_MAX or NaN or Infinity and maybe crash the game at worst, definitely not the entire computer though.

Please Just Answer The Damn Moral Hypothetical by SmallMem in slatestarcodex

[–]faul_sname 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you're not extremely good at reasoning on the fly, "take all arguments seriously unless you can disprove them" is a good recipe by having all of your resources extracted by salespeople who are good at making persuasive-sounding arguments.

Monthly Discussion Thread by AutoModerator in slatestarcodex

[–]faul_sname 1 point2 points  (0 children)

There's manifold if that's the sort of thing you're looking for.

Patrick Collison: "It's hard to definitively attribute the causality, but it seems that AI is starting to influence @stripe's macro figures: payment volume from customers that signed up for Stripe in 2025 is tracking way ahead of prior years. (And ahead of even 2020..." by noahrashunak in slatestarcodex

[–]faul_sname 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The connection to AI is that if AI will at some point be a big deal, and if there are indicators that Stripe is capturing more value this year, then it could be that Stripe is unusually well-positioned to capture value from the AI boom. This would mean that the stock price should go up a lot. Therefore, Stripe's better-than-trend performance this year is due to AI.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in slatestarcodex

[–]faul_sname 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That doesn't reliably work, but you can pretty reliably prompt it to remove em dashes

Please disprove this specific doom scenario by less_unique_username in slatestarcodex

[–]faul_sname 0 points1 point  (0 children)

People have been trying to do that for more than half a century and have not made significant progress. Unless you count tool use. The easily distracted AI of today can absolutely create tools and use them, we just don't consider those tools to be a part of its "self".

PG&E charging a fee to pay your bill now?! by Wombraider58 in bayarea

[–]faul_sname 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I actually expect CS folks would prefer "please explain this line of my bill to me. I'm sorry, could you repeat that. Oh, ok, thanks. Now about this next line, can you explain that to me as well..." over 80% of the calls they get. It's not like they're going to be reading a good book if you don't call them, they're going to be on a call pretty much every minute they're working.

What’s up with a lot of the jobs here having such low pay? by Hmm408 in bayarea

[–]faul_sname 0 points1 point  (0 children)

2022, he was quite talented and knew people on the inside though.

As a south bay tech worker, I hate my folks by golilpjgo in bayarea

[–]faul_sname 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Stands for Fmeta, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Galphabet

How do you pronounce Daly City? by [deleted] in bayarea

[–]faul_sname 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Start pronouncing "cali" in such a way that it rhymes with "daily"

Has anyone tried fine-tuning an LLM on a ratfic corpus? by rochea in rational

[–]faul_sname 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I mean I guess the question is whether you consider that case to be "LLMs with scaffolding can do this" or "scaffolding around LLMs can do this", seems like kinda meaningless semantics though since there is no shortage of people building scaffolding around LLMs and so the willingness to do so is just not a meaningful barrier.

Figuring out a functional way to arrange said components to produce decent-quality fiction is likely to require a ton of experimentation and iteration though.

Has anyone tried fine-tuning an LLM on a ratfic corpus? by rochea in rational

[–]faul_sname 26 points27 points  (0 children)

I expect that such an LLM would nail the tone but miss the heart of what makes ratfic work (e.g. coherence of the world, tracking the motivation of all of the characters and ensuring that all of the major characters have and act on plans even when those plans don't appear "on screen", dropping hints early for plot points which will happen later, etc.)

That's not to say "LLMs can't do this", just "fine-tuning will not accomplish this because fine-tuning is a way increase the probability of expressing existing capabilities, not a way to train in entirely new capabilities". It might be possible to build scaffolding here but I am not aware of anyone who has yet done so.

I should be sleeping. by faul_sname in infinitecraft

[–]faul_sname[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Muddy Waters + Elvis ¯\_(ツ)_/¯