FaceDeer

FaceDeer, 16 days ago

I'm Canadian. Milk comes in liters.

If you're saying that 2 cubic meters can't fit in the back of a pickup truck, here's some truck capacities. A cubic yard is 0.764555 cubic meters, so a full sized pickup can hold 3.4 cubic meters of cargo.

FaceDeer, 17 days ago

Liters are a great unit for making small things seem large. I've seen articles breathlessly talking about how "almost 2000 liters of oil was spilled!" When 2000 liters could fit in the back of a pickup truck.

Water "consumption" is also a pretty easy to abuse term since water isn't really consumed, it can be recycled endlessly. Whether some particular water use is problematic depends very much on the local demands on the water system, and that can be accounted for quite simply by market means - charge data centers money for their water usage and they'll naturally move to where there's plenty of cheap water.

FaceDeer, 17 days ago

I explained why not in the sentence directly following the one that you quoted. Here it is again:

Let someone else who's purpose is fighting those fights take it on and stick to preserving those precious archives out of harm's way.

To explain in more detail: The Internet Archive is custodian to an irreplaceable archive of Internet history and raw data. If they go and get themselves destroyed at the hands of book publishers fighting lawsuits over ebook piracy, that archive is at risk of being destroyed along with them. Or being sold off at whatever going-out-of-business sale they have, perhaps even to those very giant publishers that destroyed them.

That is why not them in particular. Let someone who isn't carrying around that precious archive go and get into fights like this.

FaceDeer, 17 days ago

Unlimited copies, look it up. Internet Archive's "emergency library" broke the customary limits that other libraries stick to in order to keep publishers off their backs - they were giving out as many copies of a book at once as people were requesting, rather than keeping a limited number "in circulation."

It really was basically just a piracy site all of a sudden. It's absolutely no surprise at all that the publishers came down on them like a ton of bricks.

FaceDeer, 17 days ago

Then the Internet Archive is being an idiot and risking a lawsuit. Again. They've already been raked over the coals for copyright violation, I guess they want to add libel to the list as well?

The Internet Archive has plenty of enemies, many of whom don't have an easy legal arsenal to throw at them like those big publishers did. The publishers have been playing smart so far and have won already through legal means, it makes no sense for them to suddenly turn stupid and launch this DDoS.

FaceDeer, 16 days ago

It's basic economics. As prices rise sales drop, you just need to adjust to find the point of maximum profit. Since market information isn't perfectly known you'll occasionally see overshoots like this.

FaceDeer, 15 days ago

Come now, be realistic. OP probably means switching to cannibalism.

FaceDeer, 17 days ago

Oh, well, that's alright then.

FaceDeer, 17 days ago

An innocent kid was on board the Titan, in case everyone has forgotten. He didn't want to go. Limit your laughter a bit.

FaceDeer, 17 days ago

I'm very divided. Ask me a couple of years ago and I'd be all over that. But since then every single one of the great old sci-fi franchises I loved have been methodically ruined by "remakes" and "sequels" and "retellings" and whatnot. So while I wouldn't say no, I would be extremely trepidatious. I'd be bracing myself to reject it if it turns out to be stupid.

FaceDeer, 17 days ago

I'd be okay with picking up SGU where it left off, using the cryosleep break as an opportunity to recast and retool as needed. I think the show's first season was weak but it was really picking up and getting interesting in the second season. I can think of a bunch of interesting directions things could go from there.

Of course, everything is predicated on "is the writing good?" If you have good writing you can make something awesome out of almost any premise. And if it's bad event the best premise won't save you. It's even worse when it's bad writing on a good premise because it "ruins" it for future attempts.

FaceDeer, 13 days ago

You've invoked Betteridge's law of headlines.

FaceDeer, 17 days ago

It's possible for a stupid person to do or say something clever, though. You have to fight the battles that are actually before you, not simply imagine that they're already won because you think your opponent is dumb.

FaceDeer, 15 days ago

Obviously it's not gonna sway anyone who's gonna vote for him

That's not true. You're likely exposed to a very biased sample, there are a lot of people who simply don't pay close attention to politics most of the time and may just now be getting the rude awakening that Trump really is a fraud. There are people who really will hold their vote over the candidate being a literal felon, and being in prison would hammer that home even more strongly.

FaceDeer, 17 days ago

To be fair, the Maginot line wasn't breached. The Germans went around it.

FaceDeer, 17 days ago

I don't see humidity mentioned in the article, that's the real killer once the temperature gets up above body temperature. If humidity is high then evaporating water isn't going to effectively cool a person and the only way to survive is to get into air conditioning or other artificially low-temperature safe zones. Temperatures like this are more often seen in arid places, I dread the time something like this hits a major tropical urban area when it's humid. We could see megadeaths.

FaceDeer, 15 days ago

Now imagine Trump trying to fix anything, even slightly.

FaceDeer, 15 days ago

I mean, Jesus was actually guilty of the crime he was charged with, wasn't he? The local Jews had laws against blasphemy and that included claiming to be the son of God. Which he did. One could argue that the law was unjust, but the trial itself came to the correct verdict.

Um, not to say that Trump is particularly Jesus-like, of course. Jesus was reasonably healthy and knew a useful trade.

FaceDeer, 15 days ago

Since I find AIs to be useful that sounds fine to me.

FaceDeer, 15 days ago

Indeed. I've never been to Australia. I've never even left the continent I was born on. I am reasonably sure it exists, though, based on all the second-hand data that I've seen. I even know a fair bit about stuff you can find there, like the Crow Fishers and the Bullet Farm and the Sugartown Cabaret.

FaceDeer, 15 days ago

Companies are training LLMs on all the data that they can find, but this data is not the world, but discourse about the world.

I mean, the same can be said for your own senses. "You" are actually just a couple of kilograms of pink jelly sealed in a bone shell, being stimulated by nerves that lead out to who knows what. Most likely your senses are giving you a reasonably accurate view of the world outside but who can really tell for sure?

So, as these LLMs become increasingly but asymptotically fluent, tantalizingly close to accuracy but ultimately incomplete, developers complain that they are short on data.

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. If an LLM is able to get asymptotically close to accurate (for whatever measure of "accurate" you happen to be using) then that's really super darned good. Probably even good enough. You wouldn't throw out an AI translator or artist or writer just because there's one human out there that's "better" than it.

AI doesn't need to be "complete" for it to be incredible.

FaceDeer, 17 days ago

Twice as much each time.

FaceDeer, 17 days ago

Literally anything, at this point.

How ironic.

FaceDeer, 17 days ago

As an mBin user, I am offended

FaceDeer, 16 days ago

Hah! Of course a female librarian would miscategorize a tome like that! Why was a woman placed in charge of books anyway? I suppose they need her to keep the shelves well-dusted and tidy?

(/s of course)