The author there reads the point "Two different data entry operators, given a person’s name, will by necessity enter bitwise equivalent strings on any single system, if the system is well-designed" by thinking in terms of erroneous spelling, but also relevant is encoding issues such as lookalike characters.
True, though I think the point they're aiming at is that symbols like [new driver mark] contrast with literal pictograms like [symbol of person in wheelchair]. You can infer/guess the meaning of [symbol of person in wheelchair] 'without words' in a way that you can't with [new driver mark], because [symbol of person in wheelchair] is communicating with a picture instead, while [new driver mark] appears to be purely convention. (At least, the article doesn't seem to suggest otherwise.)
> complacent ("smug satisfaction with oneself" - I disagree that complacency is intrinsically smug)
I agree that it doesn't seem 'smug', but weirdly both dictionary dot com and Wiktionary give 'smug' as a synonym or part of the definition.
But they also analyze 'smug' as equivalent to self-satisfied or self-complacent, so maybe that's the word whose meaning is not as expected.
(I would think of "smug" less as "self-" anything - it implies a relation, it's more like exulting in a superior situation one has over someone. And 'complacent' is at base being content with one's situation, but often with the negative implication that one should be acting to make things better instead)
I don't normally experience the time interval between when my input streams shut down every night and reboot every morning either, though.
Nothing prevents one from running an LLM whose harness has a clock and a while loop in it, and it would be weird if its mere lack were really so consequential to consciousness.
The Thaler case here is something different than "AI-generated = uncopyrightable" though. Thaler was not trying to copyright work in the way humans who make work with tools normally copyright their work ("Copyright 2026 by Me"), he was specifically trying to give AI the copyright ("Copyright 2026 by My-AI-Tool"). The court rejected this because only humans can own copyright.
I believe there are other cases where AI-generated works were found uncopyrightable but Thaler is not a good example* of them.
If it's not your thing, it's not your thing, but if 'lying' is really the only barrier, note that a lot of churches actually consider it part of their mission to work with nonbelievers and would take something like "I'm not a believer but I'd like to learn what it's like for you all" (or some other true formulation of your intentions) as a valid form of interest.
As someone who's done just that... if it helps, understand that this is the kind of person who would be spending hours writing that paragraph anyway, LLM or no.
There are many possible reasons for this, and sometimes people are laboring under several of them at once.
In fact in this case, it's not the known limitation of floating point numbers to blame: this Calculator application gives you the ability (submenu under View > Decimal Places) to choose a precision between 0 to 15 decimal places, and it will do rounding beyond that point. I think the default is 8.
The original screenshot shows a number with 13 decimal places, and if you set it at or above 13, then the calculation will come out correct.
The application doesn't really go out of its way to communicate this to the user. For the most part maybe it doesn't matter, but "user entering more decimal places than they'll get back" might be one thing an application might usefully highlight.
> I'm on Mastodon. It's only very mildly nice. The reality is that it still suffers from all of this.
Most of it, at least - it does give the option to not be shown forwarded messages. There's controls on the home timeline to not show boosts, quotes, and/or replies.
Peter Biľak gives a story on bumping into this for the accent in his name. https://www.typotheque.com/articles/lcaron