Onno (VK6FLAB)

Anything and everything Amateur Radio and beyond. Heavily into Open Source and SDR, working on a multi band monitor and transmitter.

#geek #nerd #hamradio VK6FLAB #podcaster #australia #ITProfessional #voiceover #opentowork

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Joined 4 months ago
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Cake day: March 4th, 2024

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  • The underlying issue with an LLM is that there is no “learning”. The model itself doesn’t dynamically change whilst it’s being used.

    This article sets out a process that gives the ability to alter the model, by “dialling up” (or down) concepts. In other words, it’s changing the balance of the weight of concepts across the whole model.

    Altering one concept is hardly “learning”, especially since it’s being done externally by researchers, but it’s a start.

    A much larger problem is that the energy consumption is several orders of magnitude larger than that of our brain. I’m not convinced that we have enough energy to make a standalone “AI”.

    What machine learning actually gave us is the ability to automatically improve a digital model of things, like weather prediction, something that took hours on a supercomputer to give you a week of forecast, now can be achieved on a laptop in minutes with a much longer range and accuracy. Machine learning made that possible.

    An LLM is attempting the same thing with human language. It’s tantalising, but ultimately I think the idea applied to language to create “AI” is doomed.





  • I don’t believe that it’s the root cause.

    Enshitification is about monetization, getting more money from the same customer base.

    If the product you are providing isn’t paying for itself with a sustainable margin then the prerequisites are in place for the wheels of enshitification to start moving.

    Putting the foot on the accelerator is achieved by going public, selling the company, or pivoting to some random marketing weenie wet dream.

    Most of this is fuelled by “free” products that become “fremium” when companies realise that monetizing you isn’t nearly as sustainable as the marketing department would have you believe. “You just need to grow!” - nevermind that the costs of running the infrastructure grow faster than the income generated by new customers. This is exacerbated by the silo mentality exhibited in many companies, the marketing department has no insight into the costs of the infrastructure team.

    I think that we’re going to see much more of this before it gets any better. What better looks like is yet to be determined, since much of this is driven by the likes of Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and IBM.

    I mention IBM in that list because it’s been buying up “free” software companies and changing their business models.

    We live in interesting times…



  • You do know that the USA is also a signatory to the Christchurch Call?

    It agreed to (among other things):

    “Counter the drivers of terrorism and violent extremism by strengthening the resilience and inclusiveness of our societies to enable them to resist terrorist and violent extremist ideologies, including through education, building media literacy to help counter distorted terrorist and violent extremist narratives, and the fight against inequality.”

    Law works by mutual agreement. This is how our global system hangs together. Just because this is being spearheaded by an Australian process, doesn’t make it apply only to Australia.

    This same process happens every day across the world. The only difference here is that the person on the other end is pretending that this is about free speech.

    Where’s the hue and cry from all the other platforms who just took it down? Are they perhaps more aware of how this works?

    Edit:

    Perhaps this is stating the obvious, but the Christchurch Call came into existence after a terrorist massacre was livestreamed from Christchurch. It’s not a random website, it’s the New Zealand government response to that event.

    Mutual obligations, agreements and treaties are what bind us together legally. Within the legal framework in Australia, CSE and terrorist video are the same, both considered Class 1. My reference to CSE was deliberate. From an Australian perspective they’re one and the same. Different countries can argue that they’re not, but that process is ongoing.

    Finally, courts making decisions that affect others happens all the time. Just look at the abortion mess currently playing out across courts all over the USA, not just from the SCOTUS down, but between states as well.

    This is the very same thing, it’s just happens to be a country border, not a state one.

    Edit 2:

    It’s not like the USA hasn’t done this to others either. Right now it’s making laws to force a company in another country to sell an asset, TicTok.


  • I think that the specifics matter. Specifically this video on that platform. I am fairly sure that the court will say the same thing. Again, I’m not a lawyer.

    Xitter is pretending that this is about free speech and censorship.

    It’s not.

    The eSafety commissioner hasn’t asked to remove an objectionable cat video, it’s asked to remove a terrorist video.

    If this was a video depicting CSE the world would not even take a breath to demand its immediate removal.

    Xitter is being disingenuous in its argument and its signature to the Christchurch Call just serves to further highlight that the individual in charge doesn’t believe that rules apply to him.








  • Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.

    As it is, the first time this was posted, biologists and pharmacists discussed the merits of the claims and came to the conclusion that this was unlikely to be real.

    Specifically the approach would probably be thwarted the second time you attempted to use this method because your immune system would attack the vaccine.

    The discussion also pointed out that this was why the second dose of Astrazeneca during the COVID pandemic was less effective.

    Disclaimer: I’m not a medical professional and don’t pretend to be one online. I’m reciting from memory. YMMV.