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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 13th, 2023

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  • You kind of get it, it’s not really a dictionary, it’s more like a set of steps to transform noise that is tinted with your data, into more coherent data. Pass this input through a series of valves that are all open a different amount.

    If we set the valves just perfectly, the output will kind of look like what we want it to.

    Yes, LLMs are prone to hallucinations, which isn’t always actually a bad thing, it’s only bad if you are trying to do things that you need 100% accuracy for, like specific math.

    I recommend 3blue1browns videos on LLMs for a nice introduction into how they actually work.


  • I’ll just say, it’s ok to not know, but saying ‘obviously’ when you in fact have no clue is a bad look. I think it’s a good moment to reflect on how over confident we can be on the internet, especially about incredibly complex topics that cross into multiple disciplines and touch multiple fields.

    To answer your question. The model is in fact run entirely locally. But the model doesn’t have all of the data. The model is the output of the processed training data, kind of like how a math expression 1 + 2 has more data than its output ‘3’ the resulting model is orders of magnitude smaller.

    The model consists of a bunch of variables, like knobs on panel, and the training process is turning the knobs, the knobs themselves are not that big, but they require a lot of information to know where to be turned too.

    Not having access to the dataset is ok from a privacy standpoint, even if you don’t know how the data was used or where it was obtained from, the important aspect here is that your prompts are not being transmitted anywhere, because the model is being used locally.

    In short using the model and training the model are very different tasks.

    Edit: additionally, it’s actually very very easy to know if a piece of software running on hardware you own, is contacting specific servers. The packet has to leave your computer and your router has to tell it to go somewhere, you can just watch it. I advise you check out a piece of software called Wireshark.





  • Being on lemmy at all is going to come with huge confirmation biases.

    Something to consider is that most of these issues with common social media are intangible at best and straight up invisible at worst for most users.

    Most people don’t care strongly enough about any of these apps or websites to be bothered. Go ask strangers on the street what they think of spez’s this or that and they will say ‘who’s spez’ followed by, ‘oh, I don’t really care’.


  • In the US at least this isn’t really true, at least not in a practical way for most people.

    Charitable donations are tax deductible true, but they are for most people covered under what is called the standard deduction, which is a standardized amount that aims to estimate would a regular person would be able to deduct from their taxes. The standard deduction is applied automatically and is $14,600. This means that if you don’t do anything abnormal on you it taxes, your taxable income is reduced by the standard amount. For most people they wouldn’t typically be able to find $14,600 in tax deductible expenses, so the standard is worth it.

    The catch is that if you take the standard you cannot itemize, as taking the standard deduction is basically saying to the IRS “yea I donated here and there, bought some stuff for work, did this and that”. Itemizing is listing out your individual tax deductible expenses (and justifying why they are deductible) so if for example you had a single year where you donated $20,000 you could itemize that instead of taking the standard deduction for a total reduction in income of 20k plus whatever you could come up with.

    The other reason why that isn’t really applicable is that a deduction is not a credit, that is to say, deductions reduce your total taxable income amount. If you deduct $1,000 (a 1k donation for example) that would have been taxed at 20% you will receive back from the IRS, $200. Meaning that you still had to pay $800 out of pocket for the donation that will not be refunded to you.

    Deductions pretty much never result in getting more than the tax that you would have paid refunded. Even if youanahe to deduct more than you make, the resulting negative would just result in a carry over loss for the next year. You can effectively pay an income tax of 0 but it requires losses and other deductible expenses that are greater than your income, which means you didn’t actually make any net income for the year (on paper and practically)

    Other countries are different of course, but I wouldn’t want someone going out and donating their life savings thinking they will get it back in tax season.





  • Big mesh networks are ‘easy’ but I think the reality is most people don’t want to be responsible for it. They want to use utilities not run them.

    Another aspect is that different people will have significantly different burdens, if you live in a dense apartment building, it can be easy to wrap up the infra for the building into an HOA or other collective, but people in suburbs or less dense areas will need huge long range antennas and underground cables that have a disproportionate cost.

    I think more than a community run physical internet layer, we need neutralized, municipal internet as a utility.


  • Takumidesh@lemmy.worldtoTechnology@lemmy.world*Permanently Deleted*
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    26 days ago

    I’ve had this discussion with many people. Just because that’s how you define it, doesn’t mean that is how it’s actually defined. We aren’t talking about your definition, we are talking about a government’s decision.

    I think it would be foolish to expect any governing or organization to classify sites/services like lemmy or reddit as something other than social media, when they are literally completely made up of users interacting which each other with all of the content being posted by users.

    Also, you can argue about your definition all day, but the Australian government’s decision included Reddit, lemmy likely has not yet been affected due to the gov just not knowing of its existence.


  • I mean, not really. Your online banking or bill pay site isn’t social media, neither are (most) storefronts. A simple site disseminating information ( https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ as a bit of a contrived example ) has no direct engagement or content creation between users and no community forming.

    But it makes sense that most of the hobby/fun website and applications will be social media because the primary purpose of the Internet is to connect computers and by extension humans and humans like to interact with each other, the main thing the internet does is let us talk together. It’s not implicitly a bad thing that we do it.

    While the term didn’t exist at the time, I would also classify newsgroups and BBS’s as social media as well.


  • It’s exactly social media, just because it’s the one you like doesn’t make it less so.

    “websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking.” -oxford

    “forms of electronic communication (such as websites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (such as videos)” - Merriam Webster

    Lemmy and forums fit the bill pretty clearly.





  • I did but it took me a long time, years and years, with occasional dips back into smoking.

    Now though it’s nearly been 2 years no vape or anything and at least three years of no nicotine.

    I went up and down in nicotine levels, I used big huge cloud throwing fog machines and little tiny disposables.

    I eventually settled on a unit with a built in rechargeable battery and pods with replaceable coils (geekvape aegis)

    I don’t think vaping will naturally result in quitting, it I do think it’s the most effective harm reducer out there and as a tool has many ways to help reduce use over time.

    High nicotine disposables (elf bars, juul) I would stay away from if you can though since the nicotine concentration is so high that it can deepen the addiction.