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James R Kirk

@ Kirk @startrek.website

Posts
32
Comments
904
Joined
11 mo. ago

  • Removed

    DuckDuckGo Pushes Back on Forced AI, Asks Users If AI Should Be Optional

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  • Like I said, it's not helpful for queries like the one you suggested. But I've found it helpful if you only have vague or incomplete details and you are not looking for an answer, but only to be pointed in a direction where you might find the answer.

    Something like "what was that movie that had a green alien and there was a king and a jet fighter and it took place on a desert planet but also there was a scene with a bathtub".

    Or "are there any nintendo action games with a female protagonist and no guns"

  • Replacement for Roku?

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  • Me too. The original devs abandoned it and it was picked back up by new devs in 2025

    The way I see it, if someone eventually makes a Bazzite-styled distro that "just works" with a Plasma-Bigscreen UI on a Raspi it will become the clear and obvious choice for anyone. But we're far from that still.

  • Replacement for Roku?

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  • Not quite, and believe me, I've been looking.

    Your best bet is probably LineageOS Android TV on a Raspi 5. From there you can install Kodi too. My issue here is that CEC does not work. Meaning you need a second remote.

    I probably don't recommend LibreELEC on a Raspi, because despite install being seamless, Kodi these days is essentially a real-debrid frontend (which might be what you're looking for if you want integral torrent downloads!). The normal streaming apps for Kodi are not maintained even PlexJellyfin don't work out of the box.

    Something else I'm keeping an eye on is Plasma Bigscreen but that's probably 2 years out minimum of being user friendly enough for someone not experienced.

    Lastly if you have a Samsung TV, Tizentube will get you YouTube without ads (and other perks).

  • Removed

    DuckDuckGo Pushes Back on Forced AI, Asks Users If AI Should Be Optional

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  • I actually like the option to have LLM text at the top of their searches. Sometimes it's helpful for being pointed in a direction where I might find an answer if I only have vague or nonspecific information to go on.

    I would prefer better search results, but it seems like that's becoming impossible.

    Still, I'm a hard "No" vote on forced.

  • San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Flowers In Your Hair) | Rufus Wainwright Orchestral Recording

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  • The opening theme was just weird! But I said the same thing about DS9 and Enterprise.

    Now I love the DS9 theme. So maybe Academy's will grow on me, too.

  • San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Flowers In Your Hair) | Rufus Wainwright Orchestral Recording

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  • I had a funny feeling they were going to play this song, and I smiled when this cover started playing. I didn't realize it was Rufus Wainwright! Good stuff.

  • Would you want to live on the Enterprise-D (regarding its shipwide AI)?

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  • Sure, but Wikipedia does not care about "truth". "It's true" is not a valid citation on Wikipedia (and "knowledge" is not the same as "truth"). Wikipedia is built on references from experts from people that can be honest while still being factually incorrect.

    It's an important distinction because an LLM can be correct but it can never be honest. The hypothetical Enterprise-D computer appears to be able to be honest, even when incorrect.

  • Would you want to live on the Enterprise-D (regarding its shipwide AI)?

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  • I thought I was in !startrek@startrek.website for a moment...

    My take is that even if you consider LLMs to fall under the umbrella of "AI" (I don't), they appear to be a completely different technology than the Enterprise-D computer, which is more like highly advanced natural language processing.

    would you want a perfect AI that was incapable of lying or harbouring anything untrue?

    It's not really possible for an AI to know what's true with 100% accuracy, but I do think it's technically possible to invent an AI that is honest. It's important to remember that LLMs are actually "hallucinating" 100% of the time. The only reason they are ever correct is because the training data was correct.

  • Move Over, ChatGPT

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  • Ah yeah I'm with you. I actually think LLMs are a useful tool for that initial push- a search query, rough draft (or demo). But I'm not convinced they could ever move beyond that, since creating rigid, reliable structure isn't what they're designed to do.

  • ChatGPT is getting ads. Sam Altman once called them a 'last resort.'

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  • They may receive 5x the criticism and be 5x less effective at moving products, but if they turn out to be 10x cheaper to produce then that is still a huge net positive revenue-wise and allows them to make a lot more (and more targeted) ads

    Note: I totally made those numbers up

  • Does anyone else think the marketing undersold Holly Hunter as Chancellor Ake? [Very minor Academy spoilers]

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  • uhhh ok? Any particular reason...?

  • Shower Thoughts on AI

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  • That's a good point- if they were truly making a superintelligence, it wouldn't be for sale, just like Coca-cola wouldn't sell their recipe. They're selling the shovels while insisting to corporate executives there's a gold rush going on.

  • They "cannot guarantee" the product description of the 1.3k dollar laptop theyre selling is accurate because they used chatgpt to write it

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  • Does anyone else think the marketing undersold Holly Hunter as Chancellor Ake? [Very minor Academy spoilers]

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  • Exactly, they got Paul Giamatti for Spock's sake. When an actor is at their level they can be choosy about the roles they take on.

  • Does anyone else think the marketing undersold Holly Hunter as Chancellor Ake? [Very minor Academy spoilers]

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  • Top tier!

  • Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Starfleet Academy | 1x01 "Kids These Days" & 1x02 "Beta Test"

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  • I’m fairly OK with NuTrek trusting the audience less and driving a point home harder

    I'm generally against this, but it's also not like Star Trek ever gave us a reasonable expectation of subtlety....

  • ChatGPT is getting ads. Sam Altman once called them a 'last resort.'

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  • Now I call that convenience

  • Move Over, ChatGPT

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  • 🙌Hail all knowing Claude🙌

  • They "cannot guarantee" the product description of the 1.3k dollar laptop theyre selling is accurate because they used chatgpt to write it

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  • I recently tried asking Amazon's AI a simple question about a product that had hundreds of reviews. It was a cheap thing, and I admit I was too lazy to verify the info so I went with what the AI said and bought it, and guess what the AI was just completely wrong and now Amazon is paying for me to ship it back.