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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • Both use a lot of energy, but operation accounts for the majority not training.

    Running a (relatively) large model on your own PC’s GPU is energy-intensive compared to typical household electronics, but not compared to driving a car. People don’t usually object to someone playing a AAA game at 2K240, which burns energy just as fast as running inference on the same GPU.

    A typical prompt and response uses maybe a quarter to half a Watt-hour. That’s like using an LED light bulb for a few minutes; it’s the scale that makes these things problematic.






  • Why?

    It makes sense to try to give users an idea of how robust a project is, but the exact details of the tools involved in its creation rarely add much to that. It gets a little weird with LLMs because they allow someone with no programming skill to create software that appears to work, which ought to be disclosed; “I don’t know what I’m doing and I asked a robot to make this” does indicate unreliable code. A skilled developer having an LLM fill in some extra test cases, on the other hand can only make the project more robust.


  • Well-behaved server software honors delete requests, but there are a bunch of ways for that to fail without anyone doing anything malicious:

    • If your instance shuts down, there is no way for you to generate delete requests
    • If a server admin has to restore a backup from before your request, the deleted data will be restored
    • Immature or experimental software may not work as designed; Lemmy itself has a version number starting with 0
    • Archiving services may keep snapshots of pages from fediverse servers; here’s your user page on lemmy.world on archive.org
    • Fediverse servers often make content available by RSS, and RSS clients may store that content; there’s no way for them to receive a signal that it should be deleted

    And then there’s malicious activity. It wouldn’t be hard to run a server that speaks ActivityPub, subscribes to a bunch of stuff, pretends to honor delete requests, and actually keeps everything.

    Deletion will always be unreliable on the fediverse as long as it runs on technology that looks anything like current implementations.


  • Some people have specific long-term goals in mind for relationships; some just enjoy living in the present; most are somewhere between. Nobody else can say which is right for you.

    Another commenter wrote that you’re probably about 18 years old. You may not know which of the above best describes you, and that’s perfectly normal at that age. I hesitate to tell anyone else what to do in their personal life, but if a compelling opportunity comes along that conflicts with your relationship, whether it’s another prospective relationship or moving away for school or work, remember that your boyfriend won’t prioritize your relationship when his parents find an Arab girl for him to marry.


  • You are not going to find a satisfying answer to this question. It’s one I’ve been asking for a long time.

    I could say “sadism”, but that’s almost tautological. The obvious follow-up is “but why are they sadists?”, and I don’t know that. It’s likely people who aren’t sadists can’t really know that, and people who are would probably fail at explaining it, were they inclined to try.

    The best explanation I can manage is that someone who’s feeling bored and powerless might feel a little less bored and powerless for a moment if they can make someone else sad or angry. A person who actually gets off on that sort of thing is likely not all that intelligent or creative, so they fail at finding better entertainment.

    If you’re still left wondering “but why?”, good. You’re probably not a sadist.