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Comment Trump should run America like a business (Score 1) 28

That's why my Dad voted for him the first time. So run this country like Trump Entertainment Resorts or Trump University.

My family gifted me the board game Trump: The Game, back in the late 80's or early 90's. I played it five or six times. Not the worst board game. At least the components were cool, lots of plastic buildings and vaults where you could put secret bids into. Which I assume represented the illegal kickbacks and bribes necessary to operate a business according to Trump.

Comment Nobody needs software or services (Score 1) 23

We're pretty close to a point where you can ask AI to make you the platform and tools you want and it just does that. Why would I pay for github or slack clones when it's been my experience that AI can craft a MVP in an hour long session and iterate on a more complete service as needed later.

Buying software is already dumb when we have open source. And now paying for a host of software is also going to be obsolete.

Comment Re:We don't know how they work (Score 1) 158

At the risk of an appeal to authority fallacy. I do have some background, as I used to write drivers for two kinds of deep learning / DNN accelerators. One for inference that can slice and rotate memory views for TensorRT, and one for training that transparently distributes virtual memory on a multinode cluster.

We humans can easily understand an inference engine. It's not hard, and I would recommend checking one out, even if just from an introductory YouTube video. Or diving into something like llama.cpp is worth doing if you want to see the underlying math. The ugly bits are where it hooks into various backends, but there is a core piece that anyone with a decent C++ background can understand. Without C++ background, I'd recommend looking into simple-llm.

Starting with a simple but useful model like TinyLlama is a good point of research. Low requirements and the model is small enough to experiment on.

The models are a blob of data. Introspection is very limited, there is no history, and the weights (tensors really) are interdependent and even circular. So adjusting one weight can rippled through the model with unintended consequences. There is very little that one can formally reason about in a general way with a model. Maybe we'll have that kind of math one day, but right now we are stuck treating models as a black box.

So my response to anyone that claims that humans already understand what an LLM does is: Then show me.

Comment Re:We don't know how they work (Score 1) 158

That's perhaps the most interesting take on all of this. That's the psychology behind why we are running headlong into something so socially and economically disruptive that there are going to be more losers than winners.

And I get a lot of flack for talking about it. Probably because nobody likes being reminded that they have been fooled, conned into believing in the hype and dreams, while simultaneously ignoring the consequences and accountability. But at the end of the day regular folks are going to pay the price, because the investors and creators of technology will bear little practical responsibility for a problem this huge.

Comment Re: That's not what's happening here (Score 2) 99

Majority shareholder of AMZN is aware of the position his company is in. He did attend luncheons and dinners to grovel at the feet of his new master.
And with a US Treasury backed Trump Account investment, you are getting a piece of BlackRock and info Vanguard ETFs. Nationalized investment options, you'd think that the communists would be super happy right now.

Comment What is a "credit card" ? (Score 1) 24

It will be like explaining floppy disks and corded telephones to the current generation. That you used to have a physical piece of plastic with a magstrip or chip in it won't be relevant to people 5 years from now.

That you had credit, even if you were a student with no job, is going to be pretty alien to future generations. The vast majority of people will have a debit-like account with hidden fees and sale of spending habits and marketing info to support the business further. It will be like paying rent in order to spend your own money.

Comment Re:Interesting (Score 1) 181

I'd love to see the research on it. I assume outcomes are better. But it might depend on what "healthy" means. Low BMI (or waist-to-height ratio, which is a better metric IMO). Exercise and activity level probably matters. A healthy diet of fruits and vegetables, or of more lean protein heavy, or more cruciferous vegetables and little fruit. (the latter is my guess at what has the best outcome)

Genetics probably plays the biggest part of heart health. But we hand waive that since we don't have a lot of contorl over it.

Comment Re:500mg or more is bad (Score 1) 181

I don't understand the desire for energy drinks. Why not get some antioxidants, tannins, polyphenols, etc that are in tea or coffee? especially when it's cheaper and you don't have to deal with sugar or artificial sweeteners. A taste thing perhaps, although I was really disappointed with Red Bull and RockStar. 5-hour energy isn't too bad, since you can just shoot it and I kind of like the flavor. But a case of them is like $50. Which buys me a whole lot of coffee beans and Chinese tea.

Comment Re:A friend of mine (Score 1) 181

I was getting irregular heartbeat having 6 cups a day (nice espresso machine at my old job).

I lost some weight, lowered my blood pressure, added 2 miles of walking to my routine. And a blood pressure related migraine problem went away completely. And drinking 4 cups of coffee a day seems to not trigger any episodes. (plus I have a blood pressure cuff and measure my heart rate now, where as before I never checked it)

Improving one's baseline health is a bigger factor for most of us than finding the magic substance to consume.

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