That's impossible because the theory that we are in a simulation is nonfalsifiable.

For any test result, one can simply say "That is how the simulation is programmed." The only thing available is to do the opposite: prove that we are in a simulation. That probably involves breaking out of it somehow - which would be really awesome, but unlikely. As soon as it happened, the creators would just rewind it and patch the bug.

I was thinking of the "Verge Vendor" region. I would love to know the origin of that name. Vernor Vinge --> Vinge Vernor --> Verge Vendor...? Okay, that's probably a stretch.

Thanks for the clarification, I just kinda had a general idea. Your "..." additions are exactly how I was thinking as I wrote it.

Stability AI believes that releasing open models and letting the community hack at them is the path forward. They do indeed have a distributed model where you can essentially overlay custom training on top of the base model. They have some thing that allows you to fine-tune the model with a fraction of the resources that it requires to do the same thing with OpenAI's models. This is why there has been an explosion of image generation models based on Stable Diffusion. It's super easy to fork it and make a custom one. You can't download GPT-4's model and just hack at it.

I assume that the company is switching to a different direction which is why he is resigning? This sounds a lot like the early internet days when things were open and hackable. But big money investors want profitable payoff, not cool democratized technology that anybody can use. Investors want lock-in.

If I remember correctly, Eve Online has a star system named "Vernor Vinge" -- can any current players confirm that for me? I remember playing years ago and thinking that I needed to look him up just because of that.

It's this. It's kind of hilarious, really, I've watched the PS5 go from a thing you couldn't get in stores because they were never in stock to a thing stores aren't stocking because no one wants one. Sony has screwed the thing up to the point that Sony themselves have started releasing games on PC.

But the PSVR2 was always kind of a weird product. It costs as much as the console itself (I think, it looks like buying both would be $1100 total), making it more expensive than the Quest 3 ($500), while being tethered to a physical device. It doesn't support the original PSVR games, but yet has a library that consists mostly of PSVR games ported over to it. And given the above, with gamers having mostly given up on the PS5, it's clear that isn't going to change.

Since you seem knowledgable, I honestly have to ask this boomer-sounding question: Why does anyone install the Tiktok, Facebook, or Reddit apps on their phone? People send me tiktok links and Google gives me tiktok links, and they work just fine. I get it if someone is a creator -- but for the majority of people they just browse. Isn't the browser sufficient? I don't even have an account -- what am I missing? Having visited the site plenty of times in a private window, I've never found any reason to engage any more than that. I honestly just don't get it.

An AC gave an interesting option I've never considered before. What if we allow the user to select from various open moderation algorithms? The user could turn it all off and thus see everything. They could choose to option to disable nazi bullshit, then maybe hate speech, then maybe various 3rd-party filters that tend to lean left, or right, or whatever. This sounds awesome to me -- I can tailor the filter based on my preferences, and I could even make my own. Maybe I want one based on keywords, but somebody else wants one based on AI, and somebody else has a trusted person who they use as a filter. Maybe people could even have the job of being a professionally moderator for hire.

One way to do this would be for the sites to expose everything and the client browser filters it. Another would be for to create APIs that allow remote moderation. Really with REST-based web applications this is entirely feasible.

Slashdot kinda works like this. Friends get +1, enemies -1. We can set Funny, Interesting, Informative, Flamebait etc. to get a -1, +0, or +1. We can give a bonus to long comments, and we can set a threshold. So by selectively friending people I see slightly different view from you. But we are relying mostly on community moderation.

We are going to replace stupidity with automated stupidity. All these bad moderations will go into the training set. But then people will blame the AI instead of looking in the mirror and going "Hmm..... we trained the AI on ourselves.... and it is acting like an ass... what could this mean?"

It originally referred to the number of days between public disclosure or active exploitation in the wild, and the patch. If one defined it as defined the number of days between private discovery and the patch, then every vulnerability is a zero-day vulnerability and the term becomes useless.

And that's the trick they use. An iCloud backup tends to be under 5GB (barely), which is enough to fill the free tier. But it means you can't use iCloud for literally anything else, and it also doesn't include things like photos that are what people really want to back up.

Anything that's "stored on iCloud" is not in the phone backup. That includes photos, documents, game saves, and all sorts of information that people really want to keep backed up. It's also what prevents you from using any other cloud service: that data can't be saved to any other cloud storage site. Only iCloud. The data that isn't in the backup is what most users really want backed up: their photos, their messages, their contact list, their documents. Which means that, yes, the OP's wife almost certainly does need an expensive iCloud tier, because the "backup size" is only a tiny fraction of the real amount of data stored in iCloud.

Apple preventing Spotify from advertising their lower prices is just part of the way Apple attempts to push you over to Apple Music. I seem to recall a recent story about how Apple essentially forces you to buy iCloud storage space. Well, they also bundle that with Apple Music. Oh, you're out of space on iCloud? (You will be, since Apple has never increased the available space since launch, just added new and more expensive tiers.) Well, for a small monthly fee, you can get enough space to back up your phone and Apple Music.

Oh, you don't want to pay for iCloud? Well, I'll just constantly remind you that you're out of iCloud storage space until you relent just to shut up the messages.

That in addition to things always launching in Apple Music without any way to change it. Connect your iPhone to a Bluetooth speaker and Apple Music will launch. Press the "play" button on said speaker (or Bluetooth keyboard or the like) and Apple Music will launch. Connect to a car, and Apple Music will launch. Doesn't matter if you're doing something else at the time, even if it's using Apple's own Podcast app, iOS will always launch Apple Music and interrupt it.

Apple is an illegal monopoly and should be treated as such. They're also a trillion dollar company. A $2 billion fine is nothing. It needs to be much, much higher.

I notice that most of the people saying AI is not useful comes from people who start by saying "I tried it one time for something trivial and gave up."

Interesting opinion article about Stochastic parrots

I think everything you just said applies to human beings too.