This is the kinf of annoying "holier than thou" comment which sounds insightful, but which is utterly divorced from the reality of our crumbling and dysfunctional government.
Just look at how Flint, MI was handled. It took years of nationwide outrage for the government to even admit that there was a problem.
Facts are that the US government is (now) intentionally and explicitly designed to remove all power from the people and give it to lobbyists and special interest groups. All levels of government explicitly ignore majority decisions and do whatever the fuck they want. Even votes barely matter when districts are gerrymandered so hard that all elections are predetermined. When that's not enough, we just go straight for bald faced voter suppression.
Things are not sunshine and roses. The US government is actively working against you.
Try NoMachine. IME, performance is pretty sub-par, but if it's a once in a while thing you probably don't care that much. It's also got a "clean" and "modern" UI that would look right at home on a toddler's toy.
No, the reality is that an animal is usually an asset. It costs X to feed and maintain an animal over its life to achieve Y amount of profit from its sale or the sale of its products. If X plus medical costs is greater than Y, you're losing money on this animal.
Tripling the amount you pay the vet does not increase the final profit margin of the animal, so you simply do not. If basic treatment costs more than the animal will generate in its life, you don't treat the animal.
Thinking that any random farm animal is worth infinite medical resources is completely detached from reality. The animal is not worth it. There's not one single reason to pay more to maintain an animal than the money you get out of it. Not in this context.
> for unpracticed or untalented people to perform at the level of the practiced and talented
This is what tools are.
Cheap digital tablets have done away with the need for expensive consumables. You can just download a different brush style instead of learning a physical technique. No waiting for paint to dry or smudged pencils. The barrier to entry for painting has dropped to a one time investment of like a hundred bucks. Almost nobody mixes their own paint, nor stretches their own canvas. Those skills aren't needed anymore.
It's possible to build very precise machine parts by hand. It's very difficult and requires great skill, so nobody does that. Some do and are admired for it, but everybody else uses precise machines to make precise parts with nearly no effort.
It's just a tool. Only difference is that we had assumed art would never be automatable.
Objectively, I don't think this is a bad thing. It doesn't change the subjective value of art any more than the average cartoonist devalues the Mona Lisa. It's just a new form of art, there will always be people mixing their own paints and stretching their own canvas, just as there always has been.
It's only a problem because in our society you either have a job or you starve. No one can afford to be an artist. Those that do tend to grind out as many pieces as fast as they can so they can pay the goddamn rent. If not for that, these AI tools would be pretty cool.
That's about the only thing that makes any sense. Maybe it somehow faulted to route all traffic straight to the ONT, which could only give one address which I happened to get. And then the fiber got cut the very next day around the same time as we got the new router.
A lot of coincidences and extraordinary edge cases, but it's plausible I guess?
The signal may not have a single source. An attacker could also use multiple antenna to make the signal source appear as originating from some space between them. Could have multiple antenna broadcasting in time slices to maintain a constant signal from a varying source location.
No, that's not it at all. This was after multiple conversations with the same person explaining the situation. There was signs on the door, on the boxes, with giant type, highlighters, bright colors, the works.
This was people explicitly ignoring any and all signals contrary to their desires.
The confusing bit is that a strip of tape with no other context is what stopped them. Probably just that it was something so outside of the ordinary experience that it forced them to actually engage their brain for a moment.
Yup, I've actually gotten pretty decent results out of an LLM for subjects I'm already pretty familiar with. If we ever figure out the hallucination problem, LLMs could revolutionize education overnight.
I think that almost everyone would benefit enormously from having a focused and dedicated one-on-one tutor. Just imagine if you could call up the leading world expert in any field at any time to ask any question you could possibly have. We as a species would get so much more done.
At least that's what I want AI to be in the next decade or so. A tool to push humans to a much higher potential where we can solve our own problems more effectively. I'm afraid we'll skip that step, though and go straight to worshiping the AI that makes the most paperclips.
Anyway, I'm still experimenting off and on with local LLMs to get me closer to where I want to be. I'm not sure it's much faster to use an LLM and continually verify its output, but it does at least provide structure and guidance for my own self-teaching.
Nope! Only WiFi and Ethernet. I had been using my phone hotspot, but that gives me a sane IP in the local reserved block, not one from the public block.
I also was using our neighboring business's guest WiFi, but again that should have given me a sane local IP.
Every diagnostic I could think of told me I was directly connected to the WAN with no intervening networks. Then again I'm not the best at debugging networks so I could be mistaken on this point. I am 100% certain that the IP address my computer was given was not a legal local network address.
Here's my own 500 mile email story. This happened to me about a year ago.
Just a normal day at the office when suddenly the internet drops out, except for my machine. Everyone else has a network connection, but no internet. Except for me, I can't reach devices on the local network, but I can reach anything outside.
Now, our network is not large or complicated. We have a consumer grade ONT and WiFi router provided by the ISP, and a big unmanaged ethernet switch. There's really nothing to go wrong here.
After some debugging, I notice that I have been assigned an IP address in my ISP's public block. Tracert seemed to show no local network between me and the WAN. It was as if the router had somehow connected my WiFi client directly to the ONT, bypassing the local network. That only barely makes sense, but it was my best guess so I condemned the router.
Next day, new router, same problem. I couldn't explain it. This time though, I didn't have an internet connection, but local network was reachable. Some sanity restored, ar least.
Turns out that our fiber line had been accidentally cut during construction work. Once the ISP fixed that, all was normal.
The question remains, how did I have internet connection through a severed fiber line? It's not likely that the router had a bizarre failure right before the line was cut. I suppose it's possible that Windows had sneakily connected me to some other WiFi network, but then why did I have a weird IP address?
It's pretty wild. Quite often I'll have a conversation with my husband where he tells me that I've already told this story, or that I said or did something, but I'll have no memory of it. Not even a vague recollection once reminded.
Generally, the past doesn't exist. Or rather it exists in the same sort of hazy uncertainty that the future does. I do remember certain facts and events that my brain deemed important enough to commit to memory, but only as an abstract concept. My brain doesn't store past events in the same way that I experience them. There's no visual or sensory component, just raw facts and abstract ideas. There's usually no emotional component either.
> Is losing autobiographical memory inmediate, or could you remember a few seconds of what you see?
There's multiple levels to it. During some task or event, everything is available in working memory for up to a couple of hours. Basically it depends on mental focus keeping things in a single coherent state. Events not receiving active attention drop into a medium-term memory. They can last a few days depending on how impactful the events were, but generally things get cleared out during sleep.
Essentially it's the same way most people's memory works, it's just that the way the information is formatted is very different.
> Can you think in other languages?
My thinking doesn't really involve language unless I'm thinking about speech or writing specifically. But yes, other languages work the same way in my head.
It's one step removed from language. I tend to deal directly with the concept that a word represents. Ideas get converted to words as a post-processing step. Switching languages is pretty much just picking the word out of my French vocabulary instead of English. Formatting grammar works the same way, it's just rules and heuristics used to format data.
> Can you learn patterns like chess moves?
Yes, but not easily. Straight up memorizing an arbitrary sequence is pretty difficult. At one point I was actually really good at Rubik's cube solving, but it only took a few months of no practice for the rotation sequences to just evaporate from my brain. Games like Simon Says aren't any more or less difficult for me, as it's an isolated event trivially stored in working memory.
> What is your oldest memory?
Pretty typical, around 4 years old. I have very few memories of my childhood, but they're exceptionally vivid. They come closest to how I assume normal people experience memory. I remember seeing my mother at the stove and watching the pot boil, I remember what I was thinking and feeling.
> Can you suppose future events, like an accident about to happen?
I'd say I'm a bit above average at predicting events in the short term. I also tend to have pretty accurate gut instinct about the medium term.
> Do you have olfactory memory?
I recognize a smell if I've encountered it before, but I generally can't conjure a scent in my head. Memories almost never have scent included. However, the usual phenomenon of scent triggering a strong memory does work. Generally I'll remember qualities of a scent, it was harsh and acrid, soft and flowery. Same way other memories are reduced to a set of facts.
> Do you like any kind of puzzles? Can you follow or find thing with a map?
I like puzzles about as much as the average nerd.
I've always had a very good sense of direction. There's a little corner of my brain that's always aware of where I am relative to landmarks, or checks the sun to find north. To a pretty good approximation, I always know where north is. I can count on one hand the number of times I've actually felt lost. Though that specifically I think is just a habit I developed at a young age.
The (US) academic system is not set up to accommodate anyone, really. It's designed to get someone just below average through their standardized testing and not much more. If you don't fit that mold you're shit outta luck. You either suffer through it like "normal" people, or you find it utterly intolerable and fail or drop out.
Personally, I learn best backwards from everyone else. Building up very slowly from fundamentals and basically starting over with basic algebra every semester is actual hell. I need to see the goal concept fully formed and functional, and then work backwards to derive the fundamentals I'm missing.
Generally speaking, once I understand a concept I have it forever. I usually only need the briefest of refresher on mechanics and formulae as I use them. Spending the first month of calculus class going over 9th grade algebra is an unbelievable waste of my time.
My final attempt at college was a CS degree. I made it through one semester and did not even get to a single CS concept. It was at least a year and a half of bullshit prerequisites that I had to pay for. I dropped out when I had to write a presentation to the board of my hypothetical company on the benefits of upgrading their printers. I'm not kidding. I paid real money for this.
I've totally given up on the educational system. I don't fit into the cookie cutter ideal of the average idiot grinding out a degree. I just can't do it.
I think probably the ideal way for me to learn is to spend a lot of time one on one with a domain expert that can show me the final concept and work backwards with me to fill in the gaps in my knowledge. I don't want or need, nor can I tolerate spending time going over things I already know for the 30th time. I need to learn the things I don't know. School just doesn't work that way.
In the early days of the pandemic, the retail chain I worked for had a curbside delivery only policy. No customers in the store period, you had to call us and we'd bring your whatever out to you.
No amount of signage on the door would stop people walking in. I stacked a bunch of boxes physically blocking the door and people still forced their way in.
The only thing that worked was putting a strip of blue painter's tape across the doorway directly at eye level.
I have long since stopped trying to make sense of other people's behavior.
I really find it quite astounding just how much absolute nonsense python programmers are willing to put up with.
Needing more than one, MAYBE two versions of your language installed is insanity. If I build a Python widget and send it to my non-programmer coworker, there is exactly zero chance it will work until I walk over and manually set up the correct language. Instead I use a language that natively compiles to an exe.
Python is pretty neat, but the concept of a program that just works anywhere is so utterly alien that I genuinely cannot find any practical use for it.
I can't just install a pip package to use globally, I have to set up some goddamn virtual environment because everything is so brittle that nothing works without the exact correct language version.
It's like NPM all over again. Dependency hell is so bad that your package manager is now a dependency so we need a package manager manager to manage installing the correct package manager version to then install the correct packages.
Every single time I've come up to some Python thing or other, I spend about fifteen minutes fucking with it before giving up and using a tool built in a sane language.
The fact that I can't just send any random person a program and expect it to run at all is just lunacy. And no, compiled Python does not count because that's even more brittle tooling on top of all the other bullshit I have to deal with. If it doesn't work out of the box, it's a bad tool and I have far better things to do with my very valuable time.
Just look at how Flint, MI was handled. It took years of nationwide outrage for the government to even admit that there was a problem.
Facts are that the US government is (now) intentionally and explicitly designed to remove all power from the people and give it to lobbyists and special interest groups. All levels of government explicitly ignore majority decisions and do whatever the fuck they want. Even votes barely matter when districts are gerrymandered so hard that all elections are predetermined. When that's not enough, we just go straight for bald faced voter suppression.
Things are not sunshine and roses. The US government is actively working against you.