found that with just 250 carefully-crafted poison pills, they could compromise the output of any size LLM

That is a very key point.

if you know what you are doing? Yes, you can destroy a model. In large part because so many people are using unlabeled training data.

As a bit of context/baby’s first model training:

• Training on unlabeled data is effectively searching the data for patterns and, optimally, identifying what those patterns are. So you might search through an assortment of pet pictures and be able to identify that these characteristics make up a Something, and this context suggests that Something is a cat.
• Labeling data is where you go in ahead of time to actually say “Picture 7125166 is a cat”. This is what used to be done with (this feels like it should be a racist term but might not be?) Mechanical Turks or even modern day captcha checks.

Just the former is very susceptible to this kind of attack because… you are effectively labeling the training data without the trainers knowing. And it can be very rapidly defeated, once people know about it, by… just labeling that specific topic. So if your Is Hotdog? app is flagging a bunch of dicks? You can go in and flag maybe 10 dicks and 10 hot dogs and ten bratwurst and you’ll be good to go.

All of which gets back to: The “good” LLMs? Those are the ones companies are paying for to use for very specific use cases and training data is very heavily labeled as part of that.

For the cheap “build up word of mouth” LLMs? They don’t give a fuck and they are invariably going to be poisoned by misinformation. Just like humanity is. Hey, what can’t jet fuel melt again?

Can’t speak to Asian or Australian “mexican” food (although now I desperately want to eat at a Japanese Taco Bell…). And I THINK I have had Canadian Mexican once or twice but any time I am up there I tend to gravitate towards “Canadian Fried Chicken” and the like since they got the message from the Filipinos and just add a shit ton of gravy (and sometimes “cajun poutine”) to that which… is the correct way to eat Fried Chicken.

But mentioned it in the other branch: “Authentic” is a very loaded term. Taking Chinese food for example (since that is near and dear to both my heart and colon), it is all about adapting cultural recipes and styles of eating to available ingredients and regional preferences. American Chinese tends to be a LOT sweeter. My experience is that Briths Chinese tends to be more spicy and incorporate aspects of Indian cooking (so… a very roundabout way of being similar to Nepalese food). Even within China you have very big differences between what you would eat in Hong Kong versus Yunnan, let alone if you go more North.

That said, a good way to think of Mexican (especially Taco Bell Mexican) is that they are taking sandwiches (that is what tacos and burritos are) an stuffing them massively to the point of ONLY serving open faced sandwiches. It is still a sandwich with a lot of the same flavor profiles, but… it is hard to get too cranky at people insisting that it is different.

One more thing. Don’t sleep on supplements. No, not the kind that the good grocery store keeps encouraging you to buy. Stuff like metamucil is great for increasing fiber in your diet in weeks where you might not want to eat split pea or beans or whatever.

And… vitamins in general are good to have. We redefine “the food pyramid” and so forth every few years but anyone who actually puts some thought in realizes that it is nigh impossible to get THAT much vitamins and nutrients into a daily diet without some REAL expensive shenanigans. In theory you get that over the course of a week or even two weeks. In practice? We all live very busy lives but most of us also don’t engage in the level of physical activity where you are going to be eating 3-4 hearty meals a day to stay functional. But taking a multivitamin daily and some fiber powder a few times a week goes a long way towards evening out the more hectic/less healthy weeks.

Homie… you aren’t really doing yourself any favors with the “racist” allegations. But let’s break this down a bit.

“French fries”, at least in their most “traditional” form ARE “French”… in the sense that they are frenched. It is a loaded term that mostly relates to making food more aesthetically pleasing. But, with regards to vegetables, it is commonly used to refer to cutting food into long strips. Sound familiar? Julienne cuts/matchsticks are related but folk have Thoughts on the differences.

So yes, “french fries” are “French” in the sense that they are “frenched potatoes that are subsequently fried”. Steak Fries break this but Steak Fries are a war crime 99/100 times (but holy shit are they amazing when cooked properly).

And Taco Bell gives you the shits because it’s fairly poor quality,

Sorry, what do you mean by that? Well, let’s face it, we all know what you mean by that. But let’s move on.

Tacos and burritos do indeed have a lot of legacy with “poor people food” since they are essentially Mexican(-ish) sandwiches. It is protein, maybe some veg, and filler wrapped in something you can hold in your hand. And, the “filler” is the key there. Since the common protein has, historically, been beans of some form. Because they are dirt cheap, store really well, and are an AMAZING vessel for flavor (as detailed in the other branch).

Which gets back to… beans are high in fiber. Fiber really helps to regulate bodily functions. And people don’t realize just how irregular their bodily functions are.

And to roll back to the start: Taco Bell IS actually “Mexican” food in the same sense that Chinese restaraunts are “Chinese fod”. No, they are not 100% authentic but they are instead taking a cultural food and adapting it to available ingredients and regional preferences. And American Chinese or British Chinese (shockingly awesome) are just as “Chinese” as Cantonese or Yunnan Chinese food. They are regional variants based on available ingredients. Okay, Canadian Chinese food can suck a butt but I will never turn down that styrofoam plate of nonsense.

But hey, keep on showing dat ass. It makes for a good learning experience for the rest of us.

I’m going to assume you are American/European(+UK) where we bastardize the hell out of actual Mexican food.

But the general rule of thumb? Anything with beans. Beans are ridiculously high in fiber AND a really good price to nutrients ratio. And in most fast food (and even restaurant) settings, beans are used as a filler for that reason. But also? Beans (especially “refried”) is GOOD since they tend to get spiced like month old beef (like a lot of “poor people food”) so you just have massive amounts of flavor in every single bite.

This is actually the reality behind the, really racist, mindset that “taco bell gives you the shits, ha ha ha”. Since Taco Bell (and a lot of mexican inspired food) is very high in fiber.

Television and Radio are 75% advertisement.

They always have been

Most of my favorite youtubers from 2010s are gone replaced with nonstop politics, drama, reaction, and streaming content farming.

Find better youtubers? But also understand that people are going to talk about what matters to them and most people aren’t privileged enough to ignore the political hellscape (or are so privileged they think they can benefit from it…). Same with the “drama” since so much of that is intrinsically tied to how the platforms they rely on for their livelihood function.

I feel it in my heart that short form content is damaging everyones attention spans especially my tablet ridden younger family members.

I very much agree. But this has been going on for decades. TV led to a decline in movies (“I only have time to maybe watch five episodes of a show. Not a full movie”) and “book reading” has been on a decline for about as long.

When I go into the search bar on YouTube I see stuff literally called “brain break” and “brain rot”.

Okay? I mean, everyone always made jokes about how TV would rot our brains. It is nothing new

I switch on the news and its 90% pure political propagandano matter the station.

… the news is discussing politics? Gasp, shock, and amazement?

Even the memes suck now, say what you want about caption memes and dancing babies and troll face, Pepe, me gusta but that shit was at least comprehensible in humor. go on 67 Wikipedia and it literally says “It has no fixed meaning.”

“I’m Rick James, bitch”. “Whatchu talkin’ bout Willis”. “Can you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth”.

Kids are fucking stupid. At least this crop aren’t racist? Yet…

Even the steam store just feels different now. Its full of gooner porn bait visual novels and mundane activity sims and 1 season relevant fps shooters.

Don’t expect stores to curate themselves for you. Find others who like what you like and let them trawl through the steam slop. It is no different than being a PC gamer who wanted to buy KOTOR back when every store would shove WoW and Halo down your throat the second you entered.

All the stuff I enjoyed is gone,

No, it’s not. Retention of media is at an all time high and you can very much sit down to watch or play the things you live

and everything they make now seems so empty and pessimistic now.

Again, curate better.

Is this just me getting old yelling at clouds, or is something wrong?

What’s wrong is that you think the world must revolve around you. It doesn’t. But that doesn’t mean people out there aren’t making content you would love to consume. You just have to put a bit of effort in. Because The Algorithm was never about giving everyone exactly what they want. It was about matching people up to personas and feeding content along those lines.

Woo. Chud souls.

Also figures the only way they could get on the keighelys was to pay for it.

To elaborate a bit. Even ignoring the chud anti-transphobe shit the studio actively courted in the hopes of making asmongold-senpai love them (it failed?), it is just a really bad Souls game.

The concept of the lantern to shift dimensions is REALLY cool. In practice? it just means that you go as far as you can in one realm, shift, and go as far as you can in the next. There is no real sense of inter-connectivity or navigability because the coherence between the shifted realms is so poor. You just get a new bonfire right before the boss.

The idea of tying item descriptions to ability scores SEEMS interesting… except that it mostly means you can’t plan ahead because you genuinely have no idea what a skill does without going to the wiki. So… it defeats the purpose entirely and just penalizes those who try to actually play the game.

And the combat balance is also real questionable. If you pick a “meta” weapon, you shred. Otherwise you are doing constant chip damage. Which, ironically, is a problem Lords of the Fallen 1 had… on new game plus. Not new game.

All this game had going for it was that they wanted to glaze the chuds.

A wok? The raised sides of the wok are not supposed to get too warm. That is actually the “secret” of the pan. You have very centralized heat in the middle and you move things to the edges to just keep them warm while you cook the new ingredients through in the center/bottom.

How much of a gradient does indeed depend on your heat source. The propane tornado of horror in my backyard makes the center ridiculously hot but the edges are no slouch. A campfire is going to be a lesser and more controlled version of that. A smaller gas burner or an induction burner is mostly going to just heat up the center a lot.

But that is also why you let the wok come to temperature, same as any pan. ALL heat sources have hot spots. Some bits of wood burn hotter than other. The actual flame jets from your gas stove are hotter than the ceramic bit on top. Even the flamenado has hot and less hot spots. Hence why you always agitate food. Or, in the case of going for a sear and not understanding why restaraunt chefs insist you only flip once, you rotate/move the pan itself.

Your mileage may vary, obviously

But a friend has one of the bigass battery models (the expensive fancy one because he was impressing his inlaws). Cooked a full friendsgiving dinner with the only problem being his burners being tiny (which we all knew but didn’t want to say…).

Which, conceptually, makes sense. I basically only have my induction at full power when I am rapidly bringing something to a boil so I can then add the noodles and back off. So maybe a minute every 30-60 minutes during a big cooking day? And the rest of the time it is at between 40-70% on 1-2 of the 4 burners.

So if we assume the stoves are properly rated to power all four burners at 100% on a 240V circuit? That should actually be pretty within reason for a 120V circuit to handle with the battery pack being for bursting beyond that.

I would still be incredibly wary of buying one since the batteries do have a limited number of cycles. But if you are spending that much for a new stove? You probably are planning to do that again within the next decade?

A proper range hood (so one that vents externally as opposed to in a cabinet…) is pretty much an essential. Both for cooking in general and for lighting gas on fire a few feet from your face for extended periods of time.

Been a minute but I want to say the Technology Connections video where he put an air quality sensor next to a gas stove also talked about opening a window?

But my not a doctor and not that kind of scientist statement: What you need is air circulation. So fans and open windows.

Yeah… homie, I think you are very much overthinking this.

Understand that “stir fry” is kind of a catch all for how a lot of Chinese folk (I think more the Southern regions but don’t quote me on that) cook. It is conceptually no different than sauteeing some food for dinner and it is 100% a “week night dinner” deal.

Go watch a video or two on what a (home) stir fry should look like. J Kenji Lopez-Alt and Chinese Cooking Demistyfied did a collab a few years back on almost this exact topic. Then… just make sure you are doing that when you cook. If stuff doesn’t sizzle “right” you are adding too much or the heat is too low and you should adjust that. And then, after a few times, it just becomes second nature.

No different than knowing that if you put the meat in the pan and there is no sizzle then you aren’t going to get a good brown and need to raise the heat or wait longer. Similarly, if the oil explodes across the kitchen when you put that thigh down? Maybe turn it down a notch or five.

A lot of this is just what you grew up with. A LOT of people (self included) over-stuff tacos. And I am sure there are people who get confused over how to make a sandwich. Hell, a friend always laughs when I am “over thinking curry” and points out it is just a stew that even kids make and I shouldn’t be measuring anything beyond “two bricks or four”. And stir fries are a lot like that.

Don’t get me wrong. There are some truly heinous things you can do with a wok. But stir fries are almost always what people are talking about when they insist that electric can’t be used for authentic Chinese cooking (and then ignore how much of China actually have electric stoves…).

OH. Another thing people tend to forget: There are flat bottom woks for a reason. Yes, it is less “authentic”. Except… most woks were cheap ass family everything pans and would get dinged and dented anyway. And as long as you are agitating the food, it doesn’t matter if the bottom is perfectly round or has a big flat spot so that the heat can be more directly applied.

The good news is that is super easy to remedy.

I will never understand why people will buy twenty tiny bowls so they can properly mise en place every single ingredient before they even look at the stove. But ask them to just get a big serving bowl and keep the components of a stir fry in there after you cook them but before you mix everything together with the sauce? It is like pulling teeth.

Technology Connections has a great video or three on the subject. People very much underestimate just how much “bad stuff” is given off from burning gas indoors.

And from an anecdotal perspective? I am of Chinese descent and cook with a wok probably 3-4 times a week. I grew up on a shitty resistive heat stove. I have stayed in apartments with gas and with modern resistive heat. I now have an induction stove.

Induction is, hands down, the fastest for boiling water by a very large margin. And I can cook in the summer with minimal worries about making the house way too hot. Don’t get me wrong, gas is fun as hell and I actually ended up getting an outdoor propane burner for the big/fancy wok nights. But there is a lot to be said about people perceiving gas to be a lot more powerful than it is just because it looks powerful.

As for resistive? It is definitely a step down. But… not that much of a step down. Mostly it just maths out to when I turn on the stove. For gas or induction it is a minute or so before I plan to cook. For resistive? Usually when I have maybe one more bit of veg left to prep. As for stir fries? it just means I cook in smaller batches which you generally should be doing anyway unless you have a full industrial kitchen stove (or said outdoor burner). And… you probably still want to because most people (self included) just aren’t coordinated enough to handle a full blown meal and all the positioning to avoid burning or overcooking stuff over the course of a minute or three of actual cook time.

But if you think that consumer grade gas stove is giving you “wok hei”?

1. Wok hei is something that is almost exclusively about very regional street food and is not actually what you or the white guy you watched on youtube think it is
2. Your home stove does not provide anywhere near enough heat or open flames to pull that off
3. your home stove ALSO doesn’t have enough to keep a wok fully “charged” with heat. And what you think is “lack of wok hei” is actually just you overcrowding the pan and steaming things in soggy oil rather than rapidly pan frying it

Western Europe had an “advantage” in that, for whatever reason, many of their factories were rebuilt in the 1950s or later. So a lot of the tooling was closer to Japan (who ALSO weirdly had to rebuild a lot of factories in the back half of the 20th…) and China (who were more or less industrializing during that period). But all the jokes about the electrical system in (Western) European cars being a mess is “truth in television” due to having a lot of the tooling but not the expertise.

Much of it goes back to the 60s-80s when Western factories were largely outdated and realizing that East Asian factories were rapidly outpacing them and able to offer better products for MUCH cheaper. Rather than acknowledge they had become complacent and didn’t want to train their worekrs they instead focused on “made in America” bullshit and insisting that that new vacuum was no longer repairable. And… mostly that boils down to the idea that if you have vacuum tube transistors you can replace them easily whereas you can’t replace a transistor on a single chip.

But, as we have learned in the intervening decades, you can… just replace the board. And many of those evil computers in cars actually drastically increased repairability/maintainability because you can actually tune many aspects with a computer and get VERY useful data out of the sensors.

Because the reality is that you can make an SOC device that is INCREDIBLY repairable by focusing on how you do chip layout and what modules can be repaired. And you can make a multi-board setup that is immensely unrepairable by locking down parts with effectively DRM. And… there are also times where it actually does make sense to lock down/register those parts just like there are times it actually does make sense to glue the fuck out of that assembly.

But that is nuance. And nuance is for women and The Gays™. So buy American and purchase a radio that you can repair until the day you die! And then buy a new radio next year.

git checkout -b main
git branch -D master
git config --global init.defaultBranch main

You don’t have to deal with shit if you don’t want to.

To be clear:

EVERYONE should have a cheap set of electronics screwdriver bits (and the ifixit kit is really nice. So are the much cheaper knockoffs from the same factories. Up to you if you care). And having basic soldering skills and knowing when you can get away with heat shrink connectors is a really useful skill. You’ll be repairing the headphones the dog ripped off your desk in no time and save yourself a lot of money.

But when you are listening to people tlak about how this cell phone needs to be repairable or how you NEED to have the DAC be a separate board so it can be removed and replaced? Same with demanding chip diagrams for that SOC in your laptop. Ask yourself: How likely is it that you will EVER do a repair like that? How often do you actually hold onto hardware? And how much do you trust the guy with a shop in the mall to not scam you on this?

I am generally a strong supporter of Right To Repair, even when it is something I, as a consumer, am never going to even consider doing. But it is also worth remembering that a lot of the “this is horrible because it is all computers” is still rooted in racism and xenophobia. And it is always worth looking at what a repair actually will cost versus buying a new one.

For example. Last year my dishwasher failed. I did some diagnostics, did some very deep cleans, and even opened it up. And I mostly narrowed it down to a failure in one of three parts. I looked up the price of those parts and… they were all most of the cost of a dishwasher on their own. And if I paid a professional to replace them, it would be well over the price of a new dishwasher. So… I could try and get lucky and replace the right one, by myself, on the first try… or I could just buy a new dishwasher during a holiday sale. And… damn I love my new dishwasher.

… This is somehow going to be a ridiculously strong argument for requiring signed deploys because users are idiots, huh?

Yeah. Believe it or not but the sex pest who actively didn’t warn his contemporaries about the impact of the honey plugin and who now advertises on kiwi farms might be kind of a piece of shit who will say anything for a buck?

And now for a word from d-brand!

Apalrd has done some great “popular computer science” videos on the various remote KVM devices that is well worth looking up. One of them specifically goes into the ridiculously sketchy methods that are used to fetch and execute unsigned code in random buckets to handle firmware updates.

But as for the mic? Honestly, if you open up a LOT of consumer devices you are going to find random microphones. Not because they are all secretly spying on you. But because they use “off the shelf” chips and boards that already have those embedded. Especially since microphones and speakers are kind of the same hardware in most cases and we ALL love a good beep.

I 100% agree the software stack shouldn’t be on there. But, as the blog post points out, there is a LOT of developmental code and packages in that image that shouldn’t be. It is likely just a case of not removing unnecessary packages from the base image.

Because… the entire point of a device like this is that you plug it in somewhere you aren’t. MAYBE JetKVM corp can hear me muttering profanity or wondering where I left that USB c splitter when I am trying to assemble it the first time. The rest of the time? It is plugged into the back of a server that I am booting up so that I can install proxmox without having to drag a monitor over. And while you can potentially get some juicy info out of that? It is not at all worth the hassle to set up fake companies and market a fake (moderately high demand in the right circles) device.