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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: August 22nd, 2023

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  • Personally, I am very pleased with my Max Lumi (which has been superseded by other models). It was quite expensive, though, but I can say I have used it very often for five years and expect many more of it, still. However, because of its size, I don’t often bring it out with me. I primarily use it for studying at home.

    But if you don’t need the largest size (13"), the smaller ones are less expensive. If I were to replace mine, I’d probably go for a 10" one. I think that seems the right balance of size for writing notes and portability.







  • The other day I went out for lunch with a friend and some acquaintances. One guy ordered a burger, and then he went on for a little time about how is it possible there are enough cows for everyone to have a burger? How many burgers can you get from a cow? Where are all these cows coming from??

    So I said it’s factory farming, these cows are produced for the sake of their meat. A cow is huge, a quarter cow is enough meat to feed a family for a whole year. I don’t think this guy was being purposefully obtuse, because I don’t know him to have that kind of personality, so the only remaining explanation is he really is that ignorant/stupid. In this age, we have lots of people who don’t care, or wilfully turn their eye from it. But to not know?



  • Truly, I don’t understand why, but there are fully grown adults who believe that anything an LLM says is true. Maybe they think computers are unbiased (which is only as true as programmers and data are unbiased); maybe its the confidence with which LLMs deliver information; maybe they believe the program actually searches and verified information; maybe it’s all of the above and more.

    I know a guy who routinely says, “I asked ChatGPT…”, and even after having explained how LLMs are complex word predictors and are not programmed for factual truth, he still goes to ChatGPT for everything. It’s a total refusal to believe otherwise, but I can’t fathom why.


  • Around two or three years ago, I was on a sales call/app demo as a potential customer–not for TikTok, of course. It’s an American company and I’m based in Canada. I asked the sales guy about their data storage, encryption, privacy, and the like; he didn’t know. I said I needed to know that if our group uses the application to communicate internally about, for example, helping refugees, the government won’t be able to access it. The guy asked me if that really was a concern.

    Well, you tell me now, sales guy, is it really a concern?