It’s funny because I started with Windows 3.1 and it was actively user hostile then. From 3.1 to XP it was awful. Then it got slightly better with 7, and went downhill from there.
Realistically, a major Linux distro is the most user-beneficial thing you can do and today it is easier than ever. If my 12 year old can figure out how to use it productively, so can anyone. Switch today and enjoy.
Which is why I keep saying that anthropomorphizing LLMs gives you good high-order intuitions about them, and should not be discouraged.
Consider: GP would've been much more correct if they said "It's just a person on a chip." Still wrong, but much less, in qualitative fashion, than they are now.
No, it does not, it just adds to the risk that you'd be fooled by them or the corporations that produce them and surveil you through their SaaS-models.
It's a person in the same sense as a Markov chain is one, or the bot in the reception on Starship Titanic, i.e. not at all.
FWIW, I prefer my "little people on a chip" because this is a deliberate riff on SoC, aka. System on a Chip, aka. an actual component you put when designing computer systems. The implication being, when you design information processing systems, the box with "LLM" on it should go where you'd consider putting a box with "Person" on it, not where you'd put "Database" or any other software/hardware box.
It is probabilistic unlike a database which is not. It is also a lossy way to compress data. We could go on about the differences but those two things make it not a database.
Edit: unless we are talking about MongoDB. It will only keep your data if you are lucky and might lose it. :)
No, it is still just a database. It is a way to store and query information, it is nothing else.
It's not just the weirdness in Mongo that could exhibit non-deterministic behaviour, some common indexing techniques do not guarantee order and/or exhaustiveness.
Let it go, LLM:s and related compression techniques aren't very special, and neither are chatbots or copy-paste-oriented software development. Optimising them for speed or manipulation does not change this, at least not from a technical perspective.
You are giving me images from The Bug Short where the guy goes to investigate mortgages and knocks on some random person’s door to ask about a house/mortgage just to learn that it belongs to a dog. Imagine finding out that Anthropic employs no humans at all. Just an AI that has fired everyone and been working on its own releases and press releases since.
One of the most useful things that I print is Gridfinity storage boxes and holders. I try to organize as many of my tools and supplies using it. I sometimes do a little leather working for fun and have a drawer full of hardware, all in their own bins. In my garage my sockets, wrenches, etc. all has a Gridfinity holder. I design my own as much as I use pre-made ones. A while ago I even saw a shop that used it to organize most of their small wares. It’s an incredible system.
Another note: PLA has gotten significantly better in the past few years. PLA+ is legitimately better while being as easy to print and the Polymaker HT-PLA and HT-PLA-GF are even better as you can meaningfully anneal them after printing to make them strong and temperature resistant enough for some very functional prints.
Unfortunately, even annealed HT-PLA-GF still creeps quite a bit. I find this to be the main problem using PLA as an engineering filament. For many parts it doesn't matter, of course.
I like having a gridfinity grid on my desk with a number of various sized boxes for at-hand storage of things like paperclips, tacks, pens, etc...
In the garage, I have one that I can slap down anywhere, with a couple boxes that I can load for the screws, nails, washers, nuts, and bolts, etc... used in my current project.
Having the grid makes the boxes sit firmly in place.
I think PLA is a lot stronger than people give it credit for, especially if printed at 100% infill. I finally had a chance to use the PLA-CF that came with my Bambu X1C for a replacement part on my tripod, and it's great.
PLA-CF is not particularly stronger than PLA. Some properties are improved, mostly geometric stability and appearance, but the carbon fiber acts more like defects in the plastic than strengthening. It’s got very little of the benefits that you’d imagine based upon n experience with regular carbon fiber.
I wouldn’t call the A1 build plate small, more like average/typical sized.
And in that sense it means that almost every design made by someone else you find will fit your machine. I rarely if ever find something on Printables or Makerworld that requires a larger machine than the A1.
Then you’ve got the A1 mini being ao popular that many times people will make variants just for the small plate on that machine.
This is true. So far, everything I have printed has fitted on the plate. However, for larger items you can split them on the slicer and include connectors to join them back up - I'm yet to try this though
I tried this with some longer gridfinity boxes and the result was a bit meh. You have to glue them, but even then they aren't as solid as I'd like. But I only have a handful of boxes that needed to be long so it doesn't matter.
One thing I've started playing with now are gridfinity cases so I can pick a bunch of part boxes out of my drawers, put them in the case and take them to the garage without risk of everything falling out. Then, when I'm done, they go back in the drawer.
I still get worse finish quality with PETG (stringing and globbing) and these PLA+ type materials just end up being as good for me while being easier to print. PLA also prints a bit faster.
This is not my experience. PETG should be utterly problem free, super fast to print and has a much lower fraction of failed prints due to various adhesion issues. The big trick is to make sure the filament is dry, if it is not you will be in for a world of trouble. But properly used prints will last much longer, and are mechanically (much) stronger. On top of all that we can buy PETG in bulk for about a third of the price of PLA.
For functional parts I would not use anything else until there is a really good reason (such as high temperature stability or more strength for a given weight or cross section). I've gone through multiple tons of the stuff now (3500 Kg in total or so) on 85 printers (Bambu's (43), Creality (22) K1s and Prusas (20)), consistency between batches is very good though from brand to brand there can be some notable differences.
If you have stringing and globbing problems with PETG my first guess would be that the filament profile that you are using is subtly off for that particular brand of PETG and/or that the filament wasn't dry.
Calling PETG "utterly problem free" is quite a stretch lol. PLA is pretty objectively much easier to print than PETG, and perhaps than all the popular filament types out there, especially if you are trying to print anything where precision/detail matters. .
PETG is just oozier and stickier by default, so stringiness is almost guaranteed to happen, bridging at a greater risk of failure, etc. It is tougher, so unless you have a printer that can use multiple filaments on the same print, removing supports is more difficult.
Can you reduce these factors by tuning your 3D printer - yes, a bit. But that's not "utterly problem free".
PLA is the plug and play of the 3D printing world right now.
When you print objects with 10's of printers 'tuning your 3D printer' is no longer an option other than to tune it to be 'in spec' You can only tune your designs and the profile for your filament and for a particular model of printer but then all of those have to be close to identical. As soon as you start tweaking your design or filament profile to offset possible issues with the printer you've lost reproducibility.
Incidentally, a lot of the stuff on thingiverse and other similar sites suffers from those kind of issues. They are tuned for PLA on a particular printer without realizing it.
Not the person you’re replying to, but I can see the appeal of PLA. It has more color options and prints way easier.
I personally run all PETG because it is ultimately better material post-print, and once you understand how to print with it, it’s not really much harder to deal with.
The day I discovered that I should just run my dryer with the PETG inside while printing was revolutionary. Of course, that requires you own a dryer that allows the filament to print while it’s inside.
That's definitely still where I see the appeal of PLA, and once I get through the too much bulk PETG that I own I may mix up my future purchases to have more PLA where I don't need load strength and won't have issues with high temperature usage.
I am getting reasonably consistent prints but they aren't perfect.
The long version of my tips for using PETG are:
- A Bambu Lab printer doesn't hurt since it's so nicely calibrated and idiot-proof
- Clean the build plate with dish soap and dry fully. I haven't found any need for glue stick on a textured plate.
- Using a filament that has a profile available from the manufacturer for Bambu lab printers
- Printing with the filament in the dryer with the dryer running during printing
I get some the appeal too but once you get a setup dialed in well and safely for ASA/ABS, theres rarely a reason to want to print either PLA or PETG.
Better ratio of weight to strength, far more durable parts for most jobs, and acetone smoothening opens up all sorts of doors to incredibly high quality prints without all the labor of sanding.
For some applications, PLA is a little more rigid. It will then fail in a spectacular fashion, but "I need you not to bend" is something PETG doesn't always perform the best for.
That is mostly true, PLA is ONLY biodegradable in a facility that can handle that. Your run of the mill recycling center in your city probably can't or won't take your PLA prints.
And then only if it's pure PLA with no additives. Which most PLA has to improve speed of printing or strength or some other property. In practice, I'd wager that 90% of commercially available PLA fillament is not actually biodegradable.
Less creep, slightly better at absorbing shocks without breaking, better failure behaviour (PLA can suddenly shatter leaving sharp edges, PETG tends to deform elastically first).
But two of any brands and use ZFS. That’s the easiest (though you can check Backblaze if you want to spend a few hours interpreting data that ultimately won’t matter much).
The universe cares not what we do. The universe is so vast the entire existence of our species is a blink. We know fundamentally we can’t even establish simultaneity over distances here on earth. Best we can tell temporal causality is not even a given.
The universe has no concept of morality, ethics, life, or anything of the sort. These are all human inventions. I am not saying they are good or bad, just that the concept of good and bad are not given to us by the universe but made up by humans.
I used to believe the same thing but now I’m not so sure. What if we simply cannot fathom the true nature of the universe because we are so minuscule in size and temporal relevance?
What if the universe and our place in it are interconnected in some way we cannot perceive to the degree that outside the physical and temporal space we inhabit there are complex rules and codes that govern everything?
What if space and matter are just the universe expressing itself and it’s universal state and that state has far higher intelligence than we can understand?
I’m not so sure any more it’s all just random matter in a vacuum. I’m starting to think 3d space and time are a just a thin slice of something greater.
And what if there's a teapot revolving around the sun?
These are all the same sort of argument, there is no evidence for such universal phenomena so it can be dismissed without evidence, just as the concept of deities.
>"The universe has no concept of morality, ethics, life, or anything of the sort. These are all human inventions. I am not saying they are good or bad, just that the concept of good and bad are not given to us by the universe but made up by humans."
The universe might not have a concept of morality, ethics, or life; but it DOES have a natural bias towards destruction from a high level to even the lowest level of its metaphysic (entropy).
You dont know this, this is just as provable as saying the universe cares deeply for what we do and is very invested in us.
The universe has rules, rules ask for optimums, optimums can be described as ethics.
Life is a concept in this universe, we are of this universe.
Good and bad are not really inventions per se. You describe them as optional, invented by humans, yet all tribes and civilisations have a form of morality, of "goodness" of "badness", who is to say they are not engrained into the neurons that make us human? There is much evidence to support this. For example the leftist/rightist divide seems to have some genetic components.
Anyway, not saying you are definitely wrong, just saying that what you believe is not based on facts, although it might feel like that.
Only people who have not seen the world believe humans are the same everywhere. We are in fact quite diverse. Hammurabi would have thought that a castless system is unethical and immoral. Ancient Greeks thought that platonic relationships were moral (look up the original meaning of this if you are unaware). Egyptians worshiped the Pharaoh as a god and thought it was immoral not to. Korea had a 3500 year history of slavery and it was considered moral. Which universal morality are you speaking of?
Also what in the Uno Reverse is this argument that absence of facts or evidence of any sort is evidence that evidence and facts could exist? You are free to present a repeatable scientific experiment proving that universal morality exists any time you’d like. We will wait.
I have in fact seen a lot of the world, so booyaka? Lived in multiple continents for multiple years.
There is evidence for genetic moral foundations in humans. Adopted twin studies show 30-60% of variability in political preference is genetically attributable. Things like openness and a preference for pureness are the kind of vectors that were proposed.
Most animals prefer not to hurt their own, prefer no incest etc.
I like your adversarial style of argumenting this, it's funny, but you try to reduce everything to repeatable science experiments and let me teach you something: There are many, many things that can never ever be scientifically proven with an experiment. They are fundamentally unprovable. Which doesnt mean they dont exist. Godels incompleteness theorem literally proves that many things are not provable. Even in the realm of the everyday things I cannot prove that your experience of red is the same as mine. But you do seem to experience it. I cannot prove that you find a sunset aesthetically pleasing. Many things in the past have left nothing to scientifically prove it happened, yet they happened. Moral correctness cannot be scientifically proven. Science itself is based on many unprovable assumptions: like that the universe is intelligible, that induction works best, that our observations correspond with reality correctly. Reality is much, much bigger than what science can prove.
I dont have a god, but your god seems to be science. I like science, it gives some handles to understand the world, but when talking about things science cannot prove I think relying on it too much blocks wisdom.
Yeah I mean there is no evidence that vampires or fairies or werewolves exist but I suppose they could.
When someone makes a claim of UNIVERSAL morality and OBJECTIVE truth, they cannot turn around and say that they are unable to ever prove that it exists, is universal, or is objective. That isn’t how that works. We are pre-wired to believe in higher powers is not the same as universal morality. It’s just a side effect of survival of our species. And high minded (sounding) rhetoric does not change this at all.
That still makes ethics a human thing, not universe thing. I believe we do have some ethical intuition hardwired into our welfare, but that's not because they transcend humans - that's just because we all run on the same brain architecture. We all share a common ancestor.
Think of it this way: if you flip a coin 20 times in a row there is a less than 1 in a million chance that every flip will come out heads. Let’s say this happens. Now repeat the experiment a million more times you will almost certainly see that this was a weird outlier and are unlikely to get a second run like that.
This is not evidence of anything except this is how the math of probabilities works. But if you only did the one experiment that got you all heads and quit there you would either believe that all coins always come out as heads or that it was some sort of divine intervention that made it so.
We exist because we can exist in this universe. We are in this earth because that’s where the conditions formed such that we could exist on this earth. If we could compare our universe to even a dozen other universes we could draw conclusions about specialness of ours. But we can’t, we simply know that ours exists and we exist in it. But so do black holes, nebulas, and Ticket Master. It just means they could, not should, must, or ought.
> Think of it this way: if you flip a coin 20 times in a row there is a less than 1 in a million chance that every flip will come out heads. Let’s say this happens. Now repeat the experiment a million more times you will almost certainly see that this was a weird outlier and are unlikely to get a second run like that.
Leaving aside the context of the discussion for a moment: this is not true. If you do that experiment a million times, you are reasonably likely to get one result of 20 heads, because 2^20 is 1048576. And thanks to the birthday paradox, you are extremely likely to get at least one pair of identical results (not any particular result like all-heads) across all the runs.
We don't "know" anything at all if you want to get down to it, so what it would mean for the universe to be able to care, if it were able to do so, is not relevant.
@margalabargala:
You are correct, hence the meaninglessness of the OP.
The universe could care like humans make laws to save that ant colony that makes nice nests. the ants dont know humans care about them and even made laws that protect then. But it did save them from iradication.
They feel great cause they are not aware of the highway that was planned over their nest (hitchhikers reference).
Well are people not part of the universe. And not all people "care about what we do" all the time but it seems most people care or have cared some of the time. Therefore the universe, seeing as it as expressing itself through its many constituents, but we can probably weigh the local conscious talking manifestations of it a bit more, does care.
"I am not saying they are good or bad, just that the concept of good and bad are not given to us by the universe but made up by humans." This is probably not entirely true. People developed these notions through something cultural selection, I'd hesitate to just call it a Darwinism, but nothing comes from nowhere. Collective morality is like an emergent phenomenon
But this developed morality isn’t universal at all. 60 years ago most people considered firing a gay person to be moral. In some parts of the world today it is moral to behead a gay person for being gay. What universal morality do you think exists? How can you prove its existence across time and space?
Firing a gay person is still considered moral by probably most people in this world. If not for the insufferable joy they always seem to bring to the workplace! How dare they distract the workers with their fun! You are saying morality does not exist in the universe because people have different moralities. That is like saying attracting forces dont exist because you have magnetism and gravitational pull(debatable) and van der waals forces etc. Having moral frameworks for societies seems to be a recurring thing. You might even say: a prerequisite for a society. I love to philosophize about these things but trying to say it doesnt exist because you cant scientifically prove it is laying to much belief in the idea that science can prove everything. Which it demonstrably cannot.
Back in college I spent some time translating portions of it to Russian. It was super easy to work with the project on that. I honestly have no idea if any of my contributions are still a part of it but I am really glad I did that.
Realistically, a major Linux distro is the most user-beneficial thing you can do and today it is easier than ever. If my 12 year old can figure out how to use it productively, so can anyone. Switch today and enjoy.