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  • 2 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 7th, 2023

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  • If those words are connected to some automated system that can accept them as commands…

    For instance, some idiot entrepreneur was talking to me recently about whether it was feasible to put an LLM on an unmanned spacecraft in cis-lunar space (I consult with the space industry) in order to give it operational control of on-board systems based on real time telemetry. I told him about hallucination and asked him what he thinks he’s going to do when the model registers some false positive in response to a system fault… Or even what happens to a model when you bombard it’s long-term storage with the kind of cosmic particles that cause random bit flips (This is a real problem for software in space) and how that might change its output?

    Now, I don’t think anyone’s actually going to build something like that anytime soon (then again the space industry is full of stupid money), but what about putting models in charge of semi-autonomous systems here on earth? Or giving them access to APIs that let them spend money or trade stocks or hire people on mechanical Turk? Probably a bunch of stupid expensive bad decisions…

    Speaking of stupid expensive bad decisions, has anyone embedded an LLM in the ethereum blockchain and givien it access to smart contracts yet? I bet investors would throw stupid money at that…



  • We’re also using Forgejo for a small consulting team working on lots of different projects for a lot of different clients.

    A couple of our team members who came from a more complex and scaled environment (particularly our DevOps / SRE guy who’s worked at such places as LinkedIn and Snowflake) want to move us to Gitlab because it’s “more powerful” but I like Forgejo because it’s just super simple. Just does exactly what I need, doesn’t give me to many more options.

    We have

    • Projects segregated into teams, organized by client (so only those working on a specific client’s projects have access to their repos).
    • Able to invite clients and put them into the team for their project (we’ve had a couple clients that want that).
    • Able to automate deployments with webhooks (this was pretty easy to get working).

    One of our devs wanted to use Actions. It’s hard to get that working and (at least a month ago) there were warnings that Actons aren’t mature yet and are probably insecure (looks like that may have changed with the recent jump to Forgejo 8.0). I think it’s now a non issue for us though because we were like “Dude, stop trying to role your own CI/CD, that’s why we have two infrastructure people!”




  • This exact thing happened to one of my clients. And it sucked because they didn’t even register the domains with Ionos, they registered them with some other company that then got bought by Ionos. They were not technically savvy and didn’t understand what was happening until it was way too late. They lost about 8 domains closely associated with their business and with their CEO’s research.




  • I have a kid, I spent 10 years working with kids professionally, and I agree with this dude.

    In fact, lots of people, myself included, are drawn to leftist anarchism BECAUSE of lessons we learned about the failures of authoritarianism in school from parents and teachers. It’s always super annoying to see parents and teachers settling comfortably into an authoritarian role with their own kids, after hearing them wax emphatically about the effects of authoritarianism in adult society. I’m surrounded by hypocrites, and it’s not harmless. It’s like everybody either forget what it’s like to be kids, or think that the lessons of adulthood give them license to stop caring about those “little” problems, (and be fricken condescending in the process) when actually they just find it “easier” or it “feels safer” to them.

    I have friends who we’re excellent teachers, but left the school system in absolute despair because they went in intending to be collaborative, entertaining teachers and passionate advocates for the kids in their care… Only to run up against all the bureaucratic walls the education system throws up to prevent exactly that and create as much conformity as possible… And then the icing on the cake is the vast majority of parents who just don’t get it, Don’t even try to get it, Don’t listen, know what they know, their opinions are their opinions and talking to them is just effing hopeless.

    Whenever I’ve dealt with really difficult children, 9 times out of 10 you meet the parents and you’re like “Oh, this all makes sense!” (I can actually only think of three exceptions and two of those were clinical sociopaths). Or you go to work with a school (I’ve worked with and at dozens of schools) and you’re like “Oh, I understand why the kids from this school that I see in my program are always behaving in X, Y and Z dysfunctional ways. How is everyone this clueless and incompetent??” I have watched teachers utterly fail to teach or connect with the kids in their charge, and then watched those same teachers play politics and keep their positions while teachers who are doing a great job get let go (or forced out through social bs) because they want to ignore all that crap. I have had teachers come up to me when I’m running a program or event at their school and had them say “Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I saw the kids in your program and those are all the most difficult children we have!” And I’m like “these kids are fine! You’re an authoritarian in an authoritarian environment, aren’t you??”

    And I’m literally surrounded by adults who like think they know what they’re doing, and aren’t even trying to get it and MAN do they have opinions they want to share and it pisses me the fuck off.

    My kid creates super good boundaries, he emphasizes kindness in communication in ways I was totally unable to do it his age, he advocates for himself (and other kids) like someone a decade older, and if he’s on his phone in class, it’s because the teacher is failing to engage the class. End of discussion. When I see that situation, I’m almost always like “I could teach this class and these kids would not be on their phones, and I have the experience under my belt to prove it.” (And I have seen shit like that).