This screams FAITH (Filthy Assumptions Instead of THinking) from a distance, on multiple levels:

1. Assuming that the current machine learning development will lead to artificial general intelligence. Will it?
2. Assuming that said AGI would appear in time to reduce power consumption. Will it?
3. Assuming that lowering the future power consumption will be enough to address issues caused by the current power consumption. Will it?
4. Assuming that addressing issues from a distant future means that the whole process won’t cause harm for people in a nearer future. Will it?

Furthermore, Gates in the quote is being disingenuous:

“Let’s not go overboard on this,” he said. “Datacenters are, in the most extreme case, a 6 percent addition [to the energy load] but probably only 2 to 2.5 percent. The question is, will AI accelerate a more than 6 percent reduction? And the answer is: certainly,” Gates said.

The answer addresses something far, far more specific than the main issue.

If I may, here’s my alternative solution for the problem, in the same style as Gates’:

Kill everyone between the North Pole and the Equator.

What do you mean, it would kill 85% people in the world? Well, you can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs, right? Nobody that I know personally lives there, so Not My Problem®. (Just keep Japan, I need my anime to watch.)

…I’m being clearly sarcastic to deliver a point here - it’s trivially easy to underestimate issues affecting humankind, and problems associated with their solutions, if you are not directly affected by either. Gates is some billionaire bubbled around rich people; this sort of problem will affect the poor first, as the rich can simply throw enough money into their problems to make them go away.

Jet lag is the hell of a drug. And not a fun one.

More like the straw that broke the camel’s back. And a sign that Microsoft’s behaviour is still the same as it was in IE times.

I know that this expression desensitises people to something serious, but it describes Microsoft - the “it”/corporation - perfectly: rapist mentality. It shows how eager Microsoft is to disregard consent, users saying “no, I don’t want it”, and to force itself over the users as long as it gets some benefit out of it.

Including new obnoxious advertisement slots into an already released product - one that you paid for - is only a result of that mentality.

I thought about this a while ago. My conclusion was that the simplest way to handle this would be to copy multireddits, and expand upon them.

Here’s how I see it working.

Users can create multireddits multicommunities multis as they want. What goes within a multi is up to the user; for example if you want to create a “myfavs” multi with !potatoism, !illegallysmolcats and !anime_art, you do you.

The multi owner can:

1. edit it - change name, add/remove comms to/from the multi
2. make the multi public or private
3. use the multi as their feed, instead of Subscribed/Local/All
4. use the multi to bulk subscribe, unsub, or block comms

By default a multi would be private, and available only for the user creating it. However, you can make it public if you want; this would create a link for that multi, available for everyone checking your profile. (Or you could share it directly.)

You can use someone else’s public multi as your feed or to bulk subscribe/unsub/block comms. You can also “fork” = copy it; that would create an identical multi associated with your profile, that then you can edit.

Is it? [coherent]

Yes when it comes to the relevant info. The anaphoric references are all over the place; he, her, she, man*, they all refer to the same fossil.

*not quite an anaphoric reference, I know. I’m still treating it as one.

I can only really guess whether they’re talking about one or two subjects here.

It’s clearly one. Dated to be six years old, of unknown sex, nicknamed “Tina”.

Why does it show someone cared for the mother as well?

This does not show lack of coherence. Instead it shows the same as the “is it?” from your comment: assuming that a piece of info is clear by context, when it isn’t. [This happens all the time.]

That said, my guess (I’ll repeat for emphasis: this is a guess): I think that this shows that they cared for the mother because, without doing so, the child would’ve died way, way earlier.

That all reads like bad AI writing to me.

I genuinely don’t think so.

Modern LLMs typically don’t leave sentence fragments like “on the territory of modern Spain. Years ago.” They’re consistent with anaphoric references, even when they don’t make sense in the real world. And they don’t screw up with prepositions, like switching “in” with “on”. All those errors are typically human.

On the other hand, LLMs fail hard on a discursive level. They don’t know the topic (in this case, the fossil). At least this error is not present here.

Based on that I think that a better explanation for why this text is so poorly written is “CBA”. The author couldn’t be arsed to review it. Myself wrote a lot of shit like this when drunk, sleepy, or in a rush.

I’ll go a step further and say that the author likely speaks more than one language, and they were copying this stuff from some site in another language that has grammatical gender. I’m saying this because it explains why the anaphoric references are all over the place.

The article is coherent (it conveys the relevant info without contradicting itself) albeit poorly written. Most likely the result of someone getting really sloppy while writing it, perhaps sleep-deprived. But it doesn’t read like AI stuff, nor a translation - cue to “Cova Negra cave” (lit. “Black Cave cave”).

Those mistakes would be easily solved by something that doesn’t even need to think. Just add a filter of acceptable orders, or hire a low wage human who does not give a shit about the customers special orders.

That wouldn’t address the bulk of the issue, only the most egregious examples of it.

For every funny output like “I asked for 1 ice cream, it’s giving me 200 burgers”, there’s likely tens, hundreds, thousands of outputs like “I asked for 1 ice cream, it’s giving 1 burger”, that sound sensible but are still the same problem.

It’s simply the wrong tool for the job. Using LLMs here is like hammering screws, or screwdriving nails. LLMs are a decent tool for things that you can supervision (not the case here), or where a large amount of false positives+negatives is not a big deal (not the case here either).

Next on the news: “Hitler ate bread.”

I’m being cheeky, but I don’t genuinely think that “Nazi are using a tool that is being used by other people” is newsworthy.

Regarding the blue octopus, mentioned in the end of the text: when I criticise the concept of dogwhistle, it’s this sort of shit that I’m talking about. I don’t even like Thunberg; but, unless there is context justifying the association of that octopus plushy with antisemitism, it’s simply a bloody toy dammit.

I’m not currently playing the game (lots to do and, well… it’s Cracktorio, you know), but I’m wondering about the impact of those changes on my typical playstyle. It’ll be probably neutral or positive.

The key here is that I only use the fluid mechanics for short-range transportation, and even then I’m likely to force a priority system through pumps; in the mid- or long-range, I’m using barrels all the time, even for intermediates.

Perhaps those changes will force me to revaluate the role of pipes, that would be a net positive. If they don’t, the changes will be simply neutral.

So Mint can perform the same role as a tablet

Yeah, you could argue that Mint allows that laptop to perform the same role as a tablet; it’s at most used for simple image edition, web browsing, and listening music through the SMB network (from my computer because hers has practically no storage).

Without a Linux distro the other options would be to “perform” as electronic junk or virus breeding grounds.

I keep seeing these posts and comments, trying to convince people This Is The Year of The Linux Desktop.

Drop off the strawman. That is neither what the author of the article said, nor what I did.

The rest of your comment boils down to you noisily beating that strawman to death, and can be safely disregarded as such.

To reinforce the author’s views, with my own experience:

I’ve been using Linux for, like, 20 years? Back then I dual booted it with XP, and my first two distros (Mandriva and Kurumin) are already discontinued. I remember LILO.

So I’m probably a programmer, right? …nope, my grads are Linguistics and Chemistry. And Linux didn’t make me into a programmer either, the most I can do is to pull out a 10 lines bash script with some websearch.

So this “Linux is for programmers” myth didn’t even apply to the 00s, let alone now.

You need a minimum of 8GB of RAM and a fairly recent CPU to do any kind of professional work at a non-jittery pace [in Windows]. This means that if you want to have a secondary PC or laptop, you’ll need to pay a premium for that too.

Relevant detail: Microsoft’s obsession with generative models, plus its eagerness to shove wares down your throat, will likely make this worse. (You don’t use Copilot? Or Recall? Who cares? It’ll be installed by default, running in the background~)

Linux, on the other hand, can easily boot up on a 10-year-old laptop with just 2GB of RAM, and work fine. This makes it the perfect OS for my secondary devices that I can carry places without worrying about accidental damage.

My mum is using a fossil like this. It has 4GB or so; it’s a bit slow but it works with an updated Mint, even if it wouldn’t with Windows 10.

Sure, you can delay an update [in Windows], but it’s just for five weeks.

I gave the link a check… what a pain. For reference, in Linux Mint, MATE edition:

That’s it. You click a button. It’s probably the same deal in other desktop environments.

By far, my biggest issue with flags in r/place and Canvas does not apply to a (like you said) 20x30. It’s stuff like this:

\

People covering and fiercely defending huge chunks of the canvas, for something that is completely unoriginal, repetitive, and boring. And yet it still gets a pass - unlike, say, The Void; everyone fights The Void.

Another additional issue that I have has to do with identity: the reason why we [people in general] “default” to a national flag, for identity, is because our media and governments bomb us with a nationalistic discourse, seeking to forge an identity that “happens” to coincide with that they want.

But, once we go past that, there are far more meaningful things out there to identify ourselves with - such as our cultures and communities, and most of the time they don’t coincide with the countries and their flags.

As such I don’t think that this is a discourse that we should promote, through the usage of the symbols associated with that discourse.

Maybe where you’re from it’s easy to separate your government flag as its own symbol that doesn’t represent real people

I think that this is more of a matter of worldview than where we’re from, given that some people in Brazil spam flags in a way that strongly resembles how they do it in USA.

I get what you’re saying; Lemmy is not Reddit, Lemmy is Lemmy.

However, I think that this mostly misses the point. The issue is not to copy neutral-to-positive features from Reddit; it’s to copy the negatives, or to fail to implement other positives.

I’m already preparing some simple art to do in the canvas. Nothing fancy, just a few (30px)² pictures. And if people make some Tux or distro logos I’m happy to help, too.

I just wish that people didn’t waste SO MUCH FUCKING SPACE with government flags in this sort of online game.

Yeah, it’s actually good. People use it even for trivial stuff nowadays; and you don’t need a pix key to send stuff, only to receive it. (And as long as your bank allows you to check the account through an actual computer, you don’t need a cell phone either.)

Perhaps the only flaw is shared with the Asian QR codes - scams are a bit of a problem, you could for example tell someone that the transaction will be a value and generate a code demanding a bigger one. But I feel like that’s less of an issue with the system and more with the customer, given that the system shows you who you’re sending money to, and how much, before confirmation.

I’m not informed on Tikkie and Klarna, besides one being Dutch and another Swedish. How do they work?

Brazil ended with a third system: Pix. It boils down to the following:

• The money receiver sends the payer either a “key” or a QR code.
• The payer opens their bank’s app and use it to either paste the key or scan the QR code.
• The payer defines the value, if the code is not dynamic (more on that later).
• Confirm the transaction. An electronic voucher is emitted.

The “key” in question can be your cell phone number, physical/juridical person registre number, e-mail, or even a random number. You can have up to five of them.

Regarding dynamic codes, it’s also possible to generate a key or QR code that applies to a single transaction. Then the value to be paid is already included.

Frankly the system surprised me. It’s actually good and practical; and that’s coming from someone who’s highly suspicious of anything coming from the federal government, and who hates cell phones. [insert old man screaming at clouds meme]

Thank you for the info. That’s… sad, really.

Any further than this and they’ll call you a conspiracy theorist.

I’m probably one now - it was inevitable to connect GNOME’s obtuseness to Red Hat violating the GPL. It sounds a lot like IBM trying to make its own operating system, lacking the means to do so, and exploiting open source to do it for them.

Do you have further info? That’s a thing that I’d like to dig further into - why GNOME went from “decent but heavy desktop environment” to “oh look «those guys» /me facepalms”.

Do you mind if I address this comment alongside your other reply? Both are directly connected.

I was about to disagree, but that’s actually really interesting. Could you expand on that?

If you want to lie without getting caught, your public submission should have neither the hallucinations nor stylistic issues associated with “made by AI”. To do so, you need to consistently review the output of the generator (LLM, diffusion model, etc.) and manually fix it.

In other words, to lie without getting caught you’re getting rid of what makes the output problematic on first place. The problem was never people using AI to do the “heavy lifting” to increase their productivity by 50%; it was instead people increasing the output by 900%, and submitting ten really shitty pics or paragraphs, that look a lot like someone else’s, instead of a decent and original one. Those are the ones who’d get caught, because they’re doing what you called “dumb” (and I agree) - not proof-reading their output.

Regarding code, from your other comment: note that some Linux and *BSD distributions banned AI submissions, like Gentoo and NetBSD. I believe it to be the same deal as news or art.