Jrockwar

Unfortunately AI doesn't work like that. Any way to explain it would be an oversimplification but I can try.

The training data (songs) are used to create the weights. This is a bunch of numbers that are on their own meaningless - they don't map to specific songs, but to attributes such as "tone" "rhythm"... And like that but many (millions of) abstract attributes that don't make sense as people, but make sense to computers.

So if the thing makes a song that is very "rhythmic" but also "tonal", there's no specific training song that contributed to that - all did, and it's a mess to decypher how much each contributed to each attribute. Except the resulting song doesn't use two parameters, uses many millions, so it's essentially impossible to know.

Over time I have discovered that for me, the scoring of The Storygraph (which also tends to match Goodreads) aligns reasonably well with my own views.

That being said, there are almost literally no books with 5* and the universally acclaimed masterpieces sit at around 4.3-4.4.

So I avoid anything below 3, and only read below 3.5 if I'm really in the mood for that. That way I'm filtering pretty bad stuff, but not letting my filter stand in the way of many (hopefully any) books I would have enjoyed.

And yeah, there's cases where you don't agree with the rating but that's why there are other mechanisms (like reviews) to supplement it.

You can always slur your words and say something like "Kisten" quickly. As a non native English speaker I do this sort of thing more often than I'd like to admit, you get away with a surprising amount even when you've spoken the language for over 25 years. 😅

This might perhaps be true in the land of XXL everything, but in the space it takes to have 3 cashiers you can easily install 2 rows of 4 self checkout machines, and in Europe space tends to be more scarce.

They are a massive space saver, and when that's the space you have, 8 self-checkouts and a cashier have more throughput than 4 cashiers (which don't even tend to be staffed all at once).

It was at the beginning, but lately it's been hot garbage. I think they've nerfed it on purpose so that the migration to gemini is an easier sell.

For me, I'm happy it now understands "hey Google, how's my timer?" As equivalent of "how long is left on my timer" and no longer answers that question with "it's seven fifty two pm" 😡

Yes, but at the same time can we stop marketing as "self driving cars" normal cars with a somewhat sophisticated cruise control, like Teslas, and stop pretending their "super full self driving unsupervised for realsies plus plus" is a "self drive mode"?

Well, there's nothing yet that even resembles a comparable replacement with a different architecture (RISC-V?). So even if they were angling for that, it would have to be at least 3 years away, plus if Intel and Power PC are anything to go by, there's another 5 years until they drop support. So at a minimum, if someone buys a M-series laptop today, they can expect support for 8 years.

Not terrible, given how Microsoft left 3-year-old computers unsupported by surprise with the TPM requirement in Windows 11.

I never had that struggle because back when I was struggling to make relationships last, I didn't know I had ADHD.

Luckily I met someone who could understand me and be patient with me like nobody ever had. And conversely, I understand him and I am patient with him like nobody has ever done. And the catch is what seems to be a common pattern for us ND folks - he's neurodivergent as well, which is what made things about a million times easier.

Just like queer people have a "gaydar", it's useful to tune in to your inner ND-radar, which for me has become easier as I read and understand more not just about ADHD but Autism, for example.

For me this has totally made my relationships easier - not in terms of finding a prospective partner because that happened before I knew, but it can help adapt your communication with friends/coworkers/managers/customers/etc. When I know somebody is autistic, I am extra conscious to not use any sarcasm, double meanings, or rely on implied context. For neurotypicals, I try to go to the point and drip feed the context if and when needed. For ADHD people I am careful we don't go down rabbit holes for too long, but I frontload the context for my request/topic so that their brain has the big picture to work with.

Trust me, statistically you're far more likely than not to find good friendships and a loving partner - you just don't have a neurotypical brain chemistry so don't hold yourself to neurotypical timelines for that to happen.

But this is only because of execs' stupidity.

For a simple task that AI can actually do, say a boring text processing task, the API calls don't just cost less than my salary, they typically cost less than keeping the monitor on during the time it would take me to do it.

However when companies are stupid and decide to do things such as "tokenmaxxing" or leaderboards for who can waste more AI compute, you end up with things like calling multi-trillion models to do number calculations, or passing a 300k token context into every turn of the chat and giving it your entire codebase to change two lines of code.

This one I blame squarely on stupid CEOs and execs. The smaller version of Gemma 4 is low-powered enough that can run on phones, and can output usable results for many use cases.

What I don't understand is how the production is sold through to 2027. Assuming it's not a fake claim,

• Are they making just a handful?
• If people were buying them to get on the list for the "hyper exclusive" Ferraris that they don't offer to a first time buyer, could people not have bought a cheaper model?
• Was there that much demand for a Ferrari EV that people are willing to buy the Leaf-errari regardless of cost and aesthetics?
• Are there that many people that like the aesthetic despite the public opinion being seemingly so against it?
• If people who bought it are doing it for bragging rights but don't care about the aesthetic, why are they buying this turd instead of a sports car or the SUV thing that looks kind-of-ok?

I just don't understand...

I profoundly dislike the philosophy of renting rather than owning your compute, but with the current price of components, I just can't be bothered to buy a gaming PC. I have a steam deck and a £10 subscription to GeForce now, and with this I'm sorted for pretty much anything.

For the £120 that it costs me a year, I could barely buy a 16 GB RAM stick, let alone a 3060 RTX... It would cost me 10-15 years worth of the subscription to buy something equivalent and there's no way anything with those specs is staying relevant any longer than 5.

I've reported it too, probably it won't have an effect but we might as well try