Discussion

@[email protected] You are not alone in thinking this metal-archives.com/bands/Mer...

@[email protected] @[email protected] The release note was from the next release that included the fix, given I apparently haven't had enough coffee to write clearly this morning yet.

@[email protected] @[email protected] Early in my career I accidently wrote a parser for an open source project that restarted from the beginning of the string every character, going one further each time. Never been quite so embarrassed by a release note before or since: "[x] parser performance improved by three orders of magnitude on average config file"

@[email protected] @[email protected] Yeap, gluten free food required over here and we do something like this regularly. Also chonky varient with embedded veg: soften some sliced courgette, pepper, or spinach in a pan and tip a slightly thicker layer of the egg mix on top. Try and have enough veg to cover the base of the pan so the egg at the bottom doesn't over cook before the top sets. Bit of garlic with the courgette or nutmeg with spinach goes nicely.

@[email protected] Ostensibly the person using the word ostensibly meant ostensibly

@[email protected]

"Ostensibly for Risus of all things. Takes me back."

"He wrote Risus as well."

"Ah!"

Whelp, found out today that someone wanting to improve the clarity and engagement of their #ttrpg writing hadn't heard of 'Toast of the Town' so I was able to give them enough experience to immediately level up.

Thanks, @[email protected]

@[email protected] You'd hope tactics like this would be self-defeating, but unfortunately that "hope" is bearing rather a lot of weight I'm not sure it can support.

@[email protected] But like a pineapple does it contain neither apple nor sauce?

Chatting with someone about #ttrpg writing and was reminded of Nobilis 3rd edition, a game that contains my all time favourate example character and that has writing in its rules that you could quote for days. Like... how the interaction between your supernatural connection to things you value (the Treasure stat, think things like Thor's hammer) interacts with the Aspect stat (your ability to personally perform tasks beyond mortal limits, or opposed to say Domain where you control the thing you're a Power of to create miracles):

If you possess something using Treasure, you can wield your Aspect through its body. This draws on the natural limits of that body, however, rather than your own — if you’re possessing one of your hopes, for instance, you’re not going to be able to lift a great weight very easily because hope has no arms and legs. All you’ll be able to do is coil more tightly about your own heart, or shine in yourself with greater strength.

And synchronisity in full play I'm not the only person thinking about this and trying to get the idea communicated in different ways.

wandering.shop/users/xgranad...

Thinking about LLMs again because, unfortunately, I needed to think about LLMs again and I think I found a way to say something.

LLMs are a technique for matching input requests with semantically connected outputs from their training set, where 'semantically connected' is determined by how language in different contexts in the training data. That's what they do: find related language to what 'should come after' the prompt.

Which means that with enough input related to anything in the training set, you'll start getting the related training data (mixed and matched at the token level to varying degrees). Bomb making instructions? If they're in the training set, there's a way to extract them. Hacking tips and tricks? Of course. Other customers private data? If the LLM can access it, it can be triggered to share it.

Which means, fundamentally, the only way to control LLM output is... choosing the LLM training data. Apart from all of the odious business practices of the current suppliers, why are we trying to legislate LLM output when what we really need to enforce is ethical LLM training input? The rest is just noise; even banning LLMs makes no sense, at the end of the day they're just applied matrix multiplication and we've seen how 'banning maths' goes historically a few times already. #llm #MathsBan #IllegalNumbers

@[email protected] while I had sort of assumed the five referred to fingers, I suppose there is also the possibility that (the people being represented by) American kids on TV during my childhood took a lot more drugs than I thought.

@[email protected] ...you have five thighs?

@[email protected] @[email protected] Funny enough for another star and watcher definitely. I do wonder if (unfortunately) links from places like xitter and the orange place are where the repos get found.

Nanowar of Steel continue their streak of speed #metal with, er, interesting lyrics with "Kotlin!".

Yes, that #kotlin. println("Amazing solo"); indeed. Yes, the lyrics do include the brackets.

youtu.be/BsfXZjKLT9A

Just testing something. #kumquat

Turns out that each operation is very, very, slow but the code speed isn't actually too bad. Basically: for must batch updates and then set values for large ranges at a time, or your code will run like molasses.

Scripted up a simple data transformation for school today in Google Sheets and App Scripts are slooooow. Like order of magnitude slower than running vbscript in Excel circa 2000. Is this normal?

@[email protected] I think you're right, yes.