“Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect: […] like a physician, who hath found out an infallible medicine, after the patient is dead.” —Jonathan Swift

  • 46 Posts
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Joined 10 months ago
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Cake day: July 25th, 2024

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  • Dude, I’m sorry, I just don’t know how else to tell you “you don’t know what you’re talking about”. I’d refer you to Chapter 20 of Goodfellow et al.'s 2016 book on Deep Learning, but 1) it tragically came out a year before transformer models, and 2) most of it will go over your head without a foundation from many previous chapters. What you’re describing – generative AI training on generative AI ad infinitum – is a death spiral. Literally the entire premise of adversarial training of generative AI is that for the classifier to get better, you need to keep funneling in real material alongside the fake material.

    You keep anthropomorphizing with “AI can already understand X”, but that betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what a deep learning model is: it doesn’t “understand” shit about fuck; it’s an unfathomably complex nonlinear algebraic function that transforms inputs to outputs. To summarize in a word why you’re so wrong: overfitting. This is one of the first things you’ll learn about in a ML class, and it’s what happens when you let a model train on the same data over and over again forever. It’s especially bad for a classifier to be overfitted when it’s pitted against a generator, because a sufficiently complex generator will learn how to outsmart the overfitted classifier and it will find a cozy little local minimum that in reality works like dogshit but outsmarts the classifier which is its only job.

    You really, really, really just fundamentally do not understand how a machine learning model works, and that’s okay – it’s a complex tool being presented to people who have no business knowing what a Hessian matrix or a DCT is – but please understand when you’re talking about it that these are extremely advanced and complex statistical models that work on mathematics, not vibes.


  • Your analogy simply does not hold here. If you’re having an AI train itself to play chess, then you have adversarial reinforcement learning. The AI plays itself (or another model), and reward metrics tell it how well it’s doing. Chess has the following:

    1. A very limited set of clearly defined, rigid rules.
    2. One single end objective: put the other king in checkmate before yours is or, if you can’t, go for a draw.
    3. Reasonable metrics for how you’re doing and an ability to reasonably predict how you’ll be doing later.

    Here’s where generative AI is different: when you’re doing adversarial training with a generative deep learning model, you want one model to be a generator and the other to be a classifier. The classifier should be given some amount of human-made material and some amount of generator-made material and try to distinguish it. The classifier’s goal is to be correct, and the generator’s goal is for the classifier to pick completely randomly (i.e. it just picks on a coin flip). As you train, you gradually get both to be very, very good at their jobs. But you have to have human-made material to train the classifier, and if the classifier doesn’t improve, then the generator never does either.

    Imagine teaching a 2nd grader the difference between a horse and a zebra having never shown them either before, and you hold up pictures asking if they contain a horse or a zebra. Except the entire time you just keep holding up pictures of zebras and expecting the child to learn what a horse looks like. That’s what you’re describing for the classifier.


    • I’ve shown you how The Guardian has quoted a statement from the police about the Tesla incendiary to the exact same effect. So “it sure does feel like a pattern” sure feels a lot like bullshit you made up with no evidence.
    • After an FBI statement called it an “intentional act of terrorism”, the Guardian article now references this three separate times (I think this was changed like a few hours after you wrote your comment).
    • You’re making up a ridiculous strawman about colloquial versus technical terminology, where in reality domestic terrorism’s legal definition is how it’s used colloquially. You did read what I linked, right? Four hours after the bombing, where was the evidence the police were supposed to present showing it was terrorism in the colloquial sense? That it happened at a fertility clinic? Did you play Ace Attorney and think “Now that’s how we should do detective work”?
    • “be[ing] very carefully precise with language” is 1) exactly what the police should be doing and consequently 2) exactly what any reputable newspaper should be reporting in the immediate aftermath absent additional sources, and 3) not even what was happening here; if you think not throwing around “terrorism” in the immediate aftermath of a bombing where the perpetrator is dead is “very carefully precise”, then I hope high school essays and forum posts are the extent of your writing. If you want sensationalist bullshit, don’t rag on good outlets; go to Newsweek and consume your slop.
    • Not at all what sealioning is.

    I don’t know what you want except to make yourself look like a jackass who can’t learn from their mistake when gracefully given the opportunity.



  • Didn’t this just happen less than four hours ago? And ostensibly the perpetrator is dead? The police aren’t lawyers and have more leeway with what they accuse people of (let alone a dead(?) person), but domestic terrorism has a specific criminal definition. In four hours, the police have responded, gotten people to safety, made sure the attacker was dead(?) and there were no others, and started to investigate the scene. And you surmise that during that investigation, they’ve so far found compelling evidence this person whose corpse(?) may not even be identified yet was motivated by one of the intentions in Criterion B?

    Also, who’s “they” who very actively came out with terrorism first? Trump and Musk? Because literally of course the fascists did. I’d like to see what the police said in the first few hours of those attacks. Moreover, why do you want to whataboutism to alleged bad police behavior elsewhere to explain why the police should behave badly here?


    Edit: here’s how The Guardian covered a story about an incendiary device at a Tesla dealership two months ago. Notice how it’s fascist Trump mouthpiece Pam Bondi talking about “terrorism” so immediately, while the police statement mentions nothing of the sort.

    “On Monday, March 24, 2025, at approximately 8.04am, Austin police department (APD) officers responded to a found/abandoned hazardous call at the Tesla dealership located at 12845 N US 183 Hwy SVRD NB,” Austin police department said in a statement shared with CBS Austin.

    “When officers arrived on scene, they located suspicious devices and called the APD bomb squad to investigate. The devices, which were determined to be incendiary, were taken into police custody without incident. This is an open and ongoing investigation, and there is no further information available for release at this time.”


  • They’re happy to call it an intentional act of violence, so they’ve ruled out a lot of the explanations for an exploding car.

    That’s Criterion A and the first part of Criterion B* of domestic terrorism. There are three criteria, and the second part of Criterion B is the hardest.

    The bar for “terrorism” is pretty low - they charged an Atlanta student with is for tossing bottles of water and dry ice out his window.

    The bar for terrorism is as defined in what I just linked, and specifically Criterion B is where most of the uncertainty would lie.

    Regardless, it’s definitely a journalistic choice whether to quote the police lieutenant’s very careful, and possibly technical statement, or to quote the business owner (Musk) or US President speculating.

    The Guardian is a UK-based center-left newspaper with a generally good track record of journalistic integrity. Yes, quoting the police lieutenant is a choice here, because it’s the correct one. They currently have the most information about the situation. This isn’t rhetorical, I genuinely don’t understand: do you want them quoting Trump’s unhinged rant about this bombing that I don’t think he’s even put out yet?

    And maybe it just turns out that it’s carefully ethical journalists reporting on potential right-wing violence, and usually unethical hacks reporting on possible attacks on the corporatocracy, but it sure does feel like a pattern.

    Dude, it’s The Guardian. Here’s how they recently covered Tesla dealerships if you care to explain how it’s biased compared to this story.


    * By “first part of”, I mean the phrase “appears to be intended”. What it appears to be intended to do is the hard part.




  • Uhh… yeah, goddamn. The Daily Beast citing the Daily Mail as their source is really something. Not only do we not use them as a source on Wikipedia, and not only was this the first source ever to be deprecated there in this way because of how egregious they are, but we don’t even allow their online historical archives because they’ve been caught faking those too.

    The Daily Mail isn’t a rag; it’s sewage. It single-handedly motivated the idea that there are sources bad enough that Wikipedia just prohibits their usage everywhere (except in rare cases in an about-self fashion, but I don’t know if editors would even trust that anymore). The Daily Beast isn’t the pinnacle of credible journalism, but it isn’t abysmal either.


    Edit: sorry, here’s a source instead of just “my source is that I made it the fuck up.”






  • blame will still be placed on the war.

    Yes, it will, and to a large extent rightly so. I’d hope you understand that this insane fucking whiplash means the following:

    1. Logistics have been made more complicated and therefore expensive.
    2. Some companies have probably already made expensive changes based on this that can no longer be turned back.
    3. Companies (especially small businesses) now feel like they have to “make hay while the Sun shines”, i.e. make money while Trump isn’t tarrifing our biggest source of imports at a gajillity-billion percent. This way they don’t go bankrupt the next time Trump decides to collapse the economy from his phone on the toilet. (EDIT: And to be clear, Trump himself is explicitly saying he will 90 days from now. No remotely stable business is going to say "oh, okay, we’ll just make all of our financial decisions based on this three-month window of quasi-normalcy and not account for the indefinite period of fuckery that’s all but certain to follow.)
    4. Consumers (correctly) being worried over this means they’re (correctly) less likely to buy product. If businesses want to stay in business, they either need to downsize or sell each item for more.
    5. EDIT: China also isn’t our only trading partner. Exorbitant new tariffs on other countries still exist and still massively impact prices.

    I’m 100% certain there are things I’m failing to consider here. Trump moved past the point on the curve where deformation can be considered elastic.


  • >try all the OS out there

    >person you’re responding to is suggesting they try the other one of the two top DEs for Linux desktop before leading with “Linux Is Already Broken Before You Even Start”

    This is a ridiculous strawman. I empathize with them and want to see accessibility improve (it’s something I do in the project I work on even though you wouldn’t conventionally expect that blind people can use it). If you’re going to talk in such broad terms about the Linux desktop, not just your specific distro/DE, the onus is on you to at minimum try GNOME and KDE. Instead they chose GNOME and MATE, the latter of which is barely maintained and has effectively zero relevance outside of users who abandoned GNOME ages ago during GTK3 or people whose hardware makes the Atari 2600 look like a supercomputer (it looks like the former here). It’s not 2017 anymore; Ubuntu with GNOME isn’t some near-universal Linux desktop experience. I’m not telling them “nooooo just try my specific config for NixOS bro I promise Linux isn’t that bad”.

    This isn’t even to say that KDE will be better; I don’t know, which is why I wish they covered it. If KDE is also bad, then this is a stronger argument that Linux desktop contributors need more awareness of and focus on accessibility. If it’s just mediocre, KDE devs can see it and learn how to improve. If it’s good, then GNOME and MATE devs have a lesson in how they can improve.

    I don’t expect anyone to exhaust every DE on every distro, but when the userbase is so firmly concentrated around GNOME and KDE, I expect you to at minimum include KDE (let alone if you include MATE). You don’t have to, but I’m free to criticize your essay if you have such a massive hole in it. If you don’t want to try KDE, literally just find+replace “Linux” to “GNOME/MATE” and solve the problem that way.



  • It’s less that the arguments “aren’t that great” (they’re actually quite compelling) and more that vegans are constantly presented with the same bad-faith or grossly misinformed arguments over and over again. I think the idea of having pre-baked responses is fucking stupid and don’t use them, but as 99% of non-vegans use the same pre-baked arguments that have been factually debunked millions of times, I don’t blame anyone who chooses to do use the same tactic (except of course that these pre-baked responses actually make sense). “The non-vegans started it”, so to speak.

    The idea of “ChatTFA” sickens me to my core, though, to a point where I considered removing this post before deciding it’s not technically misinformation; it’s just recommending misinformation. It’s really gross to suggest that people use it and only hurts veganism by making people who practice it mis/underinformed and making the people who might come to better understand it turned off when they realize the “person” they’re talking to is a shitty LLM.


  • Why pay for anything ever if it’s going to potentially get taken away?

    Because it’s called “lifetime”? As in the entire point of the product is that it will not ever be taken away with the exception that you close your account? “Why pay for anything if there’s nothing enforcing the core premise of the product?” The gardener advertised a “whole-yard mow” for $100, but I’ve already gotten the area around the driveway, and honestly would it really be that bad if they just stopped right now?

    You can talk about odds all you want (although I think around $100 million in VC funding puts those odds squarely in favor of “lifetime” users getting the floor sawed out from under them Looney Tunes-style), but the fact it’s even possible is what’s deeply disturbing, because it’s deliberate. Lifetime’s meaning should be unambiguously stipulated in a contract, not inferred. Know why? Because companies out there advertising “lifetime” subscriptions right now have little disclaimers like “approximately five years or so but honestly we don’t really know or care lol this license disappears whenever we want it to”).

    People are assuming it’s for the lifetime of your Plex account, but my response is: based on fucking what? Plex on their website doesn’t seem to specify this anywhere, even in their terms of service. People asking on their official forums receive responses saying things like “probably for the lifetime of your Plex account” with no sources to anything. I’m not trying to sealion here; I literally can’t find a single instance of Plex stating officially in writing or verbally what “lifetime” actually means to the end user. If Plex isn’t going to rugpull, why can’t they add a couple sentences to their TOS saying something like: “The purchase of a lifetime pass grants the user a non-transferable license for [blah blah] starting from the date of purchase. This license will not be revoked unless 1) the associated account is terminated by the account holder or 2) the aasociated account is terminated by Plex for one or more of the reasons outlined in section [blah]”?

    They could, they should, they don’t, and you have no good explanation, otherwise you would’ve offered one by now. They have enough money to afford a legal team that wouldn’t overlook that. The answer is that they want to reserve the right to destroy the “lifetime” pass whenever they want. If you can find official documentation from Plex Inc. saying that if I buy a lifetime pass today for $250, the license will only end with the termination of the account, then I’ll have no idea why they make this too hard to find, but I’ll take back everything else I said in this comment and stop using “lifetime” in scare quotes. I genuinely want to know if they say anything about this anywhere.


  • Another reason donating to FOSS is better than paying for proprietary software. Proprietary software devs get to run around stealing whatever code they like from the open-source community and never suffer any consequence because they don’t make their source available. I can think of a select few proprietary projects that have the balls to be source-available.

    If you want to intentionally create a system that lets you evade accountability for stealing code, “fine”, but I have zero respect for you or your product, and I’m certainly not paying you a dime. I’ll put my money toward the developers who work to better the world instead of the rat fucks who steal from them to make money and pollute the software ecosystem with proprietary trash.


  • You literally said you have Plex pass in the other comment, why are you playing dumb?

    They care about the people who don’t have a “lifetime” pass? Having empathy for others who don’t have what you have, caring about the ethics of a company whose products you use and pay for, and taking a stance that software should be as free and open as possible aren’t “playing dumb”. If anything, as someone who isn’t just using Plex for free, they’ve earned more of a right to complain, because they’ve shown they’re willing to pay for quality services but think this one is exploitative.

    Maybe even disregarding empathy, they’re worried that existing features will become locked behind a tier that the “lifetime” pass doesn’t apply to? Maybe they’re worried that their “lifetime” pass won’t be so “lifetime” if “lifetime” wasn’t explicitly defined to mean lifetime at the time of purchase? Anything bad that can happen will happen with VC-fueled enshittification.


  • I also want to emphasize that relicensing from the GPLv2 to something proprietary is damn-near impossible for a project this large with a team who are so ideologically motivated to make FOSS. If I today submit a PR to the Jellyfin codebase, they can’t legally relicense to a proprietary license without 1) getting my consent to give them ownership of my work (I’m not likely to be paid off or convinced it’s a good thing that work I submitted for free is being enshittified), or 2) removing my work from the project if they can’t get in touch with me or if I say no. To emphasize: this consent is affirmative.

    Thus, the process is to survey who’s contributed to the project, reach out to anyone whose work is still in the project (preferably in writing in a permanent, court-admissable format like email), ask them to transfer ownership of their copyright to you, keep track of who’s said no, said yes, or not answered, fulfill conditions for anyone who wants something in return, and meticulously rip out all of the code from people who say “no” or don’t answer. One of the project’s major contributors died 10 years ago? Legally, too fucking bad: they didn’t relinquish shit to you. Rip out that legacy code and start over.

    Just like for instance if you want to take a Wikipedia article and own it for yourself, you can’t just go ask the Wikimedia Foundation nicely. You have to contact every single contributor whose work is extant in that article, and rip out work that isn’t explicitly given to you by its owner.