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spaduf

@ spaduf @slrpnk.net

Posts
65
Comments
176
Joined
2 yr. ago

  • Please don't use Discord for FOSS projects

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  • The biggest problem with traditional forums is the fact that participation requires yet another account. This is the most significant thing that discord has going for it, nearly everybody already has a discord account. Federated forums mostly solve this issue tho

  • Generative AI’s environmental costs are soaring — and mostly secret

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  • To address the article a little more directly: it's notable that the article begins with Sam Altman's take on the subject. His feelings are based on two fundamentally flawed premises:

    1. These models MUST get bigger for the improvements that their users DEMAND.
    2. The only solution to any environmental criticism is FUSION. A technology that Altman has personally invested in.

    2 is ridiculous just on the face of it, but I think folks may have a harder time understanding why 1 is problematic. It is true that OpenAIs business model essentializes the idea that these models can't ever be run locally, but the incentive to use their cloud services are quickly diminishing as smaller, local models catch up. This cycle will likely continue until local models are good enough to serve the needs of the vast majority of people, especially as specialized hardware makes it's way into more and more consumer devices.

  • Generative AI’s environmental costs are soaring — and mostly secret

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  • The costs are significant and growing but we should put some things into perspective to really tackle the problem efficiently. As an individual, heavy usage of these tools (something like 1000 images generated) is still roughly the same level of emissions as driving across town and generating text is pretty much negligible in all scenarios.

    Where we really need to be concerned is video generation (which could easily blow current energy usage out of the water) and water usage in these massive data centers. However, most of the current research on the subject does a pretty poor job of separating water usage for "AI" and general usage. This is why the next step is enforcing transparency so we can get a picture of how things are shaping up as this technology develops.

    All that said, there are some pretty low hanging fruit when it comes to improving efficiency. A lot of these models are essentially first-passes on a project and efficiency will improve simply as they start to target edge and local models. Similarly, these water cooling systems are predicated on some fairly wasteful ideas, namely that cool fresh water is abundant and does not warrant preservation. Simply factoring in that this is clearly no longer the case will go a long way towards reducing that usage.

  • TIL May Day, not on the same day as US Labor Day, started "in commemoration of the Haymarket Riot in Chicago (1886)."

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  • Happy 10 million! According to FediDB, we have hit 10 million users across the Fediverse!

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  • I believe that's 900 active servers, not users.

  • Happy 10 million! According to FediDB, we have hit 10 million users across the Fediverse!

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  • Nope. That's 418k total. 38k active

  • Happy 10 million! According to FediDB, we have hit 10 million users across the Fediverse!

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  • They're on Mastodon and Misskey for the most part.

  • Mozilla lays off 60 people, wants to build AI into Firefox

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  • In this context or generally?

  • Mozilla lays off 60 people, wants to build AI into Firefox

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  • I don't think this is a money making move. The previous CEO was absolutely overly focused on monetization and this move is a step away from that. I should've addressed this more explicitly in the above comment but even for the players who actively monetize, AI is a money incinerator.

  • Mozilla lays off 60 people, wants to build AI into Firefox

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  • Tell me this is a good thing.

    Mozilla has long been the most ethical player in this space (while still producing SOTA ML). All of their datasets/models are open source and usually crowdsourced. Not to mention, their existing work is primarily in improving accessibility.

    ALSO, the other half of this story is that Firefox is becoming the primary focus again. Everybody's freaking out about the AI stuff but that's because they're only reading the headlines. The programs they've shut down are things like Hubs (Mozilla's metaverse platform), the VPN, and the sensitive data scrubber (which was using a third party service anyway).

  • Mozilla lays off 60 people, wants to build AI into Firefox

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  • Though, it's tough to pull from the headline/discussion this pivot is explicitly meant to refocus on the browser.

    As far as the AI stuff goes, Mozilla has long been the most ethical player in this space. All of their datasets/models are open source and usually crowdsourced. Not to mention, their existing work is primarily in improving accessibility. It's really hard to see how this is a bad thing.

  • Mozilla lays off 60 people, wants to build AI into Firefox

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  • So frustrated to see how this conversation is playing out. This is exactly what people have been asking for but all anybody can seem to see is "AI" in the headline.This pivot is about refocusing on:

    • The Browser
    • Privacy
    • Ethical AI

    This seems like a much better position for Mozilla to operate from, particularly because they've excelled at producing ethical SOTA ML for YEARS before ChatGPT. In all, this seems far more forward looking than the previous strategy of "make weird little web tools to make money maybe" and it's an absolutely massive untapped niche, that they already have the talent to tap into. If we punish the players best positioned to shift the industry standard away from extreme and exploitative data collection, we will end up in exactly the Orwellian AI hellscape that we're all so afraid of.

  • As You Wish

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  • Prepackaged leafy greens are the worst offenders for quality control issues by far

  • Why Everyone Should Still Use an RSS Reader in 2024

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  • Does anybody have any recommendations for FOSS RSS readers with actual content surfacing features? So many RSS feeds are full of junk (this is particularly a problem with feeds with wildly disparate posting frequencies) and I've always felt they'd be a lot more useful if people were putting more effort into a modern way to sort through extremely dense feeds.

  • Michael Buble Gives a Press Conference at the 2024 NHL All-Star Player Draft While High On Mushrooms

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  • Naw bro he buggin

  • Is it time to give up on the 1.5°C climate target?

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  • Well there's two relevant points there:

    • The 1.5 degree warming targets set by the Paris Climate Accords are based on a 30 year average. One of the main points of the video and a recent popular point of conversation for climate communicators has been that this is simply too long a time span to be used as an actionable metric. This would mean that it would take at least 15 years of average temps being that high before it officially triggers anything.
    • Current models absolutely suggest that period will start sometime in this decade, which was absolutely not the case for SOTA models in 2015

  • Is it time to give up on the 1.5°C climate target?

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  • I mean actionable policy plans absolutely necessitate concrete goals. In this case, missing it seems to be more reflective of massive problems with our modeling than any sort of failure to act. When that goal was set absolutely nobody was seriously considering the possibility we would surpass it in the early 20s.

  • Michael Buble Gives a Press Conference at the 2024 NHL All-Star Player Draft While High On Mushrooms

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  • Also, Will Arnett is there

  • KDE Goes and Does It (Double-Click By Default, That Is) - OMG! Linux

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  • It's not so crazy. Most people choose a DE for the defaults

  • Why I started Sublinks: A timeline of events

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  • Great project! I wish y'all the best