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Cake day: April 4th, 2025

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  • This is not surprising if you’ve studied anything on machine learning or even just basic statistics. Consider if you are trying to find out the optimal amount of a thickener to add to a paint formulation to get it to flow the amount you want. If you add it at 5%, then 5.1%, then 5.2%, it will he hard to see how much of the difference between those batches is due to randomness or measurement uncertainty than if you see what it does at 0%, then 25% then 50%. This is a principle called Design of Experiments (DoE) in traditional statistics, and a similar effect happens when you are training machine learning models- datapoints far outside the norm increase the ability of the model to predict within the entire model space (there is some nuance here, because they can become over-represented if care isn’t taken). In this case, 4chan shows the edges of the English language and human psychology, like adding 0% or 50% of the paint additives rather than staying around 5%.

    At least that’s my theory. I haven’t read the paper but plan to read it tonight when I have time. At first glance I’m not surprised. When I’ve worked with industrial ML applications, processes that have a lot of problems produce better training data than well controlled processes, and I have read papers on this subject where people have improved performance of their models by introducing (controlled) randomness into their control setpoints to get more training data outside of the tight control regime.









  • These have been a thing for a while but it wasn’t an LLM it was a video analyzer. I did exactly one interview like that 5 years ago and gave up halfway through the second video they wanted me to send in because the job sucked ass anyway in a shitty part of the country and I realized I was going to be miserable working there even if I got the job degrading myself like that. I ask terrified of getting laid off and having to enter the job market right now and deal with all these new ways companies are coming up with to degrade potential hires and waste their time


  • I don’t understand why some people are so obsessed with this and why they make comments like this. Like what’s the point? To be smug and act like you’re better because you know that it wasn’t actually Kool-Aid used in Jonestown? Do you think it’s actually a public service? Do you have some vested interest in Kool-Aid and feel the need to defend their good name? Let me let you in on a little secret- most people know it wasn’t actually Kool-Aid but was a competitor’s product. However, it doesn’t fucking matter because that’s not the saying. If you say “Oh Jim isn’t using toothpaste because he drank the flavor aid and thinks fluoride is government mind control” the person you’re talking to will just look at you weird. It’s like getting pissed off at someone saying “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush” by saying “uhuh well actshually the birds have the same monetary value regardless of whether they are located in a bush or in someone’s hand I am very smart”






  • Idk. I think gamers are overly upset about $80 games. While I am sympathetic to not wanting the price to go up, the fact of the matter is that brand new video games cost pretty much the same as they did 30 years ago, while the cost of everything else has basically doubled in that time. I know it’s probably not what is going to happen but if $80 video games are what it takes to get us away from shitty microtransactions in full price games, then I’m all for it. I know the crowd on Lemmy will just say they should make less profit and do neither but that’s just not how the world works right now and nobody is going to do that.

    Food for thought- here are some prices in 1996 and today

    New video game: 1996- $67 (Super Mario 64), 2025- $70

    McDonald’s Big Mac meal: 1996- $2.45, 2025-$9.29

    Base package Honda Civic: 1996- $10,360, 2025-$24,250

    Average apartment - 1996- $550/mo, 2025- $1,540/mo

    Median annual income- 1996- $20,109, 2025- $50,200

    Doesn’t one of these stand out?