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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 16th, 2023

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  • I hate TikTok but I hate even more that the ban seems to have been successful this time because of Israel. Lots of people (Romney, etc) have said that TikTok must be banned because it’s the reason why young people don’t support Israel’s genocide.

    I don’t like CCP propaganda being fed to Americans, but let’s be real, CCP propaganda about Israel is way more honest than domestic American propaganda.

    While I’m on the subject, Facebook, Google, etc, are pretty near equally as evil.




  • I read Chris Webber’s essay and I kinda agree. Bluesky is really just another twitter.

    That being said I think we are entering into an era of diversification, not perhaps how we would like (through federation) but rather, through people understanding finally that the platform itself is making a choice in what kind of content it serves. We used to have this idea that the platform was just a “neutral third party” like a phone company. But in fact, it’s a publisher with its own editorial line. It pushes that line through algorithms and what voices it wants to amplify or suppress.

    As people understand this more, they are going to be much more critical of not just “the media” but also “the platform” and why it chose to show that media to its audience.






  • An important characteristic of a model is “stability.” Stability means that small changes in input produce small changes in output.

    Stability is important for predictability. For instance, suppose you want to make a customer support portal. You add a bot hoping that it will guide the user to the desired workflow. You test the bot by asking it a bunch of variations of questions, probably with some RLHF. But then when it goes to production, people will start asking it variations of questions that you didn’t test (guaranteed). What you want ideally, is that it will map the variants to the best workflow that matches what the customer wants. Second best would be to say “I don’t know.” But what we have are bots who will just generate some crazy off-the-wall crap, and no way to prevent it.


  • I saw this as the supposed plan:

    per WSJ: It may propose delaying Ukraine’s NATO membership for 20 years, establishing a 1,200 km demilitarized zone along the current front line, and leaving 20% of occupied Ukrainian territory under Russian control—while the U.S. would continue arms support under these conditions.

    The problem is, this isn’t an acceptable plan according to Russia. Russia has insisted that:

    1. Ukraine retreats from all of the oblasts that are currently partially occupied by Russia (Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia, and Kherson) as well as giving up claims to Crimea, and Russia takes ownership of everything without a fight
    2. Ukraine’s army is demobilized and Ukraine is demilitarized
    3. Ukraine is banned from joining any international organization, not just NATO (so no EU for instance)
    4. Ukraine receives no more military aid fro the west.

    Trump is going to find out that you can’t unilaterally declare peace.