Posts by dsch

Windows is testing a new, wider Run dialog box. Here’s how to try it

How do you browse with the new one?

Amazon brain drain finally sent AWS down the spout

Brain drain in this case is the mirror image of enshittification, applied on the inside of the service (employees) rather than the outside (users).

NASA bars Chinese citizens from its facilities, networks, even Zoom calls

"dual Chinese/American citizen": bit odd as China doesn't allow dual citizenship.

Saved you a click: Firefox 142 offers AI summaries of links

"Despite being in the British Isles, we're not in the UK or Ireland, so this vulture can't see them."

Wait, so that means Isle of Man or the Channel Islands?

Cloudflare fesses up to config change that borked internet access for all

It's not DNS

There's no way it's DNS

It was DNS

(credit: http://i.imgur.com/eAwdKEC.png)

AI models just don't understand what they're talking about

Re: I think therefore I am

The meaning of "I think" in "I think therefore I am" is literally "I doubt".

I've been using LLMs to talk through very dense philosophical texts, and my experience has been, true, they don't "really" understand, but they are still extremely helpful. What LLMs excel at is taking a lot of language "data" and keep them in their context window, so that even though they don't have actual understanding, they can recall relevant passages and situate them within the structure of the overall argument. So, for instance, when you're on page 60 and the book expects you to remember something from way earlier, the LLM is able to find the relevant discussion and summarise it for you, often in a way that makes sense in the argument. Another example: the book's argument is very complex and takes 100 pages to lay out, with parts of the later discussion vital to making sense of earlier discussion. Normally, you'd have to hold the earlier parts that don't quite make sense in mind until you get to the later parts, and if you misunderstood something in the meantime, the errors in your understanding keep piling up until you get completely lost. The LLM in this situation is able to alert you to this because it already has the whole argument in its context window, so when you make a claim that goes against something it knows but you don't yet know, it's able to tell you.

I think one of the most interesting things this whole "do LLMs understand" question has brought up is the extent to which our human understanding consists in taking what is in our minds and putting it into sentences that conform to logical structures. I always tell students "you don't really understand something until you can explain it to someone", and that "explaining" is precisely the process of creating the logical structures that convey your ideas and concepts. What LLMs can do is to take the sentences and logical structures that humans have created (this creation is what we think of as "thinking" and "understanding"), and manipulate it so that it a) remains consistent with the original structure, and b) allows other humans to more easily access that logical structure. Obviously, things can go wrong in this process, but if you can really make it work for you if you keep in mind what the LLM is actually able to do.

Visiting students can't hide social media accounts from Uncle Sam anymore

Re: You aren't much of a student if you don't criticise the government.

> centre-left liberal

Eh, I was off by one step. Close enough for government work.

Re: You aren't much of a student if you don't criticise the government.

It's funny how whenever you hear someone start talking about "hard-earned cash" and "real life" and harping on about "growing up", you know it's going to be one of those "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" kind of conservatives, mostly likely on the way to being a "deport all the immigrants and/or put them in concentration camps" kind of conservative.

"Nojeim said we should not worry about allowing people with different political views into the country, noting that the screening criteria in the State Department cable could be interpreted to deny US entry to people who criticize President Trump."

"Could be interpreted"? There was already that French scientist who was deported for criticising Trump's gutting of research funding in private messages. It's interesting to watch the American mainstream media talk about the "risk" of "sliding into" authoritarianism. Wake up, you're already living under an authoritarian regime.

Why is China deep in US networks? 'They're preparing for war,' HR McMaster tells lawmakers

Re: Alternatively...

This seems a more reasonable take than the fearmongering being reported on in the article. It seems obvious that the various intelligence apparatus of all nation states are constantly working on infiltrating the systems (human, electronic, or otherwise) of their rivals, without being in preparation for imminent warfare.

Update turns Google Gemini into a prude, breaking apps for trauma survivors

There's a story here about social workers and agencies not being funded enough to have a real human helping victims. If LLMs continued to be used, it would be worthwhile to have a "stable branch" for these apps. Perhaps there room for a non-profit to step in and host LLMs specifically for these use cases.

Tech suppliers await final grade as Trump prepares to flunk Department of Education

Every time I read about this, I still can't get over how mindblowingly dumb and malicious this is.

FCC on the prowl for Huawei and other blocked Chinese makers in America

> "... pose an unacceptable risk to America's national security, *including by doing Communist China's bidding*"

On a side note, it's interesting how the Trump regime is always dropping propagandistic editorialising like this into their official documents. It's an imitation of the Orange-in-Chief's off the wall social media posts, of course, but it's also a constant reinforcement of the party line that is strongly reminiscent of other authoritarian governments (which I guess no one is surprised about).

Arizona laptop farmer pleads guilty for funneling $17M to Kim Jong Un

Seems like a terrible scheme. Okay, just giving people local IPs might stay under the radar, but you're also going to do identity theft? And have the earnings delivered to your bank account?!

US senator wants to slap prison term, $1M fine on anyone aiding Chinese AI with ... downloads?

Hawley has no policy ideas, only bandwagons-of-the-week. Sometimes it makes him look like a sane Republican senator, but that is only by coincidence.

China claims major fusion advance and record after 17-minute Tokamak run

Re: Sounds really good...

It's almost as if the scientists doing nuclear fusion research in Russia are *different people* from the fossil fuel CEOs.