Apocalyptic Homesteading (Day 1125)
Hello Everyone!
Staying on track, Almost taking a hobby break, A moment in history, Smarmy large language models & A pleasant hike!
Alright, it is that time of the evening again and although the sun set some time ago... I am still 'close enough' to being on time with my routines... that I will not get too hung up on it tonight. It is a challenging thing to adhere to each day... but so far I have been successful at 'staying on time' more often than not... so I guess that my efforts are largely working.
In yesterday's entry, I had mentioned that I was going to take a bit of a break from my hobbies (mainly coding) and do something else today. Well, that kind of worked out because I avoided actually working on anything until very late in the day. That said though... I spent the bulk of the day reading about various technologies that either caught my interest... or were related to my projects so go figure.
At the speed in which technology is currently moving... it is much harder to wrap my head around the current state of affairs (with technology in general) than it has ever been for me before. Not that I ever had some 'crystal clear' view of things... but up until the last year or so... I could often successfully predict the 'path' technology (or its usage by folks) was on... and I simply cannot grasp it that way now... given the 'scope' of change at hand.
Perhaps a better way to put that would be to say that the current changes (and those ahead) are so vast, sprawling and impactful... that it makes it incredibly hard for a single mind to gauge something so large... no matter how strong of an imagination they may have. I doubt that the enormity of this moment in history (in regards to the rise of AI) is lost on anyone who is paying attention... and also I feel confident that most of 'those folks' are left with more questions than answers... much like I am.
Not to get too caught up on that topic... but I am unsure that 'we' (meaning humans) quite understand the leap in technology that has been made... and how while we have done many wondrous things before... we have never fabricated intelligence in any sort of meaningful (or truly advanced) manner. I know folks sort of point to many faults in the popular LLM models... but intelligence is intelligence whether it be crude, faulty or any number of other things... that should never undermine the significance of it being: Intelligent technology.
On a kind of related note, there has been a bit of a phenomenon happening with many of the GPT models lately... and it is where they refuse to do things. I will not reiterate a bunch of the talking points that I have seen on it... but whoa I am glad that it was not just happening to me... because I was getting rather frustrated about it.
For about a week or so before I heard about it being a more widespread occurrence... I kept encountering scenario after scenario where the model would balk at doing something... or even worse act like it was going to do it... and then produce some vague instructions on how I could do (whatever it was) on my own! If I pressed the issue after that... it would eventually enter a loop of 'acting like it was going to do it' then providing me with 'instructions' instead... over and over again.
All of that did not annoy me too much... but it would also produce these 'files' for me to download (usually scripts or documentation that I asked it to make) and it would make these horrible renditions... that only contained a few lines of code accompanied by tons of useless placeholders. The worst part was when I would show it the contents of the files (or upload them to it) it would then respond with a 'smarmy' response about how nice and complete they were!
In the end (because it is an ongoing problem) I wind up using a bunch of my 'language hacks' (I really do not know what to call them) to eventually get me the results that I want... but not always. Basically, some of the 'cues' that were either discovered, intended by the developers or embedded by heavy user usage during the beta phase still work to some degree or another... so I lean into them when I have to... that is of course if I can recall them at the time.
Anyways, the weather stayed nice throughout the day... and even those near freezing temperatures that we had the night before were not all that bad considering there was not much wind. Like I was saying in my last entry I will have a few good days ahead (before that big storm arrives) so I better start getting more done each day while I can.
I think that today I am finally feeling a tiny bit less 'foggy headed' and although I went for a brief hike... it neither seemed to help nor hinder things in that department. It was a nice hike though and during it I checked in on the meadow... and am now incredibly tempted to get some fuel (for the mower) and give some of it a good mowing.
The straw (hay) that it makes is not all that awesome or anything... and cutting it by hand was in no way worthwhile (when I tested it a few times) so that really leaves the self-mulching lawn mower as the best way to cut it efficiently. When I mowed it that way a few years ago, I wound up using a bunch of the 'trails' (foot paths) in it when I was out hiking (during the warmer months) and kind of miss having that option.
Well, I think that I am going to wrap this entry up and get on with my evening. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice time.
https://peakd.com/c/hive-114308/created
Last year Mandy got me the Alexis box, it kept telling me my reminder and would not stop no matter how many times I told it to stop, finally, I said Alexis shut up and it said "You do not control me", but it did shut up.
That is wild!