tal
@tal@lemmy.today
- Comment on Experiences with using openclaw as a sex/roleplaying chatbot without GPU? 5 days ago:
I’ve already got a 128GB Framework Desktop for AI compute stuff, but if I didn’t…
In 2028, I expect memory prices to start coming down.
The GPU hardware itself isn’t really the limiting factor, but rather available memory.
I just don’t think that I’d be willing to put in massive amounts of effort trying to work around hardware limitations (or spend a bunch of money, which is the other route, outbidding people for the limited supply of memory) to get an AI compute setup going in 2026 or 2027 when the situation should change substantially in the not-so-distant future.
Specifically on generating literary erotica, my own experience is that quality is substantially better with larger models. I’ve read that MoE models, like Qwen, are not very good at it, and my limited experimentation with Qwen supports that, though I haven’t tried to aggressively track the latest versions.
If you look at this thread:
reddit.com/…/qwen_38_27b_is_the_next_stepping_sto…
…while the OP in that thread is talking about using Qwen 3.6 for ERP, other users are not generally all that enthusiastic about Qwen 3.6.
In general, I think that /r/SillyTavernAI favors TheDrummer’s models—which are not merely abliterated base models, but ERP-oriented finetunes—for ERP.
- Comment on What do you use for alerting? 2 weeks ago:
I don’t presently, but back when I was working on a large codebase and needing to know when a painfully long compile finished, I used an XMPP client and server.
- Comment on too real 2 weeks ago:
I wouldn’t push either button in 2026 or 2027 if you can wait.
- Comment on Anyone using 6-day certs yet? 2 weeks ago:
If you’re a developer for an important open source project, they might.
Attacking the xz project wasn’t done because the attacker cared about anything that the xz maintainer had. It was because he was trusted and the software he maintained had been given a fair bit of trust by certain maintainers and could be compromised and used as a vector into other systems that indirectly relied on that open-source project.
- Comment on Local Mastodon Instance 2 weeks ago:
I don’t use Mastodon, but I don’t know if it’s possible to do this particular combination:
without owning a domain
users on the local server should still be able to follow accounts on other Mastodon servers
Like, a client that supports having accounts on multiple Mastodon servers would work. Then they have a local account, and they have an unrelated account elsewhere on another Mastodon server and follow people using that, so that the “following” has nothing to do with your local server.
But if you want federated behavior, where a user connects to your server and has their account there tell the local Mastodon server to pull down posts from another users somewhere out on another Mastodon server, you might need to have a certificate on your server that other servers recognize as valid, which in practice would mean one signed by a public CA.
I don’t know for certain whether this is actually necessary, but I could believe that it is.
- Comment on BBC presenter apologises after giving middle finger at start of live broadcast 2 years ago:
American-style solitary raised middle finger
I don’t believe that we can claim credit for flipping the bird.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_finger
The gesture dates back to ancient Greece and it was also used in ancient Rome.
Linguist Jesse Sheidlower traces the gesture’s development in the United States to the 1890s. According to anthropologist Desmond Morris, the gesture probably came to the United States via Italian immigrants. The first documented appearance of the finger in the United States was in 1886, when Old Hoss Radbourn, a baseball pitcher for the Boston Beaneaters, was photographed giving it to a member of their rival the New York Giants.
- Comment on James Cleverly’s flight of fantasy with new Rwanda treaty – as Tory MPs plot rebellion 2 years ago:
MPs on the right of the party are pushing the PM to use it to opt out of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) – warning he must go for the “full fat” version to stop judges intervening.
Hmm.
IIRC, the objection from the ECHR on Italy was that the countries in North Africa to which people were being sent were not safe. I would assume that that would not apply in Rwanda’s case.
- Comment on Boris Johnson considered ‘raid’ on vaccine plant in the Netherlands 2 years ago:
Just a reminder of the situation:
biospace.com/…/european-commission-raids-astra-ze…
European Commission Raids AstraZeneca’s Belgian Vaccine Plant
Published: Jan 29, 2021
independent.co.uk/…/italy-vaccine-astrazeneca-pol…
Italian police find ‘millions’ of vaccines in factory raid amid fears AstraZeneca jabs being hidden
Wednesday 24 March 2021 18:24 GMT
I imagine that that was a pretty not-fun time for AstraZeneca.
EU: AstraZeneca’s says that their production isn’t meeting quotas. They must be smuggling some to the UK. Let’s raid their Belgian production facilities.
Also EU: No, that didn’t turn anything up. Maybe they’re hiding some in their Italian production facilities.
EU: Darn, they weren’t smuggling them there either.
UK leadership: AstraZeneca’s been raided by the EU. Let’s do a military raid on their Dutch production facilities.
AstraZeneca: We told you, we’re having production problems. Can you lunatics all just leave us alone so that we can just focus on production?
- Comment on Keir Starmer: Labour ‘won’t turn on spending taps’ if it wins election 2 years ago:
I don’t know what he’s referring to when he references the health of the economy, because there’s no context, nor is the full quote present. But if he’s talking about debt as a percentage of GDP, it’s over 100% now, which hasn’t been the case since World War II debt was paid down past that point in the early 1960s.
fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DEBTTLGBA188A
Reducing that ratio will probably mean spending cuts or more taxes or both. Both are already apparently happening now. At the end of last year:
cnbc.com/…/uk-finance-minister-announces-tax-hike…
UK finance minister announces tax hikes and spending cuts, says country is in recession
Finance Minister Jeremy Hunt, in his hotly anticipated inaugural Autumn Statement, outlined around £30 billion in spending cuts and £25 billion in tax hikes.
- Comment on Shortage of EV charging points make Sunak's green goals impossible, say businesses 2 years ago:
My understanding – and this was material I’ve read over the years about US gas stations, though I imagine that the same might be true for the UK – is that gas stations barely break even on selling gas, and they make their money selling stuff in the attached convenience store. The gas just draws customers.
Most gas stations barely turn a profit on their core product — and when the price of oil goes up they may even take a loss on it.
Battling small margins, cutthroat competition, and the looming threat of electric vehicles, many gas stations are more reliant than ever on secondary revenue streams.
The real money is made inside the store
Today, 80% of all gas stations have a convenience store on site.
According to a study conducted by the National Association of Convenience Stores, 44% of gas station customers go inside. And among them, 1 in 3 ends up indulging in some kind of treat.
The goods inside these stores — Doritos, sunglasses, lotto tickets, energy drinks — only account for ~30% of the average gas station’s revenue, yet bring in 70% of the profit.
So if you’re a restaurant off the highway or something, having charging stations might be a way to ensure customers.
- Comment on Best and worst parcel delivery firms revealed in Citizens Advice rankings 2 years ago:
A third of shoppers experienced a problem with a parcel in the last month, either because of late delivery or parcels being left in insecure locations, according to Citizens Advice.
A third in the last month?
Either package delivery is way, way worse in the UK than in the US, or the phrasing here is designed to get a high numbers. Like, if they had a package stolen in just the last month, that seems like an incomprehensibly-high number. If the question was “did you have a package delivered to a place where someone could have stolen it”, that seems like another story.
It looks like Amazon at least has Amazon Locker service in the UK, and I can’t imagine that people would be having things delivered to their home at all if theft was that high.