0x38B
Joined 12 years ago
Joined 12 years ago
> To that end, here’s an even more interesting question around distillation: why exactly is it bad? After all, what are large language models but the distillation of all of the knowledge on the open Internet, scraped by the frontier labs and distilled into the models that are themselves being distilled? Who is exactly being wronged here?
> In fact, this paradox is the solution. I believe that open weight models are good for innovation (and, per the above, I think that labs on the frontier will be fine), but it’s a problem to be dependent on China. The U.S. should pass a law that (1) makes explicit that collecting data for training models is fair use, and (2) bars terms of service that forbid distillation, for U.S. companies at a minimum. Stopping distillation — which is literally just querying the API — is nearly impossible; the U.S. should go the other way and lean into a new copyright policy that both indemnifies the labs and also guarantees that what they learned fuels further innovation for everyone else.
1: How many people don’t delete Facebook because of it? When I left Facebook for good, losing access to Marketplace felt like a real sacrifice.
It was worse in a rural village here in Alaska, where everything was on Facebook, much to my dismay. But the upside of a small community is that I heard about things anyway via word-of-mouth.
In contrast, my iPhone changes with each update, but often I find not for the better – I hated the new control center at first, and while I made it mostly match the old one, the tap targets are smaller than they used to be, on my 4.7” display.
1: To get an Android app working that has been delisted and requires a 'key' app that you purchase. We did purchase it, but didn't think to make any backups.
“Composition must be one of our constant preoccupations, but at the moment of shooting it can stem only from our intuition, for we are out to capture the fugitive moment, and all the interrelationships involved are on the move. In applying the Golden Rule, the only pair of compasses at the photographer's disposal is his own pair of eyes. [...]
If you start cutting or cropping a good photograph, it means death to the geometrically correct interplay of proportions. Besides, it very rarely happens that a photograph which was feebly composed can be saved by reconstruction of its composition under the darkroom's enlarger; the integrity of vision is no longer there. There is a lot of talk about camera angles; but the only valid angles in existence are the angles of the geometry of composition and not the ones fabricated by the photographer who falls flat on his stomach or performs other antics to procure his effects.” (“The Mind’s Eye” p34, 1999 Aperture ed.)
I can mount it via SSHFS for anything more than copying a single book.
I stopped buying anything from Amazon on principal a couple years ago, books included; and anyway, most books I read these days are in the public domain – Project Gutenberg is a treasure trove!
> "In essence, EyeMed is merely an instrument to protect the market share of the Luxottica family of companies, and it provides little to no substantive cost amelioration to consumers, what many would regard as the principal purpose of insurance."
Searching with Kagi, the quote comes from a post on forums.studentdoctor.net by ThazinJayne (1), who prefaces the text “Here is an e-mail I received from a friend”.
An industry observer? More like an unnamed friend of an anonymous forum member.
1: https://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/luxottica-eyemed-sc...
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P.S. I like my Oakleys, both sun- and prescription glasses, but cannot deny they are way overpriced for what they are – a little bit of plastic and metal.
"In general, the Apollo waste management system worked satisfactorily from an engineering standpoint. From the point of view of crew acceptance, however, the system must be given poor marks. The principal problem with both the urine and fecal collection systems was the fact that these required more manipulation than crewmen were used to in the Earth environment and were, as a consequence, found to be objectionable. The urine receptacle assembly represented an attempt to preclude crew handling of urine specimens but, because urine spills were frequent, the objective of “sanitizing” the process was thwarted.
The fecal collection system presented an even more distasteful set of problems. The collection process required a great deal of skill to preclude escape of feces from the collection bag and consequent soiling of the crew, their clothing, or cabin surfaces. The fecal collection process was, moreover, extremely time consuming because of the level of difficulty involved with use of the system. An Apollo 7 astronaut estimated the time required to correctly accomplish the process at 45 minutes.* Good placement of fecal bags was difficult to attain; this was further complicated by the fact that the flap at the back of the constant wear garment created an opening that was too small for easy placement of the bags.** As was noted earlier, kneading of the bags was required for dispersal of the germicide.
*Entry in the log of Apollo 7 by Astronaut Walter Cunningham.
**The configuration of the constant wear garments on later Apollo missions were modified to correct this problem."
1: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19760005603/downloads/19...
> Turns out macOS's IOHIDManager silently blocks the longer HID++ report format you need to actually write to it. The OS just drops the packets. No error, no explanation, nothing. I found this out after writing a pile of probe code and staring at empty responses for longer than I'd like to admit.
"WARNING: This site has been known to cause a mind blowing experience. We recommend you prepare yourself mentally and if possible be sitting down. Side effects may include saving money, letting out a chuckle, and sporadic oinking."
Domain related: I regret getting a .io domain for my email and website; with the price increases, it's not far from $100/year. I'm looking to move from Namecheap to Porkbun and to move to a .com domain.