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OpenAI is reportedly going all-in as a for-profit company
  • I have personally found generative-text LLMs quite good for creating titles. As an example, I have a few hundred tweets that I'm trying to put into a file, and I'll use an LLM to create a human-readable name for them. It's much better than a lot of the other summarisation mechanisms (like BERT) I've tried with it, but it's still not perfect, because the model tends to output the same thing in slightly different words each time, so repeat runs will often result in the same thing with a different title.

    But, that is also a fairly limited use case.

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    OpenAI is reportedly going all-in as a for-profit company
  • At the same time, the trouble with local LLMs is that they're very resource heavy. Your average household computer isn't going to be able to run one with much usability or speed.

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    What's your radical opinion?
  • The QWERTY-type keyboard is a dated relic, especially in the electronic era, where there aren't physical mechanisms to jam because you pushed the buttons too quickly.

    This is particularly applicable to touch screens, where the format is particularly ill-suited, and ought to be replaced by something more suitable and intuitive.

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    A complex question regarding Klingon physiology.
  • The difference between the klingons in TOS and the TOS motion pictures, was that klingons always looked like that, and in DS9, according to Worf, it was due to some unspecified thing that is not discussed with non-Klingons.

    But other than that, not really. The official position likely has not changed.

    In fandom, it varies. Some people treat it as a cosmetic choice, and that Klingons underwent changes as necessary, and others might stick to the one interpretation of what klingons look like for all of them.

    Personally, I'm of the Diaspora opinion, where the varieties of Klingon all coexist, where some of the changes are racial, like they are in humans, and others not.

    For example, T'Kuvma house were Klingon supremacists, so it seems likely that some of their more exaggerated features were due to genetic modification on their part to try and enhance their Klingon attributes and remain Klingon.

    But B'Elanna? She's just like that.

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    Why did VOY treat mind-melds negatively?
  • They always were. Even when Spock was using them, he only used them when there was no other choice, and even then, there was no generally no small risk to both parties.

    From Enterprise, mind melds are treated as something both sensitive and private. Things you do with someone you trust. That seems to have carried over in the intervening centuries, but you're still not meant to meld with everything willy-nilly.

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    Android apps are blocking sideloading and forcing Google Play versions instead
  • What is a "trustworthy software environment"?

    Does that mean that it will get mad and fail you for having Developer options enabled? Having F-Droid installed? Having it plugged into a computer?

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    What happened with active users on Lemmy?
  • The Star Trek ones over on startrek.website. They weren't the most active to begin with, though their activity has dropped a bit more over time.

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    What happened with active users on Lemmy?
  • That "little more complicated" is asking for a lot, though.

    Say you're coming from Reddit, or Facebook, or something.

    It would not be unreasonable to believe that, like Reddit, every single Lemmy instance is its own separate, self-contained site.

    And that's even before figuring out federation works, and how to access things from outside of your instance, or all the nuances that come with defederation and all of that. You made the mistake of joining beehaw? Whoops, all the other "subs" are now inaccessible, because beehaw is not connected to any of the others.

    Central places like Reddit don't have that complexity. Reddit communities are singular, and there's no overarching layer to complicate things. A community that disagrees with another, and blocks them doesn't affect your experience as an user.

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    What happened with active users on Lemmy?
  • The decentralisation probably doesn't help either. People coming to Lemmy from other places are coming from a centralised system. That takes some getting used to.

    If you're new to this, you can be forgiven by thinking that all the Lemmy instances are their own separate thing, like the forums of old, rather than that they're all interconnected (excluding a whole bunch of stuff about defederation and all of that mess).

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    What happened with active users on Lemmy?
  • Part of it is that people also moved on from Lemmy too. Lemmy is nice, but there also isn't very much by way of activity on it, which feeds back into itself. No activity means there's nothing to draw people into it, and not enough to keep them around when they are there.

    One of the communities and (non-world) instances I frequented is all but dead these days.

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    Excuse me sir, could you spare an Epipen?
  • They did point out that they believed the food to be safe in the restaurant.

    They might have thought everything was above board, but it turned out to not be the case.

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    Some basic info about USB
  • It basically gets longer every few years. At this rate, it'll turn into an Amazon listing.

    USB 3.5 Gen 3 2x2 20 Gbit Two-Sided DP PD USB 3 USB 2 USB 1 Compatible

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    Daily Discussion Thread: 📖📖📖 Monday, September 9, 2024
  • Went to the aquarium today. It was lovely.

    They have this ridiculously big baby penguin, that's twice the size of the other penwings. It looks like a gargantuan kiwi.

    Pesto the baby King Penguin sleeping in the snow.

    Zoomed out photograph showing the size of Pesto the King Penguin chick compared to the adult King Penguin looking after him.

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  • While ordering a crew cut is easy, since it's on the menu, what about other kinds?

    Can you just go "I'd like a men/women's haircut" and leave it at that, or do you need something more specific, like saying you want a Charlestone done by a No. 3 to the sides, and a 4 up top?

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    The Irony of 'You Wouldn't Download a Car' Making a Comeback in AI Debates
  • Had the company paid for the training data and/or left it as voluntary, there would be less of a problem with it to begin with.

    Part of the problem is that they didn't, but are still using it for commercial purposes.

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  • I've been using "mechanoid" as a classification (similar to humanoid, etc), but a friend pointed out that it's both too generic, and that said inorganics might just consider it biology, with organics being the weird outlier.

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    You wouldn't start off an e-mail with "My Dear X", or "Dearest X", since that would be too personal for a professional email, so "To X" being more impersonal seems like it would make the letter more professional-sounding, compared to "Dear X".

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    What caused the shift from calling things like rheostats and condensers to resistors and capacitors, or the move from cycles to Hertz?

    It seemed to just pop up out of nowhere, seeing as the previous terms seemed fine, and are in use for some things today (like rheostat brakes, or condenser microphones).

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    You often see people in fitness mention going through a cut/bulk cycle, or mention one, with plans to follow up with the other. Why is it that cutting and bulking so often happen in cycles, rather than said person just doing both at once, until they hit their desired weight?

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    One of the recent laws in Trek that gets looked at a bit, is the genetic engineering ban within the Federation. It appears to have been passed as a direct result of Earth's Eugenics Wars, to prevent a repeat, and seems to have been grandfathered into Federation law, owing to the hand Earth had in its creation.

    But we also see that doing so came with major downsides. The pre-24th century version of the law applied a complete ban on any genetic modification of any kind, and a good faith attempt to keep to that resulted in the complete extinction of the Illyrians.

    In Enterprise, Phlox specifically attributes the whole issue with the Eugenics Wars to humans going overboard with the idea of genetic engineering, as they are wont to do, trying to improve/perfect the human species, rather than using it for the more sensible goal of eliminating/curing genetic diseases.

    Strange New Worlds raises the question of whether it was right for Earth to enshrine their own disasters with genetic engineering in Federation law like that, particularly given that a fair few aliens didn't have a problematic history with genetic engineering, and some, like the Illyrians, and the Denobulans, used it rather liberally, to no ill-effects.

    At the same time, people being augmented with vast powers in Trek seems to inevitably go poorly. Gary Mitchell, Khan Noonien-Singh, and Charlie X all became megalomaniacs because of the vast amount of power that they were able to access, although both Gary and Charlie received their powers through external intervention, and it is unclear whether Khan was the exception to the rule, having been born with that power, and knowing how to use it properly. Similarly, the Klingon attempt at replicating the human augment programme was infamous, resulting in the loss of their famous forehead ridges, and threatening the species with extinction.

    Was the Federation right to implement Earth's ban on genetic engineering, or is it an issue that seems mostly human/earth-centric, and them impressing the results of their mistakes on the Federation itself?

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    Can humans eat it? Do they have food at all? What do they have as a staple foodstuff?

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    Inspired by a bit of discussion over on discord, where there was an argument over whether the USS Discovery had been upgraded by the 32nd century Federation.

    On the one hand, the Discovery did undergo a vast overhaul, being fitted with an upgraded power/propulsion system, detachable nacelles and the works, however, we also know at the end of Discovery Season 3, that Burnham resetting the Discovery's computers effectively put much of the ship back to the 23rd century baseline (or as much of one as it could return to). We're also shown that the Discovery still uses microtapes in its computer room.

    So was the Discovery upgraded completely to 32nd century standards, or is it still a 23rd century ship underneath the 32nd century paint?

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    We already know from TOS that Mutlitronic computers are able to develop sapience, with the M-5 computer being specifically designed to "think and reason" like a person, and built around Dr Daystrom's neural engrams.

    However, we also know from Voyager that the holomatrix of their Mk 1 EMH also incorporates Multitronic technology, and from DS9 that it's also used in mind-reading devices.

    Assuming that the EMH is designed to more or less be a standard hologram with some medical knowledge added in, it shouldn't have come as a surprise that holograms were either sapient themselves, or were capable of developing sapience. It would only be a logical possibility if technology that allowed human-like thought and reasoning into a hologram.

    If anything, it is more of a surprise that sapient holograms like the Doctor or Moriarty hadn't happened earlier.

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    We often see technology from the future brought back to the present, whether as a case of a chance encounter, or something more.

    However, it’s also fairly uncommon to see those technologies pop up against after they’ve been introduced. One such example is the ablative armour generators that Admiral Janeway fitted to the Voyager, being prototypes from a future Starfleet, which are seen in that episode, and then never again, even in shows that are set after the time she left.

    The reason for this might be that the Federation does not want to run the risk of being accused of violating the temporal prime directive (or accidentally running afoul of it in some other way), and shelves that particular technology entirely.

    From their standpoint, it would be rather difficult to separate a technology that the Federation developed of their own accord, compared to one that they might have developed from being inspired by, or reverse-engineering a piece of future technology, so they shelve it, rather than risk the trouble, never developing the preliminary steps to reach that future technology.

    The only anachronistic part of this is the Doctor’s mobile emitter, which is a variant of 26th century technology, and was developed into Picard, but that can be explained by it being reverse engineered from 26th century technology, by someone in the 20th century, technically making it technology from the past. Since it is Earth technology from their own past, they might be able to get away with iterating on their own version without risking trouble with the various temporal enforcement agencies.

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    [Star Trek] What is the Federation attitude to non-organic beings?

    We already know that the Federation seems to struggle when it comes to things that are non-humanoid, and non-organic, especially if they originated from Federation technology.

    But we also see that there are progressive elements. Both the Doctor and Data have a fairly healthy heaping of support, once some form of personhood was established for them.

    But does that attitude extend to non-organics that the Federation isn't familiar with?

    For the other side, Federation attitudes towards Data, the Voyager's EMH, and the ExoComps weren't all that favourable. Both the EMH and the ExoComp's burgeoning sapience were treated as simple malfunctions, that could be resolved be constant factory resets, or in the case of the ExoComps, lobotomisation/resetting of their control circuitry, effectively killing the ExoComp, and putting the Doctor back to a blank slate (in theory).

    There have been some documented cases where the Federation meets some mechanical beings, which were treated as sapient beings in their own right, but does that treatment extend to other non-organic beings? Or do you have to be "acceptable" as a humanoid to be treated as one?

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