Too bad I can’t trust either the competence or intent of those with resources to create brain chips. Sorry teenaged me that desperately wanted true VR, but I’ll probably decline it even if it becomes a thing.

The small amount of experience I have with playing around with raw hardware inputs on Linux makes me kinda surprised it took this long and guess that it was to polish this and that someone had a more or less functional version shortly after they decided to try.

I forget the name of the system, but they have a rules system that can be set up to do arbitrary actions based on arbitrary hardware messages, without even needing to do any kind of binary driver at all.

I used it to disable the volume commands from my soundbar while trying to get it to behave like it did with the optical input (where soundbar and PC each have their own independent volume settings), because when connected via USB, it would send the volume changes to the PC, so it looked like adjusting the volume changed it in both places. Turns out when in USB mode, it doesn’t use the soundbar volume for anything and the “double effect” was just an illusion caused by the PC steps being larger than the soundbar ones. It was nice having a system to actually check this.

They don’t really understand how they work and get misled by how AI can get to a correct solution (or correct looking one).

Like I was in a meeting where people were presenting their Claude skills (which are just text files describing processes that it can add to the context) and one manager mentioned doing regression testing on added skills to make sure they don’t break the functionality of existing ones. From my pov, he was both on the right track but also missing the point entirely because they won’t be able to consistently pass regression tests even without new skills. Because something being in the context window only has a chance of affecting the output. If the code being modified has comments that look like instructions, they might override the actual instructions.

Or it might try solving non-existent problems for you. Like a skill I was “developing” for making a particular modification to tests basically just outright said “make a test that inherits from the target test and add these parameters”. Dead simple step. First test I use to test it on, I see it’s missing one of the arguments. I mention it and the AI says that because of the start of the name being “<name of section>” and the test didn’t target that section, it decided that the argument wasn’t necessary, so I had to add instructions to not just add that argument but to not decdide to just leave it out for arbitrary reasons.

I can’t say for sure any of the AI tasks I’ve done saved any time by being AI. But the mental load is lower and they really want us using AI, so I’ll keep doing it, but the unreliability is going to cause more problems than it solves in the long run IMO.

Thank you, this is very helpful information, too. Lucky for me, I like to reinvent the wheel from time to time for fun, so the more open option isn’t scary, though it does sound like there’s a decent chance my 3d printer will just be a dust collector what with all the other wheels I started reinventing but never finished. But I think I will add another hobby to the collection.

I guess the joke is that it wasn’t an ambiguous expression in the first place and that pedmas/bedmas wasn’t the issue, or rather using just it here is the problem?

When you have multiplication expressed as numbers joined without a symbol, that takes precedence at the current layer, where layers are created using brackets, fraction symbols, superscript exponents and concatenated multiplies.

I’m not sure this resolves all ambiguity, but it simplifies the rule to just doing multiplication/division before addition/subtraction. It seems simple enough in my mind, so I’d need to see a counter example if it does break down.

Though I hate how mainstream math problems/puzzles always end up being an order of operations problem, which I’d argue isn’t even math but more of a metamath thing. If you’re using math to solve a real problem, the correct order of operations will be determined by logic, not any conventions.

Like if it takes you 5 seconds to get in your car and 12 seconds per km traveled, and 5 seconds to get out of your car, if you multiply the 10 seconds to get in or out by the distance, you’ll have a wrong answer. It’ll always be distance traveled in km times 12 seconds/km plus the 10 seconds, and the math works on the units as well as the numbers to show you did it in a way that makes sense.

Thanks for the quick replies! That snapmaker U1 looks great, but I do see that page referencing their app, so it could go either way, depending on whether their app is a mandatory part of the pathway.

The other one sounds like it might be a great way to get my daughter into more techy stuff, since she loves 3d printed stuff, so modifying it and needing to also modify the firmware might even be a plus for that.

I’ve been interested in getting a 3d printer for a while now but am not deep into what’s out there, does the ender 3 pro require any cloud or services that I can’t run locally to function?

Edit: same question for the snapmaker U1.

Also, where do you source your fillament from? Any other ongoing maintenance requirements (material-wise)?

I want a 3d printer, not some new relationship with a corporation.

Yeah, I’ll check that out… I was thinking that primitive builder guy would do well going to the past but I wasn’t sure how much he could teach people, so it’s cool to hear about a someone doing higher tech from scratch.

Also, that ancient puzzle box/lunar calendar/whatever it was is a counter example showing that some artisans were capable of precision work. The industrial revolution might have been more about scaling precision work to mass production levels. Like adopting standard units of measurement was a big part of it, which isn’t really technology but just getting everyone on the same page. Before that, a foot could have a different length depending on where you were, if that region even had a reliable and reproducible definition for what a foot was exactly.

Not fine metal, precision metal. Those ornaments didn’t have to fit something perfectly and if one person’s was slightly bigger than another’s, it didn’t really matter other than maybe for their pride.

I’m talking about making 50 barrels with the exact same measurements (within some small error range) so that they will all fit the same receiver perfectly and can handle a standard sized bullet.

Or, in the case of motors and machines, bearings that spin smoothly, gears that fit together without slipping, the ability to align things well enough that spinning wheels on an axle won’t add a force that wants to rip the axle apart.

Not that electric motors are completely useless without that precision, but there’s only so far you can take them with more maintenance required without that precision.

Just be aware that precision metalworking wasn’t invented until the renaissance, so you might need to invent that first or your motors will wobble badly.

Edit: that might have even been the industrial age instead of the renaissance. It might have been what really kicked off the industrial age, though the invention itself was for more reliable guns iirc.

Yeah, they did not age well at all. I think our senses of humour evolved in different directions, too.

One thing I’ve noticed lurking on AITA is that there’s suddenly more people casually talking about being religious. Not like overtly preaching like you’d see in the past, but more people referencing going to church or doing things for religious reasons.

It just seemed out of place and weird. Like the tone of that part of the internet suddenly changed. It’s still more liberal than conservative, though that conflict seems to be mostly just not present, perhaps in part because of their rule against political topics, though even when some slip through, it does seem to lean more liberal or even progressive than conservative. Like plenty of abortion support, no broad support for tribal or hierarchical judgements. But it suddenly seems more religious. Christian, specifically.

Not to mention the richer video the sega CD was capable of showing encouraged most games for it to pretty much just be choose your own adventure movies (from what I’ve heard, since I grew up on the Nintendo side of that deadly console war). Those “games” IMO are the poster child of games that focus all on graphics at the expense of gameplay, though they can be really rich in story. If younger me had gotten one of those, my disappointment would have been severe.

Also don’t forget that they released the Dreamcast in the midst of all that, too.

Funny how you use the term “banana republic” to mean “corruption that wasn’t in the US” when the situation that coined the term was created by American imperialism in the first place.

Edit: not disagreeing with you btw, just found that specific use of words ironic, given the background.

You might regret that when you wake up on a life raft in the middle of the ocean with a family of just as confused German tourists, as your subconscious has predicted and is trying to prepare you for.

email: If you don’t forward this message to 4 friends, there will be a school shooting!

ChatGPT: forwards email Crisis averted!

ChatGPT on 3 of the 4 friend accounts: forwards email Crisis averted!

ChatGPT on other friend account: If you want to pull off a successful school shooting, you need to <6 points of advice: 3 eerily on point, 2 irrelevant or obvious, 1 likely to blow up in face>

KP: We have successfully averted 4.166666 school shootings, but might have caused 0.844444 school shootings, for a net of 3.322222 school shootings prevented!

Yeah, I kinda wish the site generated a hash or something because I’ve got an extension that fakes the canvas results, but the site says those identifiers are unique for me… But are they the same unique (which indicates the extension isn’t doing anything) or different each time (which might even make the others less useful if it aggregates everything?

I did notice earlier today that the YouTube recommendations were all actually related to the video I was currently watching instead of it trying to get me to go down a rabbit hole I’ve already been down even logged out, like it does on my desktop where I haven’t installed that extension.

I like that they covered all the possibilities for the do not track flag, as I saw it as useless from the very start, as by then I realized the honour system didn’t mean shit and it would just be another piece of data.

Yeah, the :P version includes some mischievousness that the icons don’t capture. It’s like banter vs goofing around. They are similar but not quite the same, so the icons miss the mark.

For me, it kinda personifies the whole corporate approach to existence, where their understanding is close but also misses the point in very fundamental ways. Like a charicature of itself.

Which will make identity theft profitable but in a subtle way that won’t show up in credit reports.