This random commentor happens to be a Russian microbiologist, so you’re in pretty safe hands.

(No, I do not develop biological weapons, nor am I aware of any such facilities)

For all folks concerned of massive epidemic:

• The people who contacted her after the incident are isolated, the hospital quarantined
• Yes, there is a vaccine. People are not commonly vaccinated because plague is very rare nowadays, but they can be as needed.
• It can be cured by antibiotics. Care needs to be prompt though, and that’s what Daria very recklessly missed. Fatal mistake for someone who oopsied in a pathogen lab.

Also, to those concerned that this is a biological weapon lab:

• This would be the most stupid and inefficient biological weapon. Again, we have the vaccine AND the cure.
• Disease research institutes are a normal thing throughout the world. We need them to efficiently combat outbreaks should they ever reappear.

Obviously, you got banned from society

Imagine being held in prison for 30 years, knowing there’s no way out and you’re gonna be executed, and then when that day comes, they put you through torture by asphyxiation for 40 minutes, to then rush you to the hospital, so you can be saved and they repeat it again.

True! Some level of distribution is essential for the resilience and doesn’t eat too much of efficiency.

In fact, I’ve been contemplating on the possibility of small, neighborhood data centers. They could both reliably provide local information services, as well as on-demand computing power.

Much as renewables are most efficient in a grid, hardware is most efficient in a data center.

Can we distribute and become autonomous in both? Yes. Do the times hint we might have to? Also yes. Is it optimal? Not really.

When you self-host, your hardware sits mostly idle, waiting for you to need it. In a data center, that same piece of hardware could serve so many more people, each with their own schedule. The data center approach is more environmentally sustainable, as it makes better use of the hardware, and so requires much less of it for the same output.

Unfortunately, though, there are also big, huge externalities. Dependency. Abuse. Roadblocks. Advertisement economy. This is what mostly drives people to owning their own data and infrastructure. It’s not a bright, perfect future for everyone. It’s a necessity of time, not a perfect solution. Granted, it might be fun to fiddle around with.

That said, I do self-host, and I do own my solar panel. Such are times!

Marketá Gregorová, maybe?

Absolutely is! lol

Seems to be a general feature of Slavic languages.

Although it would prolly be “never do not”

You might need three diamonds (or, if you’re feeling adventurous, two buckets) to do something and make these structures operational :)

And after you learn it, you can make yours.

The technology is undoubtedly good. All technologies are, if you ask me. The problem is about externalities, but they do matter and cannot be viewed separately.

Currently, as things stand, the development and, notably, use of the technology comes with a massive threat to several important areas. This is why many pieces of software that ban LLM contributions make a for now caveat.

Relying on it now, under current circumstances, is dangerous and damaging, even if sometimes it is a tremendous help. It may get better once we have truly efficient models and training, do not reinvent the wheel from scratch 20 times over, do not screw entire economy over it, put guardrails on the use of technology against people, and have a cheap, resource-efficient, and long-relevant hardware to run it. But we’re not there yet. We’re going to space with a gunpowder barrel here. Workable? I guess. Reasonable? No.

I see your point. I don’t think China-made local models are panacea by any means though, even through it’s good they try to make it more efficient instead of just throwing gazillions and watching the world burn. It is still a very massive, very problematic operation.

Running LLMs locally, especially considering the pace of development, is just going to distribute the e-waste issue and make parts availability even worse, as I doubt your average hardware would be busy around the clock as it is in data centers (and so we’ll need much more of it). It is better for some things (like privacy or reliability or screwing with incentives of those turning the economy and the world upside down for a quick grift), but it doesn’t solve the others.

As per legal aspects, time will be our judge. I’d love not to give a damn about copyright, but it still exists.

Do tankies tend to put “liberal” on anything they don’t like?

I’m sorry, comrade, but that’s not how it works. There are many valid reasons people of all political backgrounds stand against using LLMs in (open-source) coding.

Platforms and projects taking direct action on the matter is exactly what communists usually claim to support. They make change where they can, and rally for a bigger one.

Ultimately, the most performative folks are those judging others without making something better themselves.

You talk about it being “blind” right under exhaustive list of reasons why.

The fact that these arguments appeared before doesn’t make them less true. Yes, the coding quality of LLMs has increased, and, notably, it stopped producing as many bugs all over the place, and even got to review bugs made by humans.

But it doesn’t remove all other issues from the table, namely:

• Issues of licensing and stolen code, potentially causing copyright problems which most open-source projects are poorly fit to resolve and may go down because of them
• Environmental impact of model training, huge data centers threatening water supplies, producing tons of e-waste, creating noise pollution, increasing power demand, including one from unclean sources at the critical point when we should reduce it as much as possible
• Deterioration in skill level of human coders and lack of avenues for juniors to learn to code properly, which is likely to stay as an essential thing to have
• Outside coding, there are many ethical issues around companies producing LLM models, as many have ties to the military and police, and are heavily misused to fuel fascist regimes
• And more.

I always take it, but it’s a bit of personal history

I once got stuck in a shower room because the lock broke, and I’ve spent about 6 hours on something like 3 square meters without any way to contact the external world nor entertain myself. It was just me, bath, washing machine and the sink. I’ve been alone at the house, so I couldn’t ask for help. Also, hot water pipes were being repaired, so I couldn’t take a nice shower/bath while at it, either.

Since then, I always took a phone with me. Just in case, y’know.

Oh, these are indeed weird. Probably some power fantasies.

While there are plenty of people like this, there’s more to PvP than that.

PvP is, first and foremost, about an unpredictable kind of danger. You can learn the behaviors of NPC mobs, and while you’ll look very cool dealing with 'em all, you may lose a thrill and adrenaline rush that comes with engaging the enemy you don’t know. And you don’t always know what the other person is up to.

“We will cast out the […] fascists”

Is this the resignation statement?

preparing champagne

The only thing better than a Nordic country is another Nordic country

Probably just need to wait. They didn’t roll out the new version through update channels yet, likely to have more users test it first.