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elephantium

@elephantium@lemmy.world

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elephantium ,
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What did sea lions ever do to you? :P

The ugly truth behind ChatGPT: AI is guzzling resources at planet-eating rates (www.theguardian.com)

Despite its name, the infrastructure used by the “cloud” accounts for more global greenhouse emissions than commercial flights. In 2018, for instance, the 5bn YouTube hits for the viral song Despacito used the same amount of energy it would take to heat 40,000 US homes annually....

elephantium ,
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Hmm, that makes me think we could adopt a tiered pricing system for things like water. The first 100 gallons are priced at 10 cents each, then usage beyond that goes up to 50 cents each?

You could tweak the rates & threshold to make more sense -- I don't know water rates off the top of my head, and that probably varies by orders of magnitude across the entire U.S. Also, I have no idea what water usage rates look like for different types of properties. A sports stadium, an office building, an aluminum processing plant, and a SFH with a rain garden will all have really different water usage details.

All this is kind of hinting at a broader "environmental impact" measure. That gets super complicated, though.

elephantium ,
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Some problems lend themselves to "guess-and-check" approaches. This calculator is great at guessing, and it's usually "close enough".

The other calculator can check efficiently, but it can't solve the original problem.

Essentially this is the entire motivation for numerical methods.

elephantium ,
@elephantium@lemmy.world avatar

Image generation requires no fact checking whatsoever

Sure it does. Let's say IKEA wants to use midjourney to generate images for its furniture assembly instructions. The instructions are already written, so the prompt is something like "step 3 of assembling the BorkBork kitchen table".

Would you just auto-insert whatever it generated and send it straight to the printer for 20000 copies?

Or would you look at the image and make sure that it didn't show a couch instead?

If you choose the latter, that's fact checking.

That said, LLMs will always have limitations and true AI is still a ways away.

I can't agree more strongly with this point!

elephantium ,
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I'm curious, why do you write it "70ies" instead of "70s"?

The former always makes me say "seventy-ies" as I read it. Kinda funny.

elephantium ,
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same price or cheaper

Ah, but is it? A quick search shows wood chippers ranging from $400 to $2400. If they're renting out the $400 model, yeah, you come out ahead by buying even if you're only chipping things on two weekends (and you could resell on craigslist or something).

But if they're renting out a $2000 model, I'm not sure how fair it is to compare to the $400 model (I'm not a wood chipper expert).

Wood chippers might be a bad example. I'd think if you need one, you need one multiple times -- chipping branches every fall at a cabin, things like that.

But overall, yeah, you make a good point that the rental prices can change the tipping point in rent vs. buy.

elephantium ,
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No, conflating them doesn't make any sense. You bring home the tool from the tool library, and you bring it back when you're done. It's one extra trip vs. going to the hardware store to buy the tool. The concerns about mismeasurements and extra trips don't apply.

You'd have a point if the thread were about maker spaces, I'll give you that. As it stands, though, I'd say your concerns are misdirected.

elephantium ,
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Counterpoint: You go to the store to buy the saw you think you'll need, come home, cut the first piece -- boom, same realization. Same time-sink to go back to the store. I don't think that's a concern unique to tool libs.

need one weird tool

Well, yeah. We're talking more expensive things that you only need for one project, or maybe a couple of times. Not the screwdriver set that you use for everything from box-cutting to adjusting the screws on your cabinet doors when they seem wonky.

elephantium ,
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Ha, fair enough. Yeah, a quick search shows low-end torque wrenches available for like $25. It's hard to see a rental making sense at that scale.

elephantium ,
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The next project that happens

If you're doing multiple projects where you need that same tool, that does tilt the scale towards buying. Rentals are best for one-off things.

elephantium ,
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I give it a perfect 5/7

elephantium ,
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They do tools for programmers. Big projects! But not stuff sold at retail. The plugin stuff is saying it plays well with the other kids on the playground.

And you get extras if you pay more.

elephantium ,
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I like to be on x-twitter now

O.K. by me on x-twitter now

Every speech free on x-twitter now

...

For a small fee on x-twitter now.

elephantium ,
@elephantium@lemmy.world avatar

America

elephantium ,
@elephantium@lemmy.world avatar

Doesn't anyone say 'slashdotted' anymore?

X automatically changed 'Twitter' to 'X' in domain names, breaking legit URLs (mashable.com)

On Monday, it appears X attempted to encourage users to cease referring to it as Twitter and instead adopt the name X. Some users began noticing that posts viewed via X for iOS were changing any references of "Twitter.com" to "X.com" automatically....

elephantium ,
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X sounds like a porn site of some kind

Ha, just like people gave you side-eye for mentioning 'hotmail' back in the 90s. "Hotmail, eh? Why do you need a raunchy e-mail address?"

I do agree that X is a stupid name.

elephantium ,
@elephantium@lemmy.world avatar

Bloody peasant

Court Bans Use of 'AI-Enhanced' Video Evidence Because That's Not How AI Works (gizmodo.com)

A judge in Washington state has blocked video evidence that’s been “AI-enhanced” from being submitted in a triple murder trial. And that’s a good thing, given the fact that too many people seem to think applying an AI filter can give them access to secret visual data.

elephantium ,
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Cheap security cams with “enhanced night vision” might get somebody jailed.

Might? We've been arresting the wrong people based on shitty facial recognition for at least 5 years now. This article has examples from 2019.

On one hand, the potential of this type of technology is impressive. OTOH, the failures are super disturbing.

elephantium ,
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Over Greedo's dead body.

elephantium ,
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All magic has a price!

elephantium ,
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There's a local company in my city that offers fiber to the home. I'm so happy not to be stuck with Comcast!

IRS has launched its free tax filing service, Direct File, in 12 states (arstechnica.com)

"Direct File provides a free, secure option for taxpayers with simple tax situations in 12 states to file their taxes directly with the IRS," the Treasury Department said. "Direct File is easy to use, with no hidden junk fees, and works as well on a smartphone as it does on a laptop, tablet, or desktop computer. Direct File...

elephantium ,
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Cute. Unrealistic, but cute.

elephantium ,
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These states account for 147 million people, about 43% of the country. Not too bad for a pilot program.

elephantium ,
@elephantium@lemmy.world avatar

I work for a large company that issues Windows laptops or MacBooks to employees depending on the work requirements. Most developers I know there use Macs, and I've only heard of 1-2 cases where programmers needed to get a Windows machine because they were working on a particular project.

So this is def YMMV territory.

elephantium ,
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Playing civ was the same way. Just one more turn ..

elephantium ,
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What do you get when you cross Family guy with BTTF?

1.21 giggetywatts!

elephantium ,
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IDK, it's a far cry from "dropping support for stuff 14+ years old" to "we're going to coerce you into buying new hardware every other year".

I bought a laptop at the beginning of 2010 and used it until spring of 2021. It was long overdue for replacement by then, so even that wouldn't have been affected by this.

elephantium ,
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For me: I like to play games. It was still fine for games like Dwarf Fortress or Civilization, and it could handle Factorio decently well (enough to launch a rocket, not enough for a megabase, heh).

For my mom? IDK, I was already pushing it with how long I stayed on Windows 7. I'm not sure that this particular laptop would have been a good hand-me-down in 2021.

Finally...I have to repeat: I bought the laptop in 2010. I got eleven years out of it for a type of device that most people replace every 2-3 years. Why isn't that good enough for you?

elephantium ,
@elephantium@lemmy.world avatar

Thank you!

I was pretty thrilled at how much use I got out of that laptop. I originally picked it up as a companion machine to a desktop, but about a year later, I switched over to using the laptop almost exclusively. I got a docking station and hooked it up to my desktop monitors, and all was well. It did limit the games I could play, but hey, I guess you could call me a "patient gamer".

I did have to repair it a couple of times -- I replaced both the cooling fan and the hard drive around 2015-2017.

It was funny, what finally spurred me to start looking for a new machine was a free giveaway of Total War: Shogun 2 on Steam back in 2020. Free game? New computer!

elephantium ,
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.50 cents

Verizon math? Or do you actually mean half a penny?

elephantium ,
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Are you referring to this incident?

If so, how would you want someone to refer to it?

I'm out of the loop on this one -- I don't recall hearing about this "dragged 20 feet" incident until now.

elephantium ,
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Looking for love in all the wrong places

elephantium ,
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Okta is a tech giant now?!

elephantium ,
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Alphabet spent $70 billion on stock repurchases last year. Their server costs aren't a problem.

elephantium ,
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What would the "front door" even be in this case? What comes to my mind is the corresponding app on your phone, but that doesn't really make sense in this context.

elephantium ,
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And given that the appliance needs to communicate with the app on your phone while you're not home in the first place, there probably isn't even a separate tracking API vs. data just being harvested as part of normal operations. So "back door" doesn't really fit. "Broken by design" or "spyware" would be more apt, I think.

Still, I'm really not a fan of calling any spying/data harvesting a "front door" -- IIRC, the term was coined by an FBI head pushing for back doors in our phones so the FBI could scan our messages. But he called it a "front door" as a way to dodge the reasons why building back doors in our security software is a terrible idea.

It's just another step in the terrible trend of "let's pretend that this horrible idea is ok if we just rename it" :(

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