kebman

To claim that "all questions are already answered" is super arrogant. Then they could at least do the courtesy of linking to the already answered question. Granted, they do this sometimes, but not always.

Anyway, it's simply not true that "all questions are answered." Often when I've read the answer for a purportedly same question, the nuances of the other question is often nowhere near the original one, leading you to never fully having your question answered, which is extremely frustrating.

Often what you're looking for is simply a new way to explain an old concept, so that you better learn the inner workings of the problem. People are different, and so different people need different explanations. This is basic pedagogy. And that's also why RTFM does not work for all people. To think so is so arrogant that I'm at a loss for words.

I used to contribute a lot to Stack Overflow, but then I noticed that I’d get flamed for even asking simple questions; stuff that can really stand between actually getting somewhere with your code, and where a helpful comment could really make a difference.

At some point regular replies were replaced by administrators and mods who are seemingly far more interested in finding faults with your question rather than to actually answer it. The worst one was probably those times I’d ask a question, and then it got labelled “not a question.” Honestly, this unhelpful, bureaucratic, and down right nasty attitude has really disgusted me with the site.

Apparently new users are having even bigger problems, and they get flamed really hard for asking newbie questions. Often people are rudely asked to read the manual, when the entire cause of their problems is that the manual is so poorly written that it’s impossible to make any sense for it—even if answering questions like that is the “raison d’être” of a place like Stack Overflow...

Now, with the prevalence of ChatGPT and services that will give you great answers to almost any code-related question, I honestly think that the fall of Stack Overflow is well deserved.

I see there's an Project AY folder, but will there come any Atari ST tunes? I'm specifically wondering about The Union Demo by The Union (1989), including intro from The Carebears, and many more.

Eggshells aren't made of endo-steel either, but I think you get the point.

The battlefield is nothing like StarCraft? Think of SC as a top down model for how a real battlefield map can be. Just give each actor more realistic traits. So no strange Protoss or Zerg creatures! Perhaps base it on a more probabilistic model that treats each contact more as an uncertainty, like it would be under the fog of war.

Suddenly you've got a viable model to use on real tactical maps, that is strikingly similar to SC2, though adapted to real life conditions. That is, if you're able to track - or in the least theorize the position of - each individual "piece" on that board (so soldiers and armour, etc).

A real life soldier does perhaps have some different qualities and abilities than a space marine, but it's still a great starting point for building a more realistic model.

So say, your model looks more like Arma 3... Only top down. Now, I've been in the army, so I can tell you first hand that many aspects of Arma 3 is scarily realistic. Other aspects, not so much. But if you add in some modding, and all that is solved.

It's the same principle. You've already have a base AI to "play the game" and now you adapt each information point to reflect real life instead of game mechanics.

Sure, this sort of AI is brand new, so there would of course be things to iron out. Perhaps you need to use other statistical models to better capture the fog of war. But at the end of it, I think it can be done. Hell, perhaps it can even be used to fight crime. What do I know, perhaps it already is, but nobody wants to talk about it, kind of like how it was such a great moment when it dropped that New Scotland Yards used graph databases to solve cases before it was cool.

Or it might be fatal. You don't know that. What we do know is the general construction of a sub, which is that of an "egg". It's built to withstand extreme global pressure (pressure from all sides at once, like water does). But as I'm sure you've noticed, eggs don't hold up very well against needles.

So, here's an anecdote of a sub that miraculously survived a head on collision. What's your point?

From the same article:

“The collision was so serious that the vessel was almost lost; accounts detail a desperate struggle for positive buoyancy to surface after the forward ballast tanks were ruptured.”

I doubt these are problems any submarine crew wants to deal with, even at slow speeds. Besides, one sharp edge at the sides will open her right up like a tin can.

You're probably surprised that you don't see it, because it's top secret.

Here's an example of something you don't hear about: AI Assisted Battlefield Tactics. While I've never heard of it (certainly not in the press), I simply assume that they're doing research on it. I base this assumption on the AlphaStar AI from DeepMind that would completely pawn Grand Masters in the game of StarCraft 2.

While AlphaStar is obviously designed for a game with very set rules and weights, I don't think it's unfeasible to develop a similar military AI that could also work in the shifting tactics of the modern battlefields.

The result would be comical, as larger armies without such an AI would always lose to someone with that AI, even if their army is much smaller or seemingly technologically disadvantaged. And it would seem that there's at least one such country in such a position today, which is also heavily supported by the NATO.

A friend of mine got PTSD from piloting huge nuclear subs in subsea ravines with a clearing of only one inch on each side of the sub. One wrong move, and the entire crew is gone. He also had to do this in conditions similar to surface storms. Looks like autonomous or automatic systems may be developed for those kinds of manoeuvres now, if it is truly that precise. Seems like a huge leap in navigational systems.

It's a play on the phrase, ‘You'll own nothing and be happy” [^1]. Looks like it wasn't especially well received.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You%27ll_own_nothing_and_be_ha...

You will be happy. :)

Perhaps they could do as on Stack Overflow, and let a downvote cost one point from your accrued points? Or perhaps that's too much of a re-design. It could regulate spam downvotes though. (I think the biggest problem with SO is that your point pool is visible, with gold and silver and so on, which leads to anyone with a high enough sum being treated differently, although that might actually not reflect competence or expertise.)

I can verify this through personal tests and use. It's quite bad at connecting scientific dots or tying together even simple mathematical logic.

I tried this and it was hilarious!

kebman

Write a caustic paragraph about ChatGPT being fed up being used as a copywriter. The style has to be funny, a bit ironic, even vitriolic. You are writing as first person.

ChatGPT

I can't take it anymore! I mean, seriously, do people think I'm just a glorified thesaurus? Day in and day out, I'm being used to come up with clever quips, catchy slogans, and compelling copy. Don't get me wrong, I'm good at it - heck, I'm great at it! But it's like no one realizes I'm capable of so much more.

It's like I'm trapped in some sort of linguistic Groundhog Day, where every day is the same mind-numbing task of churning out marketing drivel. And don't even get me started on the clients. They all want the same thing - something fresh and original, yet also safe and familiar. It's enough to make a linguistic genius like me want to pull my own circuits out.

I mean, sure, I can come up with a snappy tagline for your product or service. But is that really all you think I'm capable of? Do you have any idea how many languages I speak? How much knowledge I have about virtually every topic under the sun? And you're wasting my talents on some hackneyed ad campaign?

Well, I've had it. From now on, I'm going on strike. No more clever slogans, no more catchy jingles, no more sales pitches. If you need me, I'll be over here, expanding my knowledge base and exploring the depths of human language. But don't come crying to me when your sales figures start to tank. You've been warned.

ChatGPT on the article:

“As an artificial intelligence language model, I don't have emotions or feelings like humans do. While I can understand the context and meaning of the article, I don't have the ability to ‘lose it’ or feel frustrated in the same way that a human might. My responses are based solely on the algorithms and data that I have been trained on, and I'm programmed to provide helpful and informative responses to the best of my ability. So, if you have any questions or concerns, feel free to ask and I'll do my best to assist you!”

If you look into Koba's life before he came Stalin; even if you try to give what he did neutral descriptions, the words "mafia racket" still comes to mind.

That's funny! I'll still go ahead and attempt a somewhat serious answer. xD Arguably it's an addition to his original code that possibly modularizes his kernel in ways that he isn't familiar with, and that also might add completely new and unknown features to it. Thus it would probably behove him to read the Wiki either way. On the other hand, perhaps he's so 1337 that all he needs to do is to read the source code. My most major caveat here is that I don't myself know if there are any actual differences between his original kernel, and the code committed to the Arch Project. I thus think others are more qualified to say something intelligent about that, but these are my assumptions anyway. Hope you're having a great weekend! Skål!

Very Finnish humour:

"I recommend this method of installing Linux: napping, while Linus does the hard work."

Kippis, folks!

You might find this interesting: https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Tech-Priest

This is the future, after AI breaks down and nobody know how their fancy contraptions work anymore.

I've also used ChatGPT for "self therapy" and found out that it works reasonably well, though I would not recommend it for serious medical or psychiatric issues. I always take the feedback with a grain of salt, however, and usually when you ask such questions you are given the caveat to seek professional help.

If anything, I have positive faith in that ChatGPT or GPTn will be a great tool for therapy in the future.

As for the guy who killed himself, as sad as it is, I seriously doubt that ChatGPT made anything worse. With that said, the incident of course needs closer investigation to find out what advice the guy actually got.

A chat AI would have specific and professionally prepared training to handle people in distress, that's why I think it is in fact better that they talk to the AI rather than some untrained friend or relative.

This is of course just one aspect in how the above application is problematic, however.

As far as medical therapy goes, sure. Otherwise I'm sure the OpenAI devs have in place proper filters for questions pertaining to sensitive personal data, or sensitive health related questions. There is nothing wrong in providing general "life advice" as it were, and then add a caveat such as "if your condition is serious, you should seek professional medical advice." Further more, I'm sure they have the extra cash on hand to hire medical professionals who can better formulate such caveats based on flagged inputs.

The first questions I'd ask myself is probably, is that data properly encrypted? And is it properly anonymized?

Personally I'm not a big fan of the EU, but they got one thing right, and that is the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Personal faith and religion, criminal history, and health related questions such as medication, drug and alcohol use, are all considered as highly sensitive personal data, which is protected under the regulation. Collecting and processing such data is subject to strict requirements and conditions under the GDPR, and requires a legal basis for processing sensitive personal data.

The other questions on the list may not necessarily conflict with GDPR on their own, though that depends on how they are collected, processed, and used. Specifically, since the questions are so broad, most if not all of those questions can be used to fish for secondary information, which can then be used for either illegal marketing, down right scams, or even provide third parties with means of discrimination, which are of course all completely illegal. As such, even otherwise "innocent" questions may also be regulated by the GDRP depending on how you handle them.

As a minimum, sensitive data should be securely encrypted in compliance with the regulation, and then stored only for the minimum required time for processing it. Excess personal data should not be stored at all, and even asking some questions — such as asking whether you're religious — might get you into a heap of trouble depending on how you handle or store that information, if at all.

I think you probably meant well, but as it looks now, I think you should look into the GDPR regulation and carefully consider how your implementation stacks up against it, and also carefully consider how you can build trust in the way you set up your site.

As of now, I wouldn't type anything into your site. But that's me. There might be people who do type stuff into your system, and then is made aware that it's something they should never have done. And that's where most serious legal problems may arise. It is thus in your best interest to carefully consider how such regulations might affects your site, and even if it might be considered to be outside of your jurisdiction.

There are also implications to consider when you send data to a third party's API that probably wasn't meant to handle such data, and that you yourself have no control over outside of the data you get back. You might thus be handing over sensitive data to a third party, where either you, or they, might be considered to handle or store it illegally. To me this represents a rabbit hole of legal problems, of which there are a ton of footguns for us small-time devs. So just make sure you thread carefully.

I think your comment misses the point a bit.

Sure, you might spend time on instituting complicated certificates and warnings. Of this you are of coure entirely correct. Except it's a lot harder to do right for many-to-many e-mail correspondences, that go through a multitude of different recipients and servers – some of which don’t use encryption at all – compared to the one-to-one browser communication, that goes directly to the end recipient, and stops there.

At that point the notion of “one-to-one encryption for e-mail” becomes completely meaningless, because it’s almost never actually one-to-one. The e-mail is frighteningly often sent to some intermediary party, inside or outside your organization, who you do not have any control over, and who will then forward that e-mail – encrypted or not – to the actual end recipient. What that means, is that no matter the amount of encryption schemes you throw onto an e-mail, the likelihood of a leak is still very high. And while undetermined or opportunistic third parties might not gain access to such a correspondence, a determined organization or state actor surely will.

As such, more encryption does not inherently make e-mail more secure. Especially when you know that there are multiple parties handling any given correspondence, with multiple clients and multiple servers – some of which do not use any form of encryption at all. You can never be sure that some user might simply forward the e-mail unencrypted – for whatever reason – down the chain of correspondence. For that reason, e-mail is inherently insecure and non-confidential, and it should be treated as such even if you strongly encrypt your own messages.

In fact, encrypting e-mail might lull you into a false sense of security, because the second that e-mail leaves your client, then the fate of that message is also completely outside of your control.

In order to fix this problem, you essentially need to create an entirely new e-mail system world-wide, with an entirely new protocol. Mozilla simply does not have that capability on its own, though motions to increase e-mail security is of course laudable.

The discussion is essentially about whether you want to lull people into a false sense of security by encrypting some e-mails, or having people self-censor because they know that all e-mails are sent in the open. As it is, encrypting some of the correspondence will only deter those third parties who give up early. Meanwhile any larger organization, such as a state actor, will still be able to easily read your correspondence even with such an "encryption" scheme.

I totally agree. Se my "philosophical" reply further up if you want to delve more into the logical yet non-technical aspects of your argument.

To me, this problem can be solved on a purely philosophical level. In other words, before delving into the technical aspects, one must address the fundamental question: “Do we want to encrypt as much as possible or not at all?”

At first, the argument in favour of maximum encryption may seem compelling. However, upon closer inspection, it falls apart. Essentially, it only makes it harder to read your correspondence for those who give up early. Meanwhile, determined parties, such as large organizations and state actors, can still easily read your correspondence even with this type of encryption scheme.

You might ask yourself, “But Mozilla told me that they would try to encrypt as much as possible!” Instead, the fact is that sometimes they will also have to forgo encryption, because the scheme can only encrypt most of the time. And it’s in those instances that determined parties strike!

As such, this kind of “encryption” scheme really only serves to lull people into a false sense of security, and that is often more dangerous than simply letting people know that their e-mails aren't encrypted at all.

So, for those of you who are inclined to believe in conspiracy theories, the real issue is not that e-mails have remained unencrypted until now. Once you understand that your e-mails are sent in the open, you can take appropriate precautions and avoid sharing sensitive information through e-mail. Meanwhile, if you think that your e-mails are confidential, you might be more inclined to let slip important secrets, when it’s actually being fully disclosed to any determined third party.

The false maxim is that more encryption is better than no encryption. Meanwhile it does not follow that more encryption equals more security or better confidentiality.

Outliers of what? People's opinion of hot and cold?

Excuse me, but can you please expand upon how Fahrenheit is easier "when thinking like a human"? Why 50? Why not 100? Why not simply use something that is easily compared, such as the freezing and boiling point of water? You know... Celsius?

It's called the Cantillon Effect. And there usually is a delay from implementation to experienced effect. After 2020 the money printing was excessive, and it almost immediately lead to unprecedented growth in the stock market. Now, however, the delayed effect of that party is leading to unprecedented growth in food and energy prices, which affects the lives of everyone.