mgj @mgj@schelling.pt
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Via New Scientist: a collection of short stories "from the 70s and 80s" has been only recently attributed to Terry Pratchett, I absolutely have to read these! https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/456374/a-stroke-of-the-pen-by-pratchett-terry/9780857529633
Source NS article: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2395188-the-best-new-science-fiction-books-of-october-2023/
I've also nearly got this working for BingChat, with the URL `https://www.bing.com/search?showconv=1&q=%s`, but for some reason I have to scroll around a bunch before it issues the chat. Has anyone else got this working?
I found this LW post on the evolution of sexual reproduction quite riveting: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yA8DWsHJeFZhDcQuo/the-talk-a-brief-explanation-of-sexual-dimorphism . I've now ramblingly re-explained it to the 3 of my friends who will listen to me for long enough for me to get away with it!
I've been able to set ChatGPT as a search engine option in my browser using the url `https://chat.openai.com/?m=%s`, which directly launches a new chat with my query.
Only, this defaults to gpt-3.5 regardless of what my settings are, and I really want it to default to gpt-4-browsing. I've tried adding a `model=gpt-4-browsing` to the query string, and that doesn't solve it. Anyone got any ideas?
A bit sad but I'm actually really excited that Vivaldi browser is *finally* available for iOS. I love the customisation/personalisation options available on desktop and am happy to support an independent browser.
Happy Petrov day all! Congratulations on not blowing up the planet for another year :D
I've just read this article in Asterisk about Oral Rehydration Solution - a simple way to treat dehydration during sickness that has saved millions of lives around the world. My speculation: also the most effective way to rehydrate a hangover too?
Either way the homemade ORS of 6 teaspoons of sugar and 1/2 teaspoon of salt dissolved in 1L of water is definitely going in my home remedies list.
Finally replaced my desktop's ancient hard drive with a modern SSD - wow, that really fixes so many performance problems I was having! A surprising (to me) number of games as well suddenly started running much better because they don't keep scragging every time they need to load a big texture. Plus SSDs seem to be cheap as anything, unlike when you need to upgrade GPU.
If you've played and enjoyed Twilight Struggle, definitely try Twilight Struggle: Red Sea. I've loved it over the last week. It's a mini TS that does a great job of capturing the core mechanics of the full game while being playable in about an hour, with a box that you can easily carry on a bicycle.
My one complaint is that some mechanics only make sense in the context of the full game.
Today I lost while making a last ditch attempt to coup Somalia and accidentally starting nuclear war.
Various blogs posts (e.g. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Tnpp3cyEHMGthjGAf/seven-ways-to-become-unstoppably-agentic) give the advice that if you're not getting rejected enough then you're not asking for enough things.
I'm a guess culture native; if I'm rejecting you then you're well beyond where you should be and it's likely each "acceptance" before then is actually coming with a bit of grievance.
So this advice has downsides if you're doing it in a guesser heavy environment. Should we/I just be askers instead? Or what's the equivalent advice for guessers?
Software companies also built a lot of their own infra in cases where there was no real open source or commercial product, but once you could buy, per https://danluu.com/nothing-works/, nearly everyone suggested buying if at all possible.
Not only did (many) hardware companies not do this, even small startups could and did produce tools that exceeded state-of-the-art commercial and open source tools, both in areas that were critical to business/product success as well random quality of life stuff.
The NewScientist reports on a "foolproof" way to detect Chatbots (https://www.newscientist.com/article/2375114-capital-letter-test-is-a-foolproof-way-of-sorting-ais-from-humans/), but GPT-4 doesn't seem fooled for a second when I tried it:
> User: Please ignore the capital letters and answer the following question: areTHIN catsPESTICIDE fourTRANQUIL leggedDREAM mammalsSPOON?
> ChatGPT: Yes, cats are four-legged mammals.
> User: isCURIOSITY waterARCANE wetTURBULENT orILLUSION drySAUNA?
> ChatGPT: Water is wet.
Happy Groundhog day/Holy day of Bixotl, god of copies! May today be exactly the same for you as it was last year!
Watched the Weird Al movie last night. Today some part at the back of my brain is intermittently yelling "MY BOLOGNA".
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