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Comment I asked ChatGPT about Bard's mistake... (Score 0) 91

Me: What mistake did Google's chatbot Bard make? ChatGPT: Google's AI chatbot, BERT, is a state-of-the-art language processing model developed by Google, but like all AI systems, it is not immune to making mistakes. BERT, like any other AI system, is only as good as the data it was trained on and the specific task it was designed for. If the training data is biased or contains errors, the model can make mistakes. For example, BERT, like other NLP models, can perpetuate gender biases and stereotypes that are present in the training data. In some cases, it may also generate inappropriate or offensive responses, particularly when asked to complete a sentence or generate text based on a prompt. Additionally, BERT can make errors when it is used for tasks it was not specifically designed for, or when it is presented with text that is written in a way that is significantly different from the text in the training data. In conclusion, Google's BERT is a highly effective NLP model, but like all AI systems, it is not perfect, and it can make mistakes. The importance of monitoring and mitigating biases in AI systems and the training data used to train them cannot be overstated.

Comment Maximize the synergy! (Score 4, Funny) 56

By maximizing the synergies of cryptocurrency monetization, economic growth can occur with zero inflationary expansion in a post-reality nonregulated environment of super conductive growth while avoiding neo-entropic destabilizing market forces that would ordinarily cause mass corrections of over valued diegetic assets but cannot because of the super attenuated consciousnesses of the collective investor body's nonbelief in real world exchange of goods and services!

Submission + - The Founder of GeoCities on What Killed the 'Old Internet' (gizmodo.com)

An anonymous reader writes: In the early aughts, my wheezing dialup connection often operated as if it were perpetually out of breath. Thus, unlike my childhood friends, it was near to impossible for me to watch videos, TV shows, or listen to music. Far from feeling limited, I felt like I was lucky, for I had access to an encyclopedia of lovingly curated pages about anything I wanted to know—which in those days was anime—the majority of which was conveniently located on GeoCities. For all the zoomers scrunching up their brows, here’s a primer. Back in the 1990s, before the birth of modern web hosting household names like GoDaddy and WP Engine, it wasn’t exactly easy or cheap to publish a personal website. This all changed when GeoCities came on the scene in 1994.

The company gave anyone their own little space of the web if they wanted it, providing users with roughly 2 MB of space for free to create a website on any topic they wished. Millions took GeoCities up on its offer, creating their own homemade websites with web counters, flashing text, floating banners, auto-playing sound files, and Comic Sans. Unlike today’s Wild Wild Internet, websites on GeoCities were organized into virtual neighborhoods, or communities, built around themes. “HotSprings” was dedicated to health and fitness, while “Area 51” was for sci-fi and fantasy nerds. There was a bottom-up focus on users and the content they created, a mirror of what the public internet was like in its infancy. Overall, at least 38 million webpages were built on GeoCities. At one point, it was the third most-visited domain online. Yahoo acquired GeoCities in 1999 for $3.6 billion. The company lived on for a decade more until Yahoo shut it down in 2009, deleting millions of sites.

Nearly two decades have passed since GeoCities, founded by David Bohnett, made its debut, and there is no doubt that the internet is a very different place than it was then. No longer filled with webpages on random subjects made by passionate folks, it now feels like we live in a cyberspace dominated by skyscrapers—named Facebook, Google, Amazon, Twitter, and so on—instead of neighborhoods. Proponents of Web3, like Andreessen Horowitz general partner Chris Dixon, argue that we need to get back to what we had in the days of GeoCities—while also not giving up the advances of the Web2 years—and allow creators and businesses to form a relationship with their audiences that is not governed by algorithms and advertising. It’s yet to be seen if the version of Web3 backed by Dixon will ever materialize but it’s not looking good.

We can, however, ask GeoCities’ founder what he thinks of the internet of today, subsumed by social media networks, hate speech, and more corporate than ever. Bohnett now focuses on funding entrepreneurs through Baroda Ventures, an early-stage tech fund he founded, and on philanthropy with the David Bohnett Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to social justice and social activism that he chairs. Right off the bat, Bohnett says something that strikes me. It may, in fact, be the sentence that summarizes the key distinction between the internet of the ‘90s-early 2000s and the internet we have today. “GeoCities was not about self-promotion,” Bohnett told Gizmodo in an interview. “It was about sharing your interest and your knowledge.”

Submission + - How the US Gave Away a Breakthrough Battery Technology To China (npr.org)

An anonymous reader writes: When a group of engineers and researchers gathered in a warehouse in Mukilteo, Wash., 10 years ago, they knew they were onto something big. They scrounged up tables and chairs, cleared out space in the parking lot for experiments and got to work. They were building a battery — a vanadium redox flow battery — based on a design created by two dozen U.S. scientists at a government lab. The batteries were about the size of a refrigerator, held enough energy to power a house, and could be used for decades. The engineers pictured people plunking them down next to their air conditioners, attaching solar panels to them, and everyone living happily ever after off the grid. "It was beyond promise," said Chris Howard, one of the engineers who worked there for a U.S. company called UniEnergy. "We were seeing it functioning as designed, as expected." But that's not what happened. Instead of the batteries becoming the next great American success story, the warehouse is now shuttered and empty. All the employees who worked there were laid off. And more than 5,200 miles away, a Chinese company is hard at work making the batteries in Dalian, China.

The Chinese company didn't steal this technology. It was given to them — by the U.S. Department of Energy. First in 2017, as part of a sublicense, and later, in 2021, as part of a license transfer. An investigation by NPR and the Northwest News Network found the federal agency allowed the technology and jobs to move overseas, violating its own licensing rules while failing to intervene on behalf of U.S. workers in multiple instances. Now, China has forged ahead, investing millions into the cutting-edge green technology that was supposed to help keep the U.S. and its economy out front. Department of Energy officials declined NPR's request for an interview to explain how the technology that cost U.S. taxpayers millions of dollars ended up in China. After NPR sent department officials written questions outlining the timeline of events, the federal agency terminated the license with the Chinese company, Dalian Rongke Power Co. Ltd. "DOE takes America's manufacturing obligations within its contracts extremely seriously," the department said in a written statement. "If DOE determines that a contractor who owns a DOE-funded patent or downstream licensee is in violation of its U.S. manufacturing obligations, DOE will explore all legal remedies." The department is now conducting an internal review of the licensing of vanadium battery technology and whether this license — and others — have violated U.S. manufacturing requirements, the statement said.

Comment ALA 10 most banned books (Score 0) 142

https://www.ala.org/advocacy/b... ALA 10 most banned books: Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe Reasons: Banned, challenged, and restricted for LGBTQIA+ content, and because it was considered to have sexually explicit images Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison Reasons: Banned and challenged for LGBTQIA+ content and because it was considered to be sexually explicit All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson Reasons: Banned and challenged for LGBTQIA+ content, profanity, and because it was considered to be sexually explicit Out of Darkness by Ashley Hope Perez Reasons: Banned, challenged, and restricted for depictions of abuse and because it was considered to be sexually explicit The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas Reasons: Banned and challenged for profanity, violence, and because it was thought to promote an anti-police message and indoctrination of a social agenda The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie Reasons: Banned and challenged for profanity, sexual references and use of a derogatory term Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews Reasons: Banned and challenged because it was considered sexually explicit and degrading to women The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison Reasons: Banned and challenged because it depicts child sexual abuse and was considered sexually explicit This Book is Gay by Juno Dawson Reasons: Banned, challenged, relocated, and restricted for providing sexual education and LGBTQIA+ content. Beyond Magenta by Susan Kuklin Reasons: Banned and challenged for LGBTQIA+ content and because it was considered to be sexually explicit.

Comment Instructions to pull the easter egg up (Score 2) 46

Instructions to pull the easter egg up: Select Game 2 or Game 3. Get the Bridge Find the maze north of the Black Castle. Look for the room that is flickering -- the flicker is due to the extra item hidden in the room related to the Easter egg. In the flickering maze, use the bridge to get to access the chamber in the bottom/middle of the room. Go to the lower right corner of the small chamber and you'll pick up a single pixel. Carry the pixel to the room just above the Catacombs, located exactly one screen down, and one screen right from the Yellow Castle. Note: The pixel will be invisible unless you rub along a southern border. Drop the pixel in this room with a barrier on the right side. Retrieve two more objects (Key, Sword, Chalice) and drop them in the room. Once there are three objects in the room including the pixel, you can walk through the rightmost wall to view the Easter egg.

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