Yes, I do.

My national background and the current situation in my country makes Twitter an important source of information (I follow local news sites as well).

I used the gaming as an example as a more neutral topic of conversation.

I see where you are coming from (even if you are being a bit glib), but the reality is such that the vast majority will go with the flow.

And trust me, my hate for Musk is way more than you can imagine. This is serious stuff.

I actually did try that twice (in a context where they would have more motivation than a typical dev/studio), no luck.

Don’t get me wrong, I do think we have to move of corporate social networking systems. I started actively using Lemmy about two months ago and I am enjoying it. However, we do have to be realistic about the state of the market.

For certain content there really is no alternative. One example would be gaming, almost no studios/developers are on Mastadon.

I do have a gaming-focused Mastadon account and I do use it, but it’s not really comparable.

According to the report, the company’s chief financial officer, Susan Li, told staff the division has lost $55 billion since 2019.

$55 billion in losses over ~5 years? That’s a substantial amount.

Yeah Blockchain is a massive warning flag.

There are only two real use cases for Blockchain

1. Financial speculation (very risky one, somewhat like trying to time a pyramid scheme)
2. Various types of fraud

(i) Innumerable media applications just like Odysee, X, Reddit, Zerohedge, Drudge Report, etc. powered by the same Arweave technology stack which makes them privacy focussed, customizable, and censorship resistant.

This part doesn’t sit well with my me. Tone is a bit too bombastic.

Thank. you for the clarification.

Yes, we would replace the LLM spam copytext with:

ZuckZuck is not a robot that lacks humanity. ZuckZuck is capable of emotions. ZuckZuck did not knowingly facilitate the genocide of the Rohingya in Myanmar. ZuckZuck.

Does this piece of shit tool fill the “non fiction” books with some variant of:

Elon Musk is the greatest person on earth. Humanity is very lucky to have Elon Musk. Elon Musk is never wrong.

I’ve been waiting for the 0.27.1 update on F-Droid and there has been nothing so far.

Did not know you had to add the New Pipe repo.

Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott is of course not a reliable source due to conflict of interest and his position in the US corporate world.

If anything, the fact that he is doing damage control PR around “LLM scaling laws” suggests something is amiss. Let’s see how things develop.

Progress is definitely happening. One area that I am somewhat knowledgeable about is image/video upscaling. Neural net enhanced upscaling has been around for a while, but we are increasingly getting to a point where SD (DVD source, older videos from the 90s/2000s) to HD upscaling is working almost like in the science fiction movies. There are still issues of course, but the results are drastically better than simply scaling the source media by x2.

The framing of LLMs as some sort of techno-utopian “AI oracle” is indeed a damning reflection of our society. Although I think this topic is outside the scope of current “AI” discussions and would likely involve a fundamental reform of our broader social, economic, political and educational models.

Even the term “AI” (and its framing) is extremely misleading. There is no “artificial intelligence” involved in a LLM.

I am increasingly starting to believe that all these rumors and “hush hush” PR initiatives about “reasoning AI” is an attempt to keep the hype going (and VC investments) till the vesting period for their stock closes out.

I wouldn’t be surprised if all these “AI” companies have come to a point where they’re basically at the limits of LLM capabilities (due to problems with its fundamental architecture) while not being able to solve its core drawbacks (hallucinations, ridiculously high capex and opex cost).

That seems like a fair assumption. I would argue we are at the peak of the bubble and only recently we’ve seen the suits (Goldman Sachs and more broadly analysts at banks) start asking questions about ROI and real use cases.

Et tu, MSI?

An argument can be made that the vast majority of “free speech” polemics from US oligarchs are a ruse.

They couldn’t care less. They see it as a tool to manipulate plebs and promote their financial interests as well as leveraging such polemics as a cover for corruption.

With respect to Musk, it is likely a republican administration will cancel any legal proceedings against him and give him a formal “get out of jail free” card. Although some of Musk’s posturing is likely tied to his degenerate tendencies.

A very reasonable assumption, although I think they will provide these features for at least 12 months for new devices.

Apologies for bringing that up, it was indeed uncalled for. You were being tactful and respectful.

I strongly disagree with the notion that hate is not inherently inside russia’s population. I would even go as far saying russia, as conceptualized by the overwhelming majority of the population, cannot exist without imperialism, chauvinism and genocide (i.e. extermination of local culture/language in any occupied territory as well as physically killing and torturing those who disagree).

Earlier in our thread you brought up a sociological report on a small town (on the eastern side of the Urals?), I read a preview article (in russian) about this report. The findings in the preview are damning for russian society. Even those who are not committed supporters of the invasion still believe the invasion should continue and they support “their boys” as a matter of patriotism and national pride. They also don’t think the full scale invasion was a mistake (let alone the annexation of Crimea and invasion of Donbas - although this my speculation). Furthermore, they also support making the war effort more efficient.

And this is supposed to be the more moderate wing of russians society. Something like 1.1 million russian men have directly taken part in the invasion of Ukraine (since 2014). Maybe 1.5-1.7 million civilians have personally taken part in the occupation of Ukrainian territories (I am excluding say “tourists” visiting occupied Crimea for the sake of argument). You also have 10s of million of russians who hold openly genocidal views (I believe 30% of russian think Ukraine should be nuked).

Russians will be hated in Ukraine for at least two generations (if not for far longer) because russian society as it is today is largely supportive of their government’s imperialist and genocidal aims. More so, there is no reason to believe this will change (even on the basis of a conceptual model).

How exactly would there be any political change in “five to twenty years”? What specifically can happen (on a purely theoretical level)? Why would it happen? What are the roots of this change?

And why do you say no longer than putin’s lifetime? What would stop someone similar (or worse) from taking over after putin dies? The russian people aren’t going to do anything and they show no interest in changing anything. You might say this is because of threats to their livelihood (fair, but who is responsible for this state of affairs?) or propaganda. I would say it’s because fundamentally the overwhelming majority of the russian population are aligned with imperialist and openly genocidal goals of the government.

What of the russian opposition? Have they started a campaign to develop a military strike force consisting of russian nationals? Sabotage programs? Assassination campaigns against senior enablers and admin of the regime? Of course not, instead they make stupid youtube videos trying to scapegoat the current situation on some people in the 90s. Why would the average russian choose what is essentially “putinism lite” (I will note that the “liberal” opposition largely supported the annexation of Crimea, even if they tried to put a spin on it for western audiences) when they can choose the real thing?

I will go back to my original OP. The qualitative and quantitative evidence very much supports the notion that the overwhelming majority of russians are authoritarian, chauvinistic and support imperialism and to some degree genocide too. This is not because of historical essentialism or some of “bad gene”; these are bunk theories best left for crude jokes (fully justified considering the situation). It is because as things stand now (and I will speculate this won’t change in the next ~50 years), the vast majority of russians have a made a choice; they believe invading neighbouring countries and genociding the local population (both direct violence and to turn them into “russians”) is a good thing.

Image/video upscaling via neural net is something I would pay for.

I currently use freeware/open source alternatives, but I am planning to get a copy of Topaz Video AI in the future.

Even the freeware/open source algorithms are incredible in terms of quality. You do get artifacts and it doesn’t handle certain things very well (I get problems with watermarks); but that might be my lack of knowledge.

When I first did a successful SD upscale (x2 resolution), it almost felt like magic.

I had seen some pretty impressive neural net upscaling before (Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat, Lumière Brothers, 1896), but it’s a whole different feeling when you can do it yourself with pretty solid results.

This is wild!