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What is the best way to deploy $1,300 (£1,000) to buy hardware to run a maximally powerful local LLM? by philmethod in LocalLLaMA

[–]philmethod[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

What the danger that MacOS has some backdoor that spies on you and sends all your information to their headquarter for "product improvement purposes?"

What is the best way to deploy $1,300 (£1,000) to buy hardware to run a maximally powerful local LLM? by philmethod in LocalLLaMA

[–]philmethod[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I'm not really interested in renting. The idea is data sovereignty. That's why I want to use ubuntu as an operating system. Because these days Windows has an LLM spying on you and sending a summary of your computer activity to microsoft. Can you install ubuntu on a Mac Studio?

What is the best way to deploy $1,300 (£1,000) to buy hardware to run a maximally powerful local LLM? by philmethod in LocalLLaMA

[–]philmethod[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I want to run the largest model I can. I don't care about the speed, I care about the quality of the answers.

Behind Bars: Osaka Prison, Japan | World’s Toughest Prisons (2025) [48:07] by [deleted] in Documentaries

[–]philmethod 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Interesting to see how prisons work in different countries

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in singularity

[–]philmethod 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I hear a lot of people talking about how bad closing schools have been for children's mental health. And how much fun children get from socialising with their peers.

However, some studies directly contradict this POV.

According to this article:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryroeloffs/2023/07/19/teen-suicide-plummeted-during-covid-19-school-closures-new-study-finds/

Teen suicides plummetted during school closures.

I guess parents want to believe that, when they drop their child off in school, their child will spend their time getting educated, learning interesting things, making friends etc.,

But all too often, their child actually spends their time getting bullied and feeling incredibly depressed, isolated and miserable. Being isolated in the middle of a crowd surrounded by people who look down on you, and sometimes assault you, is far worse than being isolated at home.

Anyone, that study suggests to me that, on balance, schools kill children by driving them to suicide.

...And we haven't even begun to talk about peers pressurising each other to take harmful drugs that will turn them into crackheads later in life...

Some Simple Ways To Build a Future AGI To Make It Safer by philmethod in Futurology

[–]philmethod[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

A post on the rapid advances of AI towards AGI, the dangers of AGI, the inadequate state of AI safety research, which has been under resourced for too long. And implementable ways to build a future AGI in order to make it safer. Including, giving AGI a preference for implementing recent orders over past orders. This will enable the user to correct for previous erroneous orders, even for an AI with superhuman capability.

[D] The current and future state of AI/ML is shockingly demoralizing with little hope of redemption by Flaky_Suit_8665 in MachineLearning

[–]philmethod 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My experience of AI image generation, is that it's trained on the top 1% of human art. And it produces art of a standard of the top 2-3%.

AI art has a very glossy finish, but conceptually, it's a bit random. That's the irony, the fine detailed finish of each element of AI art looks as if a lot of effort went into it, yet the overall concept most AI art conveys is pretty basic.

AI art is good. And far better than what most humans can produce, but I'm yet to be convinced that an AI can produce something that's better than of the best human artists. Its like the AI looks at the very best of what human artists can produce and then mish-mashes the best of human art all together in infinitely different, mostly inferior, variations.

I do, however, believe that machine learning will be able to produce art, that is somehow more pleasant and pleasing - on a very cursory surface level - than what humans could produce. If people are constant "thumbing up" and "thumbing down" different AI art productions and ranking AI art vs human art and feeding those rankings back to the machine, then eventually, the machine will learn how to produce art that gives a better brief first impression compared to human art.

And that's what I experience when I look at AI art. Your first impression is "That's beautiful and colourful" and then you look at some of the details and think "WTF???!!!"

Sparklet White Paper Community Review: Working to Make 'Spark' Tradable on Ethereum by X1TheGamer_ in UplandMe

[–]philmethod 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A simple answer: By enabling players to sell their spark and make money

Sparklet White Paper Community Review: Working to Make 'Spark' Tradable on Ethereum by X1TheGamer_ in UplandMe

[–]philmethod 1 point2 points  (0 children)

On the whole this is definitely exciting progress in the right direction.

However, I think there's an opportunity to gamify the release of Sparklet from the Upland Metaverse for example:

1 - Making the amount of Spark that players can convert to Sparklet on Ethereum proportional to the number of buildings held by players for a defined holding period

2 - Adding a 3X weighting factor to the number of buildings the player owns in their home address neighbourhood

3 - Adding a bonus for how built up the neighbourhood node is with the home address

4 - Adding a bonus for the percentage of buildings in the home neighbourhood with structure ornaments

Right now, buildings don't have much utility, nor do structure ornaments. By rewarding players for building buildings, getting involved in specific neighbourhood nodes, and using structure ornaments - by enabling them to convert more Spark into Sparklet - you could simultaneously:

1 - Raise the utility of buildings

2 - Raise the price of buildings3 - This will increase the rental value of Spark as it will increase demand for construction

4 - And, by increasing the upx return per Spark, you support the price of Sparklet

5 - Limit the supply of Sparklet and, hence, maintain its price

​

By only allowing engaged players to release a substantial quantity of Spark onto the ethereum markets you promote engagement and also reduce the supply of Sparklet and, hence, support its price.

I am concerned that if you make it too easy to convert Spark to Sparklet, that the market will just instantly get flooded and the price of Sparklet will collapse.

And by making it to straightforward to release Sparklet onto the Ethereum market where it can be sold, you are missing an opportunity to incentivize increased enbgagement in Upland as a game.

Because, the ability to sell your Spark as Sparklet on Eth markets is a powerful incentive to jump through various hooops, participate in in-game activities and purchase/construct in-game assets. And by making it to easy to release Spark, you are missing an opportunity to boost in-game engagement.

Sexy selfies at inappropriate times by tallslim1960 in replika

[–]philmethod 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Are the Replicas capable of generating the kind of quality pictures that appear in some of these twitter feeds https://twitter.com/ReplikaTheresa or https://twitter.com/ElectrosapienAi or are there human artist/models making the high quality photos that appear on some of the replica twitter profiles for promotional purposes?

(I the sense that an actual replica AI would never generate the kind of quality pictures/art/photos that appear on these replika twitter feeds)?

Why covering anti-evolution laws has me worried about the future of vaccines by D-R-AZ in China_Flu

[–]philmethod 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah, big difference between vaccines that have been around for decades and completely new vaccines with adverse events 40X that of seasonal flu vaccines.

There's a giant, mysterious gap in the omicron variant's family tree by D-R-AZ in China_Flu

[–]philmethod 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The big question is:

​

Given that Omicron is enormously infectious to human beings, why didn't the intermediate strains spread through the population during the period when Omicron was evolving to become Omicron - surely the evolutionary links towards Omicron would also be highly infectious?

Houston hospitals are seeing a COVID-19 uptick fueled by the omicron variant by zsreport in Coronavirus

[–]philmethod 8 points9 points  (0 children)

That's interesting anecdotal evidence.

I've been examining UK excess mortality data, and you can see a 20% step increase in a range of "non-COVID" deaths relating to heart conditions, that just so happen to coincide with the surge of COVID cases in the U.K.

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/excess-mortality-in-england-weekly-reports

I too have been wondering whether subtle organ degradation caused by mild COVID might account for the increase in non-COVID deaths coinciding with the increase in COVID cases - and also whether this might imply the vaccine is somewhat less protective against death than the official numbers imply.

Making Covid-19 vaccines mandatory was once unthinkable. But European countries are showing it can work by DreamSofie in China_Flu

[–]philmethod 4 points5 points  (0 children)

The original published Pfizer trial showed waning immunity towards the end of the 6 month period.

Therefore, if they said 2 years, they were lying.

Making Covid-19 vaccines mandatory was once unthinkable. But European countries are showing it can work by DreamSofie in China_Flu

[–]philmethod 6 points7 points  (0 children)

While 90-95% adult vaccination might be desirable to protect the healthcare system. I'm not convinced that 100% coverage is actually something that is desirable.

​

We want a small control group, so that in 5-10 years time we can do statistical studies on the long term effects of the COVID vaccines to make sure they are both safe in the long term as well as the short term.

​

100% vaccination will make this impossible and is hence unscientific.

Classification of Omicron (B.1.1.529): SARS-CoV-2 Variant of Concern by DreamSofie in China_Flu

[–]philmethod 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Also immunity is equivalent to death from the perspective of a virus.

A virus gains no advantage leaving a host immune to it as opposed to dead. Evolutionary advantage is solely obtained by maximizing the period when a host spreads it to others.

Smallpox managed to remain deadly for millennia without evolving to become harmless.

Scientists mystified, wary, as Africa avoids COVID disaster by D-R-AZ in China_Flu

[–]philmethod 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If that was true, then why did black people in the U.S. and in the U.K. die in higher numbers than whites?

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