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malloc
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Raphael wrote: ↑Tue Jul 21, 2026 4:04 am
Richard W wrote: ↑Tue Jul 21, 2026 3:54 am
malloc wrote: ↑Mon Jul 20, 2026 7:02 pm ... that Sam Altman is actually a powerful sorcerer capable of forging souls and binding them to data centers.
Doesn't that fit the financial facts?
It fits what the financial people think the financial facts are.
Well it's pretty much indisputable that AI works these days. It has pretty much achieved parity with humans in terms of cognitive abilities with even mathematicians facing stiff competition from it these days. People keep predicting that AI will hit some wall of development and stagnate yet it just keeps getting more powerful.
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malloc wrote: ↑Fri Jul 24, 2026 10:23 am Well it's pretty much indisputable that AI works these days. It has pretty much achieved parity with humans in terms of cognitive abilities with even mathematicians facing stiff competition from it these days. People keep predicting that AI will hit some wall of development and stagnate yet it just keeps getting more powerful.
malloc, I promise you they haven't reached parity with humans. IF you train them on one very specific thing (writing, specifically, or math proofs, specifically), they are a much less creative version of what humans can do and still need humans to alter the output to be useful.
IF you train them very, VERY well on one VERY specific thing, based on things humans missed that later turned out to be false negatives, it can catch things that humans didn't. Like cancer screenings that humans didn't mark as cancer, then later tested positive at a late stage. But that is extremely focused training on very specific things. That's not a general use Dr. Bot, that is specifically "Humans didn't see cancer in cases like this and this has an XX% chance of actually being cancer" bot. Even then, a human has to decide whether to treat based on the chance that it is cancer and not a false positive from the bot.
They cannot do a multitude of things well like humans, or dogs, or even most bugs can do with much less resources. Please, show me, an LLM that can walk, or an image generator that can do math, or a math proof bot that can write even the worst poetry. I'll wait.
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malloc wrote: ↑Fri Jul 24, 2026 10:23 am

Well it's pretty much indisputable that AI works these days. It has pretty much achieved parity with humans in terms of cognitive abilities
If I'd tell an "AI" that Kuala Lumpur is an Ecuadorian scientific research station on Venus, it would probably have no sure way of telling whether what I say is true or false. If enough people would tell it that, it might well end up "believing" (for lack of a better word) it.
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linguistcat wrote: ↑Fri Jul 24, 2026 12:02 pm malloc, I promise you they haven't reached parity with humans. IF you train them on one very specific thing (writing, specifically, or math proofs, specifically), they are a much less creative version of what humans can do and still need humans to alter the output to be useful.
IF you train them very, VERY well on one VERY specific thing, based on things humans missed that later turned out to be false negatives, it can catch things that humans didn't. Like cancer screenings that humans didn't mark as cancer, then later tested positive at a late stage. But that is extremely focused training on very specific things. That's not a general use Dr. Bot, that is specifically "Humans didn't see cancer in cases like this and this has an XX% chance of actually being cancer" bot. Even then, a human has to decide whether to treat based on the chance that it is cancer and not a false positive from the bot.
They cannot do a multitude of things well like humans, or dogs, or even most bugs can do with much less resources. Please, show me, an LLM that can walk, or an image generator that can do math, or a math proof bot that can write even the worst poetry. I'll wait.
On the other hand, look at this:

Image

No human could possibly have done that. Isn't AI amazing?
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alice wrote: ↑Fri Jul 24, 2026 2:47 pm On the other hand, look at this:

Image

No human could possibly have done that. Isn't AI amazing?
You must have entered the wrong filename or something because I don't see anything. Although yes, AI excels at generating images that would certainly challenge humans at least, like photorealistic forgeries.

The history of supersonic airliners demonstrates that we can uninvent technology if we really want. They retired the Concorde and the Tu-144 for far less than what AI threatens to unleash.
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malloc wrote: ↑Fri Jul 24, 2026 3:24 pm
alice wrote: ↑Fri Jul 24, 2026 2:47 pm On the other hand, look at this:

Image

No human could possibly have done that. Isn't AI amazing?
You must have entered the wrong filename or something because I don't see anything. Although yes, AI excels at generating images that would certainly challenge humans at least, like photorealistic forgeries.
It seems the site IP-blocks American IP's.
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Here's the page I found it on, if that helps: https://www.mailwatched.co.uk/viewtopic ... start=3160. It's near the bottom.
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alice wrote: ↑Sat Jul 25, 2026 2:24 pm Here's the page I found it on, if that helps: https://www.mailwatched.co.uk/viewtopic ... start=3160. It's near the bottom.
The entire site region-blocks my IP address unfortunately. It seems ironic that an "annoyingly woke" site seems so eager to keep foreigners away.
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I may have asked this before, I don't remember: Does anyone know of any successful athlete (in a physical sport) whose biological parents were both very decidedly non-athletic people?
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Raphael wrote: ↑Sun Jul 26, 2026 3:24 am I may have asked this before, I don't remember: Does anyone know of any successful athlete (in a physical sport) whose biological parents were both very decidedly non-athletic people?
I don't know, but I'm the reverse: both my parents won trophies in East African athletics competitions (don't ask), but i've always been "very decidedly non-athletic".
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Raphael wrote: ↑Fri Jul 24, 2026 12:55 pm
malloc wrote: ↑Fri Jul 24, 2026 10:23 am

Well it's pretty much indisputable that AI works these days. It has pretty much achieved parity with humans in terms of cognitive abilities
If I'd tell an "AI" that Kuala Lumpur is an Ecuadorian scientific research station on Venus, it would probably have no sure way of telling whether what I say is true or false. If enough people would tell it that, it might well end up "believing" (for lack of a better word) it.
That reminds of the classic joke of telling a child that strawberry milk comes from pink cows, and waiting to see how many years it takes them to realize that it's false.
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maybe we could use Red Dye No. 3 to dye the cow directly...
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xxx wrote: ↑Mon Jul 27, 2026 2:41 am maybe we could use Red Dye No. 3 to dye the cow directly...
We'd also have to feed the cow strawberry flavoring.
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Goddamn it all to hell. Reddit blocks me from viewing the site with a popup unless I create an account. Perhaps the time has come to join but I simply don't like the idea of rewarding such bullying. Aside from that, your privileges on Reddit depend on how many upvotes your posts get and I am terrible at that kind of social gaming as anyone here can attest.
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malloc wrote: ↑Mon Jul 27, 2026 8:23 pm Goddamn it all to hell. Reddit blocks me from viewing the site with a popup unless I create an account. Perhaps the time has come to join but I simply don't like the idea of rewarding such bullying. Aside from that, your privileges on Reddit depend on how many upvotes your posts get and I am terrible at that kind of social gaming as anyone here can attest.
Does old.reddit.com no longer work either?
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bradrn wrote: ↑Tue Jul 28, 2026 5:58 am Does old.reddit.com no longer work either?
I have not tried that yet. I have heard of it but didn't know what it was for.

Broadly speaking, though, it really is amazing how much my quality of life has deteriorated over the past five years. Literally everything about my life has gotten distinctly worse. Entirely new crises that I never even expected to see in my lifetime have become background noise. The few luxuries I enjoyed from that time have vanished.
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malloc wrote: ↑Tue Jul 28, 2026 11:45 am
bradrn wrote: ↑Tue Jul 28, 2026 5:58 am Does old.reddit.com no longer work either?
I have not tried that yet. I have heard of it but didn't know what it was for.

Broadly speaking, though, it really is amazing how much my quality of life has deteriorated over the past five years. Literally everything about my life has gotten distinctly worse. Entirely new crises that I never even expected to see in my lifetime have become background noise. The few luxuries I enjoyed from that time have vanished.
If you inspect the elements on the page (i.e., the page with the blur/authwall), you can disable that.
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I'm watching an episode of Forged in Fire where they're on a challenge where they're repurposing failed blades from previous seasons. They do the intros, Wil explains the parameters and the setup. At the beginning, they cycle through close-ups on all four contestants. Over the youngest one, who is a kinda tall young dude, they overdubbed a cartoonish gulp! sound effect.

EDIT: THEY DID IT AGAIN AS THEY WERE GETTING READY TO TEST THE BLADES, SAME KID, SAME GULP SOUND EFFECT ON A CLOSE-UP OF HIM. THEY REALLY DID IT HALFWAY THROUGH THE EPISODE.
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Man in Space wrote: ↑Tue Jul 28, 2026 10:53 pm If you inspect the elements on the page (i.e., the page with the blur/authwall), you can disable that.
That does delete the element but I still can't get the page to scroll once it appears.
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malloc wrote: ↑Tue Jul 28, 2026 11:03 pm
Man in Space wrote: ↑Tue Jul 28, 2026 10:53 pm If you inspect the elements on the page (i.e., the page with the blur/authwall), you can disable that.
That does delete the element but I still can't get the page to scroll once it appears.
I sometimes have the same issue--but I don't always. I'm not 100% sure as to what specifically is doing that. Perhaps someone with more knowledge could advise?
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