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Transmission Control📡

@protocol6.lonecoder.com

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Coder★Engineer★Scientist Information Theory, Cryptography, Computational Intelligence & Physics Tauist and devout ignostic (not a typo) a.k.a. Kashinki (Twitch/XBox/Steam/Discord), @TcpProtocol they/them 🚫🍊🤡

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Transmission Control📡 @protocol6.lonecoder.com · Dec 20

Just a little reminder that the idea at the core of LLMs isn't all that new.

An illustration of The Engine from Jonathan Swift's 1726 book Gulliver's Travels showing a grid of moveable words on a table with iron handles for each row and column. Beside it is a quote from the book:

The Engine
"Every one knew how laborious the usual method is of attaining to arts and sciences; whereas, by his contrivance, the most ignorant person, at a reasonable charge, and with a little bodily labour, might write books in philosophy, poetry, politics, laws, mathematics, and theology, without the least assistance from genius or study."
— Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels, 1726

Not included in the image, the book further describes The Engine and its operation in some detail:

He then led me to the frame, about the sides, whereof all his pupils stood in ranks. It was twenty feet square, placed in the middle of the room. The superfices was composed of several bits of wood, about the bigness of a die, but some larger than others. They were all linked together by slender wires. These bits of wood were covered, on every square, with paper pasted on them; and on these papers were written all the words of their language, in their several moods, tenses, and declensions; but without any order. The professor then desired me “to observe; for he was going to set his engine at work.” The pupils, at his command, took each of them hold of an iron handle, whereof there were forty fixed round the edges of the frame; and giving them a sudden turn, the whole disposition of the words was entirely changed. He then commanded six-and-thirty of the lads, to read the several lines softly, as they appeared upon the frame; and where they found three or four words together that might make part of a sentence, they dictated to the four remaining boys, who were scribes. This work was repeated three or four times, and at every turn, the engine was so contrived, that the words shifted into new places, as the square bits of wood moved upside down.

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Transmission Control📡 @protocol6.lonecoder.com · 23h

Seems like there might be room for a "just add water" gel that you mix in a reusable squeeze bottle, though.

Transmission Control📡 @protocol6.lonecoder.com · 23h

What are your thoughts on gels? Seem easier to dispense. Also less potential for making a mess. And you'd think they'd have a head start over powder, being pre-dissolved. But obviously there's increased shipping costs and emissions.

Transmission Control📡 @protocol6.lonecoder.com · 1d

What's with the Tribune's factually incorrect headline? The story gets it right but the headline is just wrong.

Transmission Control📡 @protocol6.lonecoder.com · 2d

Labeling this a story really should be false advertising if it isn't already.

Transmission Control📡 @protocol6.lonecoder.com · 3d

Not unless you recorded all the information about the air spaces in detail and stored that. Your inference about the general shape of an idealize uncompressed chicken burger will never be a perfect reconstruction.

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Transmission Control📡 @protocol6.lonecoder.com · 3d

What you are describing is perceptual compression, which is lossy.

Transmission Control📡 @protocol6.lonecoder.com · 4d

Close. Lemme see you decompress it fully.

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Transmission Control📡 @protocol6.lonecoder.com · 6d

Given the apparent imminent death of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, it seems like it'd be far cheaper and easier just to revive the old General Atomics/USAF/NASA Project Orion.

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Transmission Control📡 @protocol6.lonecoder.com · 6d

What, you don't want a $20k personal robot that can't quite do that yet on its own but someone in India will happily drive it for you via remote control while the company uses that as training data to replace them?

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Transmission Control📡 @protocol6.lonecoder.com · 6d

Yes, but if it has been instructed to tamp down on misinformation on a topic, if you ask any followups it'll gaslight you and deny what it just found until you ask it to search again. Around and around you go.

Transmission Control📡 @protocol6.lonecoder.com · 6d

I had a similar experience with ChatGPT. It kept alternating between giving sources saying it happened and vehemently denying it was real and saying there were were no credible sources. It was full on gaslighting me. It felt like they instructed it early on and failed to remove the instruction.

Transmission Control📡 @protocol6.lonecoder.com · 7d

Tase 5
Sugar Rabies

Transmission Control📡 @protocol6.lonecoder.com · 7d

I'm more worried about AI MARTINO.

Transmission Control📡 @protocol6.lonecoder.com · 8d

Mathematicians redefine operators all the time. More by analogy than strict properties. I mean, is modular addition still addition? It doesn't follow all the rules of integer addition. What about elliptic curve point addition, which behaves the same as modular addition but works very differently.

Transmission Control📡 @protocol6.lonecoder.com · 8d

I think they can be if you can define a consistent, deterministic rule for combination?

Transmission Control📡 @protocol6.lonecoder.com · 11d

Could have been worse. There was a lawsuit against Google a couple years ago after a guy drowned when directed down a dark abandoned road with a bridge that had washed out 9 years earlier. People had been reporting it as a hazard to Google for years and they never did anything to fix the map.

Transmission Control📡 @protocol6.lonecoder.com · 12d

How is "No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice" even remotely ambiguous?

Transmission Control📡 @protocol6.lonecoder.com · 12d

There's the other little problem that if you give money to the government, it has to go to the Treasury and nobody can legally spend money from the Treasury without it being appropriated first by Congress.

Transmission Control📡 @protocol6.lonecoder.com · 12d

So a check was given to the Treasury and now Congress still has to appropriate it?

Transmission Control📡 @protocol6.lonecoder.com · 21d

Microsoft seems to think it's a serious warning sign of a mental health crisis if you consider leaving Windows.

Transmission Control📡 @protocol6.lonecoder.com · Oct 5

Cursor seems like a major safety issue to me. Particularly around hot-reloaded code. It will edit things without your permission, save them to disk and only then ask you if you want to undo the changes it already made. Your entire system could crash before you can hit the undo. Or worse.

Transmission Control📡 @protocol6.lonecoder.com · Sep 30

I don't think the appropriate answer to the Hitler Youth is starting a Hindenburg Youth.

Transmission Control📡 @protocol6.lonecoder.com · Jul 21

Is the bit we can't see on fire?

Transmission Control📡 @protocol6.lonecoder.com · Jul 14

Err.. Lost in Austen, of course.

Transmission Control📡 @protocol6.lonecoder.com · Jul 14

What about the weird/fun ones like Lost in Asten (2008), the ITV 4-part miniseries? It's a portal fantasy adaptation of Pride and Prejudice.

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