Very low fee cross-border (remittance) transfers using stablecoins (cryptoassets that are pegged to a fiat currency like the dollar) allow people to avoid getting ripped off by companies like Western Union.

On crypto platforms like Ethereum that support smart contracts (basically computer programs that run on the blockchain and allow you to automate transfers etc), you can provide liquidity to money markets and asset exchange platforms and earn many times the interest yield (APY) of what you might get at a bank for a similar thing (like 12-60% vs 2-5%). If you’re a real finance nerd you can also access various exotic financial instruments on other platforms that otherwise wouldn’t be available to you unless you were at a huge investment bank or hedge fund and even some that aren’t possible there. These are often called DeFi platforms (Decentralized Finance)

Another huge use of crypto networks are money laundering and scams though so beware. It’s still a largely unregulated black market. Never put more money into a crypto network than you can afford to lose.

Hmmm… if an ‘organism’ has no organs, is it still an organism? 🤔

Sounds cool. Gave it a minute or two and can’t deal with the banter haha not my cup of tea.

Exactly. The system is what it does.

Absolutely. They do tend to be quite a bit more expensive per watt though. From my research you can get cheap panels and just plug them into a LiPo4 battery or even lead acid batteries as well. It’s just that batteries (even though they’ve gotten a lot cheaper) are still expensive enough to nearly double the cost of the system in many cases so the plug-in option with 400 watts of panels etc gives you the best bang for the buck for sure. But it’s not legal or possible in many US states (though that is changing fast)

Biking (e-bikes are great if you can afford one and greatly increase range and decrease effort in many environments)

Installing solar (I’m currently renting but my state is debating a new law which seems likely to pass modeled on the Utah law - and others which started in Europe - which allows small solar systems to be plugged directly into a home outlet to supplement energy needs with minimal cost)

Yeah if you get further along in the video (it’s long so I understand many people may not get 30 mins in or whatever) they talk about how someone on Reddit noted that the tone mapping was way out of whack and they edited some of the images to show what it would look like if it was corrected and it’s way more natural looking with less blown out highlights and uncanny more yassified stuff.

I agree that the tech is very impressive. To paraphrase another comment I made in a post about the tech reveal video (which apparently was also unpopular based on the number of downvotes) I think many people are completely misunderstanding how it works. It doesn’t change textures or 3d models (what are often called game ‘assets’) at all. The only thing it changes is lighting and for that it does use AI (machine learning) to create a much more realistic lighting presentation. You may find this hard to believe but lighting can dramatically alter appearance. The notion that it sexifies or slopifies everything by making faces sexier etc is just not true except to the extent that the lighting changes have this perceived effect on the characters for you.

That said, concerns about artistic intent vs these changes are definitely valid here for these demos since it’s a very different look to how the original devs intended and Nvidia have basically modded this into existing games which weren’t designed around it to show it off. This has the affect of some of it looking a bit off I agree. In the future, when devs can decide to create assets around it or not I think those concerns will become less relevant. That said, PC power users and modders will likely hack it into a game if they want to even if the devs don’t enable it as an option. Modding and hacks are just the nature of PC gaming though. I don’t see a bunch of people crying about artistic intent because someone modded Thomas the Tank Engine into a game etc.

DLSS of course does use machine learning (transformers or CNNs) which you can call AI if you want, but I think there may be a bit of a misunderstanding about what this new version is actually doing. If you watch the video or read the breakdown they note that DLSS 5 is NOT replacing or altering the original graphical assets in the game with generated ones. There’s no new textures or 3d models being changed here. It only alters the lighting of the game to add more realistic shadows and reflections etc. It’s just that it does that so extensively that it gives the impression of being an almost entirely different image. Kinda nuts that lighting can do that but that is apparently what is happening here.

That said, arguments about artistic intent are still very relevant here since it’s a very different look to how the original devs may have intended.

My biggest takeaway here is that choosing the context length and (to a lesser extent) the temperature carefully is important for reducing hallucinations. I expected model families to vary widely between themselves but not for context length to have such a massive impact tbh.

It seems from this like reducing context length in applications where it isn’t essential for the model to hold very large amounts of context simultaneously would be best practice no?

And diesel prices (which underpin essentially all industry and production) have gone even more brrrrrrrrrr. Which means just about everything else will be shooting up in price soon if the strait remains closed…

I have only played a few hours but need to play more. Wish I could help but don’t know. Very cool and unique game. Enjoy.

Godspeed. I also nearly beat the game and then put it down and forgot most of it so ended up beating it almost twice. It’s a great game. Still haven’t finished the Blood and Wine DLC though…

Finally got around to playing Caves of Qud and it took me a while to figure it out and dial in the controls on Steam Deck but now it’s starting to become clear just how insane this game is…

In a similar boat in regards to cutting out invasive, rapidly-enshittifying corporate tech providers but I agree that YouTube still has some good content worth it. Good news is that with the use of Invidious servers on desktop and SmartTube / NewPipe on Android TV or mobile you can pretty much have your cake and eat it too.

P.S. if you’re looking for a less shitty / ad bloated way of watching Yt videos on Nvidia Shield Pro or similar Android TV I recently switched from NewPipe to SmartTube and it’s much better since it integrates Sponsorblock and the UI is actually designed for a TV.

I’ve heard Calibre Web has a better UI and experience. Can anyone weigh in on whether that is true? I’m mostly looking for a better way to manage my book library on KOReader (Kindle) than just putting things into 3 directories (reading, to read, read) and using syncthing to copy them to the equivalent folders on my device.

100%. I was thinking Renee Good vs Trump.

As someone who has used both Evernote and Standard Notes, I can say that the latter is obviously better for privacy but for those who are really looking for a FOSS option and want something more powerful than a simple notes store (albeit with a bit of a learning curve) you should definitely check out Logseq.

Yes, because making locally hosted LLMs actually useful means you don’t need to utilize cloud-based and often proprietary models like ChatGPT or Gemini which Hoover up all of your data.

As someone who has been on both sides of this I can say that a regular meditation practice can really help. Nothing crazy, just simple sitting meditation (vipassana) 1-2x times a day everyday. Working your way up from 5 to 10 to 20-25 minute sessions.