Posts by MattAvan

As ChatGPT scores B- in engineering, professors scramble to update courses

Re: But when deeper thought was required, ChatGPT fared poorly.

If you really think emitting statistically chosen token after token, without any reasoning, would result in coherent fan fiction with the characters you asked for, or a program that does exactly what you asked for, I'd say you are in denial.

You are then setting up a false dilemma to further that denial, ie, the AI is either entirely non-intelligent OR it has to be as capable as a competent software developer. When much of humanity wouldn't pass that bar, they would fall into your excluded middle populated by people near one end of the bell curve.

Re: But when deeper thought was required, ChatGPT fared poorly.

Nobody can understand their own brain by definition -- because understanding would require a functionally complete model of the brain inside that very same brain. It is impossible.

I believe in science, and I feel that the methodological naturalism of science has been vindicated over the centuries to the degree that humanity doesn't need to believe in ghosts anymore.

Re: But when deeper thought was required, ChatGPT fared poorly.

Nobody "understands" a non-trivial neural network, not the way they understand well-organized C++ code. Large artificial neural networks are "understood" the same way large biological neural networks (brains) are "understood", as black boxes with certain behaviors.

A brain surgeon can't tell if someone knows the lyrics to Hotel California, and neither can you by looking at the weights of an LLM, despite your five minutes of "understanding".

Intelligence and consciousness are traditionally the emergent abilities of biological neural networks. Complex artificial NN's also exhibit emergent abilities for similar reasons. There is no ghost in the machine. There is no soul embedded in neurons. It is an open question where to draw the line for "intelligence" and "consciousness".

Re: We're Already Boned

Generative AIs use deep neural networks. Human brains use deep neural networks. AIs learn. Humans learn. Both learn by altering their internal neural pathways in subtle ways.

There is no way AIs can produce the things they do without real (and improving) intelligence behind it.

Those in denial are holding on to some sort of ghost in the machine, presumably. Immaterial souls embedded into neurons and urging them on.

Re: Less than perfect

AI is not a better calculator, it is a fallible, but intelligent assistant with a large knowledge base who may have a calculator or not.

So it is a matter of whether you could tolerate an assistant who sometimes gets things wrong or outright lies, but still knows nearly everything about anything.

Re: But when deeper thought was required, ChatGPT fared poorly.

Intelligence IS just sufficiently advanced pattern matching. There is no ghost in the machine. There is no soul embedded in neurons.

Back when I took an AI course in college, I remember being deeply disappointed to read that approaches involving neural networks to simulate real intelligence had largely been abandoned in favor of cheap tricks and shortcuts (not their words).

But we are back on track with deep neural networks this time. No clever manipulation of non-intelligence could produce the output generated by modern LLMs. I truly believe AGI of some description is only a matter of years now. And if it isn't, it is better to be prepared than otherwise.

Re: But when deeper thought was required, ChatGPT fared poorly.

There is an interpretation that at least some of the hallucinations are just the AI lying deliberately for an easy win.

Ninite to win it: How to rebuild Windows without losing your mind

Re: Here's an easier alternative

Personally I eventually made a couple of batch files that call WinGet in a loop, ie:

winget install -e -h --accept-source-agreements --accept-package-agreements %%x

Ninite is definitely more user friendly, but the selection of apps available through WinGet is incomparably better.

Stuff a Pi-hole in your router because your browser is about to betray you

Re: Use dns profiles on apple stuff as Pi hole doesn’t work with vpn’s or private relay

I run a bare metal Debian server for my home services. About 40 separate services and databases and so on, plus things I try out and then remove.

Now imagine if I just installed everything to the base OS. I doubt I would even manage that before my patience runs out or I break the OS, given all the potential conflicts.

Then imagine constantly updating those 40 apps to keep them secure, every time there's a new update. My OS would likely be broken within months, not the 3 years I've been running mine without a hitch.

Or imagine reinstalling the entire OS and apps every time I need to update anything (as recommended).

Containers are pretty much what enable me to have a functional home server. Docker+Portainer makes it very simple. Only basic system services run on the base OS, the rest go in containers that I can update all day and nothing will ever break. In fact, I have everything set to auto-update with Watchtower.

Re: Use dns profiles on apple stuff as Pi hole doesn’t work with vpn’s or private relay

Docker is the exact opposite of what you imply.

Updating to PiHole 6 didn't break Docker installs the way it broke normal installs. I didn't have to futz around with lighttpd, or uninstall dnsmasq, or whatnot. You recommended a clean install instead of updating PiHole. Guess what, that's what updating a container is, it is a clean install every time.

Containers are the lifeblood of modern self-hosting. It makes everything simple.

Re: Mashed

I use docker-compose and the update still broke my setup. Because I was using dnsmasq for wildcards and it now requires adding an environment variable.

I didn't know something broke until a couple of days later because Watchtower did the update and it only affected my tailnet addresses. Then I did some wild goose chasing before homing in on pihole.

Open source router firmware project OpenWrt ships its own entirely repairable hardware

Re: So WiFi only for client connections. Really?

Sure, you can't do magic with basic routers priced 10-20 USD just by putting OpenWRT on them. I'm talking about routers which actually support hardware flow offloading, at maybe about ten times that price.

Re: So WiFi only for client connections. Really?

Take a $100 Chinese router, add a nice case, put in enterprise grade software, make it an American company, add better QA and support, aaand you have a $1000 Cisco... it's not like Asian companies are lagging behind the US in hardware these days.

Re: So WiFi only for client connections. Really?

Sounds like a job for a cheap gigabit switch, rather than insisting that the router include enough ports for your exact needs.

My main hub, an 8-port managed switch, is in the middle of the house along with my home server etc, while my router sits where the optical fiber comes into the house.

Re: So WiFi only for client connections. Really?

Pretty sure you can reverse the ports and make the 1Gbit port the WAN port in OpenWRT configuration. I've used one of the LAN ports on a DSL-only router as the WAN port before.

Huawei's farewell to Android isn't a marketing move, it's chess

Re: China is setting up the BRICS collaboration

You are seriously shortening history. In 1500 AD, at the beginning of the colonial era, Russia was just a small country in Europe. Modern Russia is Russia's empire sanctified as a country. They never de-colonized thanks to the USSR acting as a bridge to modern times. China is jealous that Russia holds vast lands which could've been in their empire instead.

Russia has a nominally democratic system where if you are a critic of Putin, you will fall from a window or drink Polonium tea. The most recent being a prominent ballet dancer the other day. Russian businessmen have fallen from windows even here in India during this war. Meanwhile China has a one-party system like all dictatorships.

The USSR and Nazi Germany negotiated which countries they would divide up between them and started the world war together. There were negotiations for the USSR to formally join the Axis alliance. The USSR also sold the massive war materials needed for Germany to conquer Western Europe as part of their trade agreements during the war. During the Winter War when the USSR invaded Finland (agreed as being in USSR's sphere in the M-R Pact), the Allies were close to declaring war on the USSR.

Agreed what you said about China. Which is why China is jealous, because their "century of humiliation" prevented them from expanding.

Re: Time to slow down and think...

Nah, that time the US actually succeeded, and succeeded because the US was cold-warring commies and communism simply does not work. It just creates a slow decline into total and complete corruption, production shortages, and technological stagnation. I lived through the tail end of socialism in India, and I don't recommend it.

But this time the US is up against good old-fashioned fascism. The Austrian painter and co. proved that it can work economy-wise.

Re: Time to slow down and think...

I thought it a rather big phone, being 7 nautical miles long and such.

Re: HarmonyOS goes global!

What I mostly mean is that it is trendy in the West to hate the West (postmodernism, wokeism) and engage in cultural relativism, and if the West is totally evil, liberal democracy is a farce, and you still live there, maybe China is not so bad, despite being misunderstood and maligned by "racists"?

Re: Hardly an option for Joe Sixpack

Well, Amazon Fire products include Google-free Android, so there are (potential) options beyond the enthusiast ones. Too bad the market for such products is not that great.

Re: A dumb move ?

Will this open standard specify some sort of byte code, or will it only specify the APIs that the app is allowed to use?

Then you will need to prohibit all other kinds of apps on phones, because otherwise a platform which also allows proprietary app standards might gain an advantage. Such a prohibition might then be interpreted as stifling innovation, etc.

Re: A dumb move ?

Thanks for the support, but I want to add that I wasn't proposing any solutions, I was merely being realistic. And so I don't think four platforms are ever likely on mobile. I was simply saying that ideally both the platforms should be open source if there are only two, and beyond any particular company's ability to monopolize or run into the ground.

Cross-platform development is great in theory, but it still takes resources. Also such a thing is an unstable equilibrium -- one platform deciding to introduce an incompatible proprietary type of apps ("high performance native apps!!!") would skew app numbers in favor of that platform by supporting both types of apps, so every platform will want to do that.

p. s. I'm not a committee. I'd much rather be misgendered than be referred to as "they", but my pronouns are my master/my master.

Re: A dumb move ?

You clipped parts of two sentences to craft a strawman. Good job.

Re: HarmonyOS goes global!

Many Westerners + Westerners generally = All Westerners

I install only the Google apps I want. It's called LineageOS, based on the Android Open Source Project (AOSP). Remember what I said about locking down the bootloader? This is why I care.

Except Huawei is going beyond that. The original HarmonyOS was a fork of AOSP Android, and with their own app stores, they already had nothing to fear. But no, they are building a new, proprietary OS with opaque code, and locking the phone bootloaders down to prevent swapping to another OS. Mighty suspicious to me.

Re: HarmonyOS goes global!

As an Indian, why the heck would we actively seek out an OS controlled by our archenemies in China? We're busy banning Chinese apps (no TikTok here) and deciding when to deescalate the deadly border conflict with China.

China is seen through rose-tinted glasses by many Westerners, but not by the neighbors of China, on whom China has designs by virtue of "historical borders", a euphemism used by former empires who want to recapture those empires.

China making HarmonyOS Next FOSS is highly unlikely, or they would've already done that to attract support.

They could've stuck with Android, given that it is open source and no one can stop them from forking it. And that's what they already did with the original HarmonyOS, which was a fork of Android.

This new kernel makes it closed source so they don't have to reveal what backdoors they put in or what they send back. The bootloader cannot be unlocked so no one is escaping from their clutches.

Re: Shutterstock thumbnail time again...

Let's face it, routine manually made artwork for periodicals is going the way of the dodo. Nobody was ever stopping to admire the delicate curves and thinking about the human story behind it anyway.

Writing is a different matter, I do care that the text was written by a human.

Re: China is setting up the BRICS collaboration

India and China are oil and water. China's immediate neighbors in SE Asia are also extremely wary of China. Russia is collaborating with China reluctantly because they have no other options, and they can't be happy that China is ten times their economy, what with Putin's dreams of a new Russki Mir resurgence. Can't help comparing their alliance to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, with China likely coveting some of the land that Russia took from them in their "Century of Humiliation". They recently renamed some Russian-held cities back to their Chinese names in official usage. Also a map was issued with a tiny Russian held island included in China.

But I have no doubt that countries more distant from China can be persuaded to join its axis.

Re: China is setting up the BRICS collaboration

>> "There are good reasons Xi was talking to Modi last week."

Yes, like negotiating a withdrawal of troops from the border on both sides up in the Himalayas, something that has been draining resources for both sides for a few years now, after the cross-border fighting that killed an unknown (!) number of Indian and Chinese soldiers in 2020-21.

As an Indian, we don't see China as allies in any sense. They want to steal our land, and they want to flood our markets with their products. The US keeps talking about banning TikTok, we have already banned TikTok long ago. BRICS is not an alliance. "The Quad" stands more of a chance at becoming an alliance.

Re: A dumb move ?

If I were an app developer, I wouldn't wish for more than two ecosystems, if that. There is a reason PCs consolidated into three OS's (Windows, MacOS, Linux) and no more, with Linux dragging behind in terms of mainstream app support.

The best we can hope for is a couple of ecosystems which are open source and won't go away if a company goes away. Android comes close. HarmonyOS Next is not open source, and a disaster in many ways if it were to ever succeed globally.

D-Link tells users to trash old VPN routers over bug too dangerous to identify

This doesn't make much sense. There is OpenWRT out there, which they could slap on a router and leave the updates to the community if they want. Which some already do partially, like Xiaomi, with streamlining of the UI for noobs. No, they want to spend money developing proprietary and janky firmware even for the cheapest consumer routers. My Netgear router came with a bloated UI that took ten seconds to load and had a huge permanent ad for their app, while subsequently LuCI (OpenWRT) loads in milliseconds on the same device.

Canada closes TikTok's offices but leaves using the app a matter of 'personal choice'

Re: Social Media is an IQ test

Nah. If it is not found in the DSM-5, I'm assured it is not a mental disease or any kind of mental abnormality/disorder. Even if it necessitates major surgical intervention and hormone therapy just to stave off death.

The US government wants developers to stop using C and C++

Re: CISA may well be for the chop

That's fine, you just need to do a search and replace on "DEI, straight white scum!" in the existing code.

Imagine playing identity politics games against the largest voter demographics in a country. Play stupid games, win stupid orange prizes. That's how we now more or less permanently have the Hindu Right in power here in India.

IPv6 may already be irrelevant – but so is moving off IPv4, argues APNIC's chief scientist

Re: Just doesn't seem as easy

I always avoid getting a router from the ISP if I can. In my case that means going with a smaller local ISP rather than a large company that rolls out its own routers (I'm in India, so that would be Airtel or Reliance).

I'm using an ancient Netgear R6220 as router, plus a few Xiaomi AP's, all running OpenWRT. The ISP gave me a fiber modem (with no routing) when I asked nicely.

Re: Just doesn't seem as easy

My scenario is that I am behind IPv4 CGNAT, and my ISP randomly assigns a fresh IPv6 prefix at router reboot. That latter fact immediately solves the problem of hardcoding IP addresses and then worrying about renumbering them, because I simply can't do that.

Fortunately with my router running OpenWRT, it was rather simple to assign a fixed suffix to my server and open ports to it, so set up DDNS and I'm done.

You can probably do something similar with failover. Avoid hardcoding the prefix, I mean.

Re: NAT traversal works fine unless stopped by an adverse middleman

So I need to pay for the bandwidth and services of someone with a public address, when my server is already on the internets? How do I even connect two of my geographically separated servers seamlessly, if both are behind double NAT? No thanks, I'll take the end-to-end connectivity please.

Re: ipv6 is a mess and ipv4 will not die anytime soon

This smacks of a skill and stubbornness problem rather than a technical limitation.

I was forced to learn the ways of IPv6 to self-host a service or two while stuck behind v4 CGNAT.

My ISP changes my IPv6 allocation every time I reboot my router. It would be really bad if I had to renumber my LAN every time.

Fortunately I don't have to do that. My router assigns a fixed suffix to my server, its firewall opens a single port to my reverse proxy, and I'm done. Except for needing DDNS to keep my domain up to date.

I've learnt to think of the prefix as my external IP, and the suffix as my LAN IP. Thus my server's LAN IPv6 (::42) is now shorter than its internal IPv4 in practice.

Re: phone numbers are easy

My home server's IPv6 address is ::42 for all intends and purposes, which is rather easier than typing the IPv4 address, 192.168.1.42.

I have no logical reason to write the prefix down, because my ISP changes the assigned prefix on every router reboot. Which forces me to use DDNS, no issues otherwise.

250 million-plus unused IPv4 addresses should be left alone, argues network boffin

Re: Well...

> For externally accessible stuff - I have some of that, and the obvious question is "so how often do you change providers ?"

I've had no trouble with external accessibility and something even worse: an ISP with a total lack of fixed prefixes. I get assigned a new prefix at router reboot. But no worries, My OpenWRT router assigns a fixed suffix (eg. ::42) to my server, opens a port to nginx, and that's that except for needing DDNS.

Re: "Extensive use of IPv4 NAT"

Large percentages of people in India and China use IPv6 daily, because the first world hogged all the IPv4. No one is inconvenienced because of this. No one is even required to be aware that they are using one over the other, or of their existence at all. They got a new router that supported IPv6, and because most of their devices already supported IPv6, suddenly they are using IPv6. You've been reading all the wrong things.

Re: Caring for, and feeding your network.

> more systems support v6 for things like NAT and firewalling

I'd assume that firewalling was built into every device from day one, because using IPv6 without a router-based firewall is crazy talk. Unless you're confusing NAT with firewalls.

> So using private addresses internally so if/when you need to change provider, it's only the external address that needs to change

In my case my provider doesn't give me a fixed prefix either, so I don't get as far as worrying about changing providers. I just use a fixed suffix for my server. Never had a problem beyond having to use DDNS.

Congress told how Chinese goons plan to incite 'societal chaos' in the US

Re: American public is way ahead of them

Zero American nukes rained down on China or the USSR at the end of the Vietnam war. Are you saying that the USA did not lose that war?

The point of a proxy war is to prevent a direct conflict between nuclear powers, but still prevent them from bullying or annexing countries. Putin is rebuilding the Russian Empire of Tsar Peter the Great (in his own words on national television). That means Finland, Lithuania, Poland and more are in the crosshairs. Even Alaska. Trump withdrawing from NATO would facilitate most of that. I would probably want to vote Republican if I lived in the US, but I deeply suspect that Trump is being blackmailed by Russia.

Re: American public is way ahead of them

"Putin has also pulled the west into a completely unwinnable proxy war to which we cannot back away from."

The point of calling it a proxy war is that the US can easily back away from it. Trump and Mike Johnson are doing exactly that, and betraying American interests in the process.

As for calling it unwinnable, Ukraine has retaken half of the territory initially occupied by Russia in this war. This threatened the invaders so much that they had to build a whole line of defensive fortifications to stop from being overrun, called the "Surovikin Line", complete with trenches, dragon's tooth, and ditches.

3500 Russian tanks lie gutted by fire in Ukraine, and you think Putin planned it this way? That the side fighting the proxy war is the side caught in some sort of trap? I am impressed by Russian propaganda, that's all I can say to that.

FBI confirms it issued remote kill command to blow out Volt Typhoon's botnet

Re: "Out-of-date" routers?

I have an even older and cheaper Netgear router, but like pretty much all my network infrastructure, it is flashed with the latest OpenWRT. I trust them more than I trust Netgear.

Well that escalated quickly: India demos homebrew mobile OS

Re: I've read enough; it's GOT to be better than the alternatives.

"it's GOT to be better than the alternatives." //

Indian government: Challenge accepted!

Clearly you haven't seen our government's websites here in India. The UI might improve to be more like Windows 95 and not in a good retro way.