The parent poster acknowledges this, they are saying the randomization is *introduced artificially*.

The same as any dice rolling app. All you have to do is seed the pseudorandom number generator the same for each run, and it will roll the same dice, in the same order, every time.

Likewise, if it wants to spit out the next word/phrase and 2 of them have 33% probability, and two have 17% ...

Then if you seed the random number generator with the same seed for every instance / run, you'll get the same output from the same input on the same model.

The system is entirely determininistic. The same as any other software, from the ghosts in pacman to the bots in quake arena, to a chess engine. We introduce "randomness" to make it more enjoyable, but its pseudorandomness, that we artificially insert. We could just as easily seed the random number generator the same way every time, and then it would do the exact same thing every time. None of these are actually thinking and making decisions.

Its a mere 200 pages, and its the inspriration for "Blade Runner". Yeah, its worth reading.

Reading Philip K Dick for the prose itself is pretty much missing the point. The themes, ideas, and questions it poses are generally worth the effort.

The movie adaptations are hit and miss. Blade Runner I think was well done (not just as a movie on its own, but as an adaptation of the book)

The Minority Report movie adaptation on the other hand shits the bed so hard its painful to watch.

Assuming the small business is local, it generally also circulates money through the local economy instead of siphoning it all away, which provides jobs in your local community, and ensures a healthier local tax base from businesses. The increased foot traffic tends to bring halo benefits to nearby eateries and so forth. It results in more and better job prospects for your kids than "amazon delivery driver" too.

These all combine to make the community you live in more economically vibrant, with things to do and places to go. Instead of a desolate suburban hellscape.

Its more a philisophical point than a direct benefit to you that can be measured in the $1 more something cost you, but its real.

"Of course audiobooks also have their downsides."

It's rapidly approaching trivial to have the audiobook created by an llm narrator. Whether it will be worth listening to such a book is a separate question.

On the one hand it makes a lot more books accessible for the blind, which is a godsend... even a bad narration by an ai is potentially much better than simply not being able to consume the book.

But on the other, its going to make finding a good audiobook read by a narrator worth actually listening to much much harder for those who are listening to audiobooks for the value-add that good narration brings.

If only there was some way to get at this sort of information, some article containing it.

Nah, Mozilla has been naming things after things that already exist for years.

Remember Mozilla Phoenix? Mozilla Firebird?

https://www.mozillazine.org/fi...

I have tried it. It's not really a solution for me.
- good for watching local content

but

- netflix support is a kludge at best, unofficial and no 4k (is the plugin a web browser wrapper?)
- other streamers are in the same boat
- no F1TV support at all

I don't blame kodi, its the streaming services that are the root problem here. But I can't make them support open platforms and I understand why they don't.

The upshot is that picking up a dedicated streaming box seems to be the best solution to get official support from the streaming services. The boxes tend to generally work well with kodi/plex/jellyfin etc to give you a way to play your local content alongside the streamers own apps in a small remote-control friendly manner.

I like the roku and the shield pro -- although both have been adding ads to their home screens. I'll probably pickup an appleTV box next since its still pretty clean. Its bad enough the streaming services themselves are devolving into ad-ridden crap, but as long as the ads are limited to the app itself, and i can delete the app and cancel the service if it goes to far. So far netflix generally just pushes its own content which is fine, and F1 is ad-free unless you count all of f1 as just being a giant sponsor circus.

What are you using for the streaming services? Netflix etc? A web browser?

If so, that's a complete non-starter; it fails the ease of use expectations of watching TV of the wife using a remote control to turn it on and make it go. (and honestly it fails my own expectations for that matter too; having to reach for a keyboard or mouse to watch a movie or stream a show is just clunky). It also limits you from watching content in 4k.

At the moment, I've got a RokuHD of some sort on one TV, and an nvidia shield on another one. Plex, netflix, f1tv, and a couple other things on both of them. The TV remote can fairly seamlessly control the TV/soundbar and the attached box and it works well, and passes the usability test, but both devices are still more ad-laden than I want.

I've also got computers and consoles hooked up to TVs for gaming and what not, but i find them utterly miserable to use for streaming. Their is no app for linux that I'm aware of. And even the app for Windows is regularly just complete ass to use, and its a PITA to switch from plex to netflix and back etc, and using them with a remote control is pretty trashy. So I've been using the aforementioned boxes for streaming as the least awful way to run things for some years now.

But if there's a better way now, I'm listening.

They started building it 2022, and expect it to be operational in May. In other words: its already pretty much finished.

You are a bit late to the party to shit on its prospects of getting off the ground.

The difference being that finding waldo in a sea of faces almost but not quite waldo, some with the right hat but no glasses, some with the stripe shirt but no hat, etc etc is a lot more representative of the real problem.

It always starts with a synthetic or toy problem but, again, its about selecting a good representative proof-of-concept to be for it to be convincing.

If you showed me the exact same waldo image recognition system and demonstrated it finding waldo on a blank page, it would in fact be the same system, but this demo would not "prove" the concept very convincingly, right? The engine is the same, but the 'proof' in the proof-of-concept is far less persuasive.

120 bytes of binary for a dead simple cpu, likewise, is just not very persuasive. Its a very weak demonstration like using the image recognition system find waldo on a blank page.

It is like demonstrating a system can see toy boats through a 5mm sheet of slightly tinted glass and then talking about how the same tech will be able to help researchers find shipwrecks at the bottom of the ocean, after a century of decay, half buried by silt, ... from a satellite in space.

A proof of concept is a non-production demonstration that provides convincing evidence you'll be able to scale it up and do the ACTUAL thing in the real world that you claim it can do.

This demonstration just isn't convincing. It is too small and simplified a case to justify the grand claims.

Except in this case the real world problems are several orders of magnitude more complicated than the toy problem of reverse engineering binary source of a 120 bytes of code for very simple 40 year old 6502 processor.

You've assembled a lego space ship and then claimed you are qualified to design and build a real one.

Not confused at all. Don't blame the voters for the candidates.

"Do better in 2028 or you'll have Vance."

I think even Vance would be a solid upgrade.

I'm well aware. It was a subject matter that appealed to a wide audience. It had very high budget, and was a project Cameron was passionate about. It was very well constructed technically. The costuming and set design was beautiful, with fantastic attention to detail. The cinematography, visual effects, and sound editing were all top notch too. It genuinely deserved *most* of the awards it won.

But you can have a very very well produced very very stupid movie.

It was was dumb screenplay. The love story was painfully tedious and silly, and we all knew the boat was going to sink before we bought the ticket and that's what people were there to see anyway. The boat sinking is what won best picture. Not the love story or the characters party to it. It was simply not a compelling story all. It was an extremely well produced spectacle about a sinking boat, but the actual plot?

Reminds of another technical acheivement spectacle film... also by James Cameron, also won multiple awards and nominated for several more (collectively 9). Also with a painfully stupid plot: Avatar.

Titanic? Really? I had more empathy for the guy whose car they defiled than either character. Hundreds of actual real people died on that ship so we could have a back drop to a trite and unbelievably sappy romance about fictional characters? The ending was beyond annoying too with the whole throwing a unique priceless heirloom into the ocean, you know to "let go" of Jack. you know -- that boy she knew for almost 4 whole days.

"the Democrat college educated voter will vote for a dingbat who knows nothing."

We would have even voted for a potted plant because even a potted plant would be a better choice.

"I voted for a 3rd party candidate."

Would you like a sticker? Supporting a 3rd party is nice and all but in the current US system, voting 3rd party in any remotely competitive state amounts to not voting. Basic game theory stuff. I'll vote 3rd party when we have a proper STV system in place or something comparable.