I encountered a Pips puzzle in NYT once which didnt have a unique solution. This was very confusing as I was expecting these puzzles are curated and the designers would use tools to design unique and interesting puzzles.
I don't know, I could imagine that this changes when AI becomes more sensible than the average internet advice.
Also I would like to see some evidence how dangerous the experiment with the AI inspired Fusor actually was. I recently read here "hiking in jeans" is dangerous.
I'd be interested in how an LLM could become more sensible than the average internet, they are by definition the average of the internet. I'm waiting for the next major innovation, and given AI's history I might be waiting a long time.
Fusors are somewhat dangerous, they use extremely high voltage, in the thousands to hundred thousand volt range.
x-rays become an issue above around 30,000 volts, but they are frequently made by high school students, and I'm not aware of any deaths.
> they are frequently made by high school students, and I'm not aware of any deaths.
That's been done no more than a few dozen times I think? Maybe less than that. I think it's a rare enough activity that the accident rate simply hasn't been probed enough.
Wood burning with microwave transformers is notorious for getting people killed, but how many people does it kill relative to how many people have tried it? Maybe a handful few out of a hundred? On the other hand, kids building fusors are probably smarter than the average public, to whom wood burning with transformers is frighteningly accessible. I don't think teenagers building fusors is quite that dangerous, but I don't think we have enough data to call it a statistically safe activity.
> they are by definition the average of the internet.
Are you referring to base models?
Nowadays they also train on stolen books and are further "aligned" based on feedback. I imagine they are already learning to teach based on feedback from users.
To be honest, I was using internet as shorthand for average of human knowledge, on the basis that most books, peer reviewed articles, and everything else is already on the internet, even if they exist only in the more unsavory corners (I've seen nothing to suggest the FM producers were / are much bothered about where the data is from).
But yes referring to base models. I'm also not convinced that the average book is any more trustworthy than the average webpage, whether that be a purely technical book, where you really need to webpage of errata to be able to use the examples. Or the more pop-sci books that cherry pick data and jump to completely unfounded conclusions (I'm thinking of the ancient engineers - aliens built the pyramids books).
The feedback is great and might work in some areas, technical knowledge. But once you step outside of the physical sciences and engineering, you don't so much end up with better quality information, just a curated experience that aligns with the model owners (think DeepSeek and Tiananmen square)
the nice thing about books, especially STEM ones, is that you can tell if there's a problem because there will be inconsistencies. so even without the errata, you can fuzz until it all matches.
In House on Fire, William H. Foege describes his own experiences in public health and details the remarkable program that involved people from countries around the world in pursuit of a single objective―eliminating smallpox forever.
As I understand it, it's not about aesthetics per-se, but rather that "nature" is a semantic concept defined by us humans for anything that is outside of the human sphere - i.e. something is "natural" or "out in nature" or "nature's way" if it's what would have been if humans hadn't been involved.
Search for good games in the vast pile trash mobile games: Gorogoa comes to mind
Start developping apps for your phone
Start modding the hardware of your phone (e.g. build a custom case)
Read books (modern phones with bigger screens are surprisingly comfortable for reading)
Research all the birthdays of your friends and safe them in the contact information. Your phone will remind you to send them a message on their birthday;)
I highly recommend "Backgammon NJ for Android" by Jimmy Hu - well worth the price. It has the best computer opponent I've seen (one that can usually beat me on the hardest setting, all of the computer opponents on the free backgammon games I tried years ago were a joke).
All: please don't repeat the usual Wolfram trope. (If you don't know what I mean by that, a decade's worth of explanation can be found via https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....)
The issue is not that it's wrong, it's that it's extremely repetitive and we want fresh discussion on HN, preferably about the specific content of an article.
I saw that comment but didn't follow the algolia link.
I didn't realize Stephen Wolfram was dang's personal We Do Not Mention the Orangutan. I suppose that given the inevitable prevalence of clichéd back-and-forth tropes and exchanges on HN, there's little choice but to draw a line in the sand on specific versions and hope it serves as a stand-in for all of them.
I have some expirience implementing an extreme dumb phone: I did it on a samsung smartphone using "Google family link" which is the parental control feature of android.
You need a second ios or android device (yes the family link app to control your "children" also exists for IOS). This device you store in an inaccessible location and you tie it to an account of which you dont remember the password (just write a long sequence of random characters on a sheet of paper and store it in the same inaccessible place)
Then you set everything up:
You install the desired apps on the main phone.
You prevent installation of additional apps through parent phone.
You blacklist all addictive websites.
(You can also block all preinstalled apps, in my case I had to block the browser app from Samsung, because the family link app does not restrict this browser it can only restrict chrome)
I ended up with a very watertight dumb phone. One goal was also to prevent any access to porn through the phone. This is also a process, because sometimes you find new ways to access such content despite the google family filters. Then you just blacklist those additional ways.
What I still have:
WhatsApp (people suggest sometimes to just use a feature phone or light phone, but this is not an option because at least in europe you need whats app, else you are excluded from social life)
