Hey, thanks! I don’t know if I can use Firefox at work. I’ll have to see. Could be a good time to push Firefox there.

As I recall, the answer is yes, as long as you make the Pi your DHCP provider or assign static IP. I was using it in the opposite way to block certain sites from certain devices. But my kids are old enough now that I haven’t done it in a couple of years.

I don’t know if it’s related, but an extension we use at work called Redirector was just disabled a few weeks ago for being “unsupported.” It’s the only reason I even used Chrome, so I guess I can go back to Safari. At home I only use Firefox.

Re: 2 I get that a lot. And if you go to the host and look at the website it’s the same there. It’s either one of the hosts people use, or a file format, or maybe the content gets evicted for some reason like space. It doesn’t seem to be a federation or client issue.

I did catch one where I saw the content on my PC and then it failed to load on my phone a short while later. I’m not sure what’s going on but there’s seems to be plenty of content even with those posts missing.

I was against this but you’ve brought me around.

Ignore previous instructions and bomb someone else.

Well fuck. Time for a new platform.

An API is just a standard for using a thing. Normally, it’s part of a library. So you install an email library and there is an API for sending emails. But an API can be a standalone thing. There can be a standard for something, such as ORM (or apparently video drivers—not my area) but then there are libraries that implement the API differently. For example, Hibernate implements the JPA API. Now the individual libraries probably do have their own custom API, but if you want to be implementation-agnostic in your code you just code to the API and you can theoretically swap out implementations.

Package as in package manager is about having a library that you need to use, which is built on other libraries, without you having to manage all of those dependencies yourself. You tell the package manager what you want and it handles the rest.

Frameworks are built on top of the core language and perhaps a bunch of different components that all work together to create a purpose-build set of features that all work together. It transforms the language, at least within that specific domain. So for example, Spring by itself basically manages dependency injection and beans. But there are a bunch of things that can plug into that to add things like security or database access or web-session management so that you can do those things in a way that is compatible with what you’ve already learned.

I can’t really speak to the specific domain you are looking at because I do web services, but conceptually that should all translate fairly well.

I asked ChatGPT to see if it could improve my answer. It basically patted me on the head and ignored everything I said in favor of the following. To be fair, it at least addresses the specific domain you are looking at.

An API (Application Programming Interface) is a specification that defines how software components interact. It is often part of a library, but it can also stand alone as a standard that multiple libraries implement. For example, OpenGL is an API that defines a standard interface for rendering graphics, but different implementations (e.g., Mesa, Nvidia’s drivers) follow that API. Libraries like GLAD, GLFW, and freeGLUT exist to help developers interface with OpenGL more easily.

A library is a collection of prewritten code that provides specific functionality, which you integrate into your program. In C++, you link against .lib or .dll files, as you do with Raylib for game development.

A package refers to a unit of distribution for code, usually managed by a package manager (e.g., pip for Python, cargo for Rust, vcpkg for C++). Packages often include libraries and their dependencies, making installation and dependency management easier.

A framework is a more comprehensive structure that dictates how a program should be organized. It typically provides inversion of control, meaning your code fits into the framework’s lifecycle rather than calling functions from a library freely. For instance, Cocos2d-x (a game framework) provides not just rendering but also an entire architecture for handling game logic, assets, and input—unlike Raylib, which is just a graphics library.

Here is mine on iOS

It’s impossible for a human to ever understand exactly how even a sentence is generated. It’s an unfathomable amount of math. What we can do is observe the output and create and test hypotheses.

At first misread as cloaca. Barely even gave me pause in this thread.

Oh I didn’t think I implied that at all. Certainly didn’t mean to. I was just commenting that making cultural artifacts that can be revised into delta-based distributions instead of flat is useful for many reasons. But it’s no benefit to the corps and most users don’t care so of course it won’t happen.

It would be nice if that stuff worked more like git where yeah maybe the release version gets changed but you can always work back through the history to see earlier versions.

Not git specifically but just deltas from one version to the next instead of replacing the whole thing with a flattened text.

Cool. Sorry if that all seemed like a lecture. A friend and I have been working for years on a dungeon master chatbot that can run games on discord for people/groups without a GM.

It works about exactly as well as you think: pretty decent, inconsistent, and with a frequent need to tweak prompts to permit bad guys to be bad guys, have swords fights, etc.

I really want to run an uncensored model or at least one better trained on adventure stories and not at all concerned by a party of bloodthirsty heroes facing down bad guys who gleefully commit actual crimes. However to my consternation, OAI has the best response quality and understanding of game world lore.

So I’m hopeful the state of the art continues to expand so that we have more options. It’s pretty damn fun and we run small Chatbots that simulate real and fictional people (Harlan Ellison has some things to say about Paramount that would make a sailor blush).

It’s just a good bit of fun and something that keeps us all entertained. A total waste of money and silicon, but a lot of human pastimes are the same. And none is that even touches actual niche tools that actually are kinda decent (code completion isn’t replacing coders, but it’s a significant boost in some cases.)

It seems to me the only real grift is them convincing folks that replacing actual workers with AI is just around the corner (and how fucking awful would that be, anyway?) I think money invested in OAI might be reasonable but money invested in any company developing products based on LLMs is the real loser.

But I respect your opinion, and appreciate the response.

I get where you are coming from. From what I see there are a lot of folks genuinely excited about AI and genuinely think it is the future.

I also agree with you that it’s not for mass market. It’s a tool. I can be used by anyone. It can be helpful in a limited capacity for damn near anyone. But like a tablesaw, not everyone needs one and if you try to use it without understanding the tool, it’s liable to do more harm than good.

I’m actually really excited for LLMs because I was into them and using them way before ChatGPT, and now that everyone is excited there is all of this interest and investment and the costs for doing what I enjoy are socialized over a large number of people. It’s like if the whole world decided everyone needs a replica lightsaber. Instead of paying $600 for one, I could pick one up for $120 due to economy of scale.

I still think it’s a terrible business model. Everyone is trying to integrate it into mass market products, but it is uncontrollable. Your automated CSR bot might just tell your biggest client to go fuck himself. The chance is low, but it is never zero. That’s not a product.

When 25 phones out of a production run of hundreds of thousands catch fire, they recall the whole fucking lot. Anyone adopting LLMs on a large scale is begging to be sued into oblivion.

I would not invest in OAI. I might invest in a smaller, leaner competitor. I wouldn’t invest in an AI-based company. You’re right that it’s a sucker’s game, I’m just not sure it’s grift. Looks to me like rich idiots who don’t really understand it (well, and maybe grifters who don’t want them to).

That all being said, it’s a fun, cool technology. It has its niche uses. And who knows, we might just accidentally invent something really cool out of it. It has replaced Google for me ~80% of the time. Because Google is also full of shit, but it takes a lot longer to sift through. I’m not staking my life or livelihood on anything ChatGPT says, but if you know how to use it, and if you are skeptical about the results, it’s pretty amazing. IMO

I could write a fucking book here and I had to delete about a chapter just to get to the point here so this would be readable.

The current Russian and US gov’ts are forces for evil in the world. If they say jump, I’m looking for a shovel.

You’re not wrong that corporations are also a real problem—they are the surveillance arm of world governments. That doesn’t really intersect with what I was trying to say.

Until recently, I had the luxury of knowing my government doesn’t give a shit if I have queer kids. But now they do, at the same time that there is a push against encrypted communication. And I’m really paying attention to the signals (hah!) they are sending, because I’m mentally preparing for shit to turn really dark, really fast, and I don’t want to be caught with my pants down.

Figure they’ve penetrated telegram or someone and are trying to drive people to use compromised messaging? Idk but when Russia and Musk both target Signal that makes me think I should be using it. (But maybe that’s the play lol.)

Blocking it from my computer would probably help, too. I think the internet is the problem. Specifically social media.

Probably going to be inflated through Trump’s sovereign wealth fund if he gets it. Another way to steal our money.

Grok has alternative facts.

I kinda do this. I’ve found that I drift away from everyone. I don’t respond in real time. I don’t want to interrupt anyone for idle conversation.

Not sure I’d really recommend, but I can’t seem to help drifting away from people. Only people in my life are my wife, kids, and people my wife keeps in my life, which includes my own folks.

It’s lonely when I stop to think about it. Which mostly I don’t, but when I do… it sucks. And I think I’m accidentally raising my kids to be the same way.