To a certain extent, I don't disagree. I think programming via LLM is an insane goal, and frankly will just lead back to something akin to a programming language, just more poorly defined. Learning some arcane incantation to get consistently good answers isn't anything I would stake a career on.

But it really HAS been useful to me when I'm trying to learn new programming languages because the state of documentation is so poor. As long as I have links back to source documentation, I can read up if something goes wrong. And for things like giving me tasks and writing questions to test my knowledge, it's quite good.

It's a pretty good tool, and given the energy/environmental costs, I wouldn't actually be sad if it were shut down. But it can occasionally make my life easier as long as I use it judiciously.

Lots of useful things have a random number generator as an essential component; that's not a meaningful criticism. It's bound by statistics, so that gives you a useful sandbox to work within.

Indeed, a lot of what you're doing is asking it to give you an idea of what's going on and then fact-checking it. Part of 'learning AI' is understanding what it is and isn't good at, and the kinds of prompts that are likely to get you useful answers.

For instance: I use ChatGPT now and then to help me diagnose and fix tech support problems. Its ability to trawl through forum posts and surface good fixes for weird issues is much better than google's. For the most part, this is a safe and fast usage of it, because any fix is going to be tested to see if it works, so checking for validity is built into the loop.

I also use it to help me learn programming languages. I tell it in advance: do not do any programming for me; give me general examples only, do not use the project I'm working on and accidentally do the work for me; no compliments; provide links to source documentation when possible. As a tutor, it can be extremely powerful because again, validity checking is built-in. It's generally more readable than the official documentation, if I need more examples, I can ask for them. I try the new thing I've learned, and if it doesn't work, I go back and check the source documentation to see where things have gone wrong. I ask it later to come up with exercises and test questions so I can make sure I've learned what I thought I learned.

None of this is particularly difficult to learn, obviously. If you're a programmer, it shouldn't take you long to work out how it can best support you without turning you into a mindless typist that requests it to spit semi-working code back at you.

It isn't an essential tool by any means, but if you're interested in LEARNING things, it can certainly help you do that. I think people that use it the way I do will ultimately come out ahead of the people that get it to do the work for them. I'll always be able to work independently, but also I can say that I 'learned' AI.

Then you would be wrong. Probably best to recuse yourself from weighing in on this dicsussion.

Good drip coffee really just amounts to something automating the pourover process, IMO. I'm with you, I've never had good drip coffee of the type that most people are talking about.

I read the Guardian summary article, but I guess I missed the link to the full article. It sounds like the experimental setup is just bad coffee being compared against bad coffee, as I was guessing. Thanks!

Housing is a human right is an acknowledgment that humans need shelter to survive, and as a society we should attempt to provide the requirements for life at a basic level. I'm not asking for a lot here: I think governments SHOULD provide basic housing—nobody's trying to take anyone else's private property here, I don't know why you jumped to that conclusion—but if they don't, they shouldn't be tearing down encampments where people have built their own basic housing. Nobody's labour was appropriated, and yet those people are left with nowhere to go and no protection from the weather. Abjectly immoral. If governments are going to tear down encampments, then THEY'RE the ones destroying personal property and should be REQUIRED to house those people.

I didn't say that it requires the labour of others, just that it's a right. If your government doesn't provide it, it should at least not stop you from providing it for yourself.

But I do believe that societies that are moral should provide housing for people that need it. That's basically what society exists for. If we can't provide for the least of us with such abundance, why are we even here?

Yes, housing is a right. If the government can't provide it, it shouldn't be allowed to stop you from providing your own. So if you buy a tent and pitch it somewhere so you don't die, that is a fundamental human right. People need shelter to not die.

IF your government is in the business of protecting human rights, it should provide housing, but at the very least, it cannot deny housing if you can provide it yourself.

I'm not in favour of these weird dumpster-diving rules either. Food that could be used to feed people going to waste for NO REASON other than profits. That's insanely fucked up. I will not defend a system like that. Food is ABSOLUTELY a human right. And again, if the government isn't going to provide it, it should not stand in the way of you making or acquiring it for yourself. You should be able to hunt wild game, collect fruits, garden, whatever. Depriving people of food to protect one someone else has THROWN AWAY is so obviously immoral I cannot even believe it happens.

lol uh you think backup companies only have your data only in one place? This would be like you thinking your favorite pizza place doesn't know what a tomato is

Go learn about raid or something

People COMPLAIN about the cost, but they do nothing about it. Case in point: pickup trucks are almost never used as pickup trucks. 70+% of people with pickups don't tow with them or use the bed for more than a car trunk could provide. Trucks are enormously expensive and even when gas is expensive, people still buy them.

We had a carbon tax here in BC and I think it worked a bit, but I still saw an enormous number of trucks on the road during that time. People just blame the government and don't change their behaviours much. People that do change were probably already going to.

I don't think that means giving up on carbon taxes; if nothing else, they're a good source of revenue and can be used for other green initiatives. Even if you make them carbon neutral, it's a good way to transfer money from polluters to non-polluters.

The story isn't clear and I haven't been able to find a link to the actual study yet.

If 'drip' is really just coffee from a coffee machine, this is easy to believe, since coffee made for most coffee machines is going to be cheap garbage. Does it include Nespresso machines and the like?

I assume they're not talking about espresso or Americanos, nor pourovers or French Presses. The language is too vague here.

If I grind fresh beans and put them in a high-end drip coffee maker, like a Technivorm, I'm pretty sure people will be able to tell the difference between that and instant, and I'd be able to find something that they enjoy.

So yeah, garbage coffee compared to a different way to brew garbage coffee isn't really revealing much.

Housing is a human right, and the pricing is relatively inelastic (particularly right now) even before landlords collude to price fix. So it's a pretty different situation than Walmart figuring out what the optimal price for tomato paste is.

But also, this is just straight-up price fixing, and we don't let gas stations do it either.

That's not what's happening. That's never what happens. Any time someone uses an ai chat bot as part of their work, they immediately turn into drooling idiots.

Yeah, who needs a chatbot when you can make unqualified claims as statements of fact. You don't even need citations, such as the ones you're claiming (without citation) they make up. (Which just to be clear, they do, a certain amount, although a casual interpretation of your words suggests you're implying "always".)

Look, there are lots of problems with LLMs, but I find it amusing to watch people launch into "what I say is true, because I said it, and it sounds true to me" when talking about LLMs being sources of inaccurate information.

Do I think 20% of 7% of their trade surplus is a massive blow to their economy? No, I don't, because I can do basic math. The rest of your post is full of the same dumb shit you cusco of, although nobody can accuse you of not being a team player. Enjoy the ride, I guess.

"This is Chinese propaganda"

Do a quick self-learn. The amount of solar panels China was selling to the US before exports was only around 20% of their total solar module exports. Their total solar exports are only about 7% of their total intl trade surplus. They sell as much capacity to Europe in a year as the US has installed *total, nationally*.

I'm not arguing they don't care about loss of business to the US, obviously it impacts them.

But watching the US self-elect to fall farther behind, checking of boxes down a veritable "how to" list of losing US hegemony is far more valuable to them.

In that sense - maybe it is propaganda, but reverse psychology style, because you're doing the lord's work for them.