Thanks for all the suggestions and info. One thing to consider is that I’m physically disabled, and fooling around with swapping drives and whatnot is not something I really want to mess around with at this stage. (and yes, I used to be a tech, haha)

You’re not a fan of the stick idea, I take it? It seems like it would be a good, low-energy way for me to give Mint a test drive…

*ribbit!* *ribbit!*

You know there’s an extension you can add that blocks Gemini from search results, right?

However, if you’re truly that hand-wringingly concerned over this stuff, and don’t like DuckDuckGo (or whatever), there’s also a P2P search engine project, SearXNG: https://searx.space/

I’ve only seen that with Google. If the result is useful, then I’ll consider it. If not, then I’ll scroll past to the search results.

Google’s pure convenience, though. It’s been compromised for years, but does have a huge database. If I’m not finding what I want, then I’ll try something else.

Problem?

Constantly, yeah. But the idea that the potential is there and can theoretically be used against you at any time without you being able to stop it is the concern. What if there’s a backdoor, for example?

I’m not particularly paranoid, but to have an increasing number of devices & gadgets with this potential is naturally going to make a lot of people uncomfortable.

Yes, good points. Hallucination is common. LLM’s have a bias towards hallucination and taking shortcuts. Part of why I always try to err on the side of simple queries, as well as ask for sources on anything that looks promising.

Also, different LLM’s and different flavors of LLM’s can fetch considerably different results. Google’s built-in Gemini is still hilariously bad at times. Personally I usually use GPT, partly because it lets me program it in ways that stay global between sessions. Very helpful for getting it to stay on point and sober with the facts.

It’s not unlike curating one’s FV or Reddit feed-- you have to put in the work over time setting it up to best answer your particular needs.

I actually did get a new Win11 mini-PC last year to beat the Win10 deadline, and intended to get Linux set up as a dual-boot, but still haven’t gotten around to it yet.

The last time I tried to install Linux (loong time ago now) there were driver issues. I guess I’m scared that I’ll screw something up, and my backup PC is old and uncertain at this point.

Thanks for the extensive comment. I guess theoretically if I was going to get a Smart TV, I’d first look in to whatever surveillance it contained, and what my options were to disable such.

Methinks it would be a shame to lose out on internet connectivity.

I haven’t had a TV in years, so I’m kinda hazy on what the main concern of Smart TV’s would be. Are they recording you via camera and speaker, is that it? If so, is there a way to block that?

If it’s moreso that they’re gathering your watching habits, it’s hard for me to see that as alarming. Er, I think.

This kind of thing is just about my most frequent use-case in GPT. I find it generally very good for crafting complex searches, and it can go in steps, offering to search various types of archives as you direct it and redirect it.

The great thing is that you don’t have to fish around for just the right words, as with traditional search engines. Just explain in plain language, and away it goes.

EDIT: Rock on with the paranoid, anti-AI downvotes! 🙃

If I understand correctly, some (or most?) TV remotes now have mics built in. The stated aim is allegedly so that the user can quickly search something up without tediously typing, but the surveillance opportunity seems pretty glaring. A smaller extension of Smart TV’s, I guess.

Ah, maybe you have to do it in reverse order, then. It assumed you wanted to stop being owner but still be mod.

I’d go for the admin, then!

Are you the community owner? If not, then you might have to ask them to remove you.

If they’re inactive, then you’d want to contact an admin.

I wonder…

https://www.google.com/search?q=star+trek+devil+in+the+dark+"tunnels"&udm=2

Yeah I’m just kind of a rubbernecker here, but from the last couple articles I read, it sounds like group-wise they’re not remotely profitable yet. At the same time, in the States and I guess elsewhere, the data centers have been rammed through against local taxpayer objection, meaning that at least to some degree they and the state are going to be subsidizing the DC’s. Also being harmed by their irreplaceable aquifers being tapped.

Far as I know, Nestle is a big player in pulling that shit, and is arguably a benefitee of regularity capture, which naturally means a certain degree of politicians enriching themselves, ultimately paid for by taxpayers & sustainability. My point is that similar things do seem to be happening with LLM’s and their DC’s. So probably all that moves the profitability needle somewhat.

Btw, this particular chart of the author’s helped me understand some things:

Fascinating stuff, altho to me, like multiple articles all rolled in to one, which could easily double as a fairly high-level university course.

My take is that tools & tech indeed get normalised over time, with all kinds of assumptions and expectations built-in as time progresses, which can… lead to some pretty interesting or even catastrophic results, eventually. Like the Bronze Age collapse, perhaps, in which the breakdown of trade rather suddenly crippled multiple city-states, reeling them back to tools & tech from centuries or more earlier. In short, any tool can become a dangerous thing IMO, for a multitude of reasons.

I agree that calling an LLM ‘just a tool’ is both disingenuous and patently false. For me, it’s a kind of dream or fantasy tool that I never really thought would be developed to this extent, back when I was horsing around with stuff like Eliza and Racter. Later, when Deep Blue 2 beat Kasparov (debatably the greatest chess player of all time) almost 30yrs ago, things started to look a little different.

At this point, I’m curious if anyone here feels like critiquing my primary LLM usage. Before explaining, I also want to add that I’m fully on board with the idea that AI will turn out to be a global disaster in the end, and that it’s already been pretty horrible, for example in terms of killing jobs and building massive abominations that we so delightfully call “data centers.”

Personally, I use GPT on a near-daily basis to do complex searches and then pull the results together, saving me a load of time & effort. As someone with ME/CFS, that really is something super-valuable to me. Of course I’ve learned over time that GPT has its strengths and weaknesses, and loves to hallucinate and make fundamental errors when given the chance. To deal with that, I’ve built up something like ~20 global directives to help mitigate such behavior, and of course, sometimes GPT’s own baked-in programming will essentially ignore some of my directives. Still, part of the process as I see it of better understanding where it shines and where it’s most likely to crap the bed. TBH, I’m also pretty blown-away by how much better it’s gotten across only a year or two.

Am I wrong? :P

Upvote, but I think what would really help when posting deep or deep-ish research / thought-pieces is to excerpt some telling portion of the article in order to show us what you personally found interesting, as well as to share some key bit of interest from the piece.

Social media streams are so driveby-ish in nature that they’re heavily geared towards a quick look or impression of an image and or bit of text, that merely linking to something will tend to get less engagement (assuming that was the point). Even in a science sublemmy, I would think.

Just my driveby-ish 2¢.

BRB I’ve got an omelet to peel off my face!

He’s in a better place now

Lol… I like you in general, Skullgrid, but dude… get a grip, please. XD

you need to carry his torch

Which I’ve been doing, as I can. May I ask the same about your efforts, Mssr…?

Thanks for the reply. You know, when I think of “enshittification,” I usually think of it in the original sense, which I understand to be the capitalist milking of an idea / enterprise / product in order to extract additional profit, meanwhile cheapening it until it’s eventually little more than a useless, dried out husk. Sort of an Invasion of the Body-Snatchers thing, yeah?

In this case it seems like Rimu specifically explained why the vote-capping update was made and what it was for, which IIRC was to help prevent PF sites from getting bogged down with too much data to track, which can actually impact server performance. I.e., not for profit, but for sustainability. Perhaps a reminder that not every step forward in PF development is going to be positive for every user; some can indeed be annoying.

I mean, there are whole philosophies built around such existential group-lifting, right?

Anyway, what kind of vote-cap number would you actually be happy with? As a patron, this is something which I feel I could bring up with yon dev. I feel like it would actually be worth paying for if we could boost that number until it worked for both he and you.

I think I speak for everyone here when I say that we love your contributions, and I personally feel like they add a lot of value to the FV. Plus of course, I’d certainly rather see you contented here than annoyed with the project.

Okay, I hate to lurk, PJ, but I admit that every couple weeks I check to see if you’re still active on the FV, and I just caught the above. Yeah, and maybe that sucks that I can do so, because I don’t believe there’s a ‘privacy of content mode’ here yet, like on Reddit. No doubt coming soon, but still.

Cutting to the chase-- based on why you scaled things down here, may I ask you something?

If so, and based on Rimu insisting that there should be daily vote-capping for yadda-yadda technical reasons (implying that it absolutely has to be X number), what would you have been happy with as a compromise for X? Or was it moreso that you just hated the whole bloody concept and refused to cohabitate under such conditions?