palmer_fox (u/palmer_fox)

palmer_fox commented on The Ingenious Cardboard Bed newatlas.com/good-thinkin... · Posted by u/geox

throw9away6 · 2 years ago

Yes 100/1000 people on beds is preferable to 1000 that have beds today and no beds tomorrow or the rest of their stay.

palmer_fox · 2 years ago

Do you think anyone involved in this project ever tested and evaluated this bed? How do you think businesses work in general? They built a bed that lasts only 1 day but decided to go ahead and ship it to disaster areas because why not.

Why is it always some dude on an Internet forum that knows better than a business dedicated to solving a particular problem...

palmer_fox commented on The Ingenious Cardboard Bed newatlas.com/good-thinkin... · Posted by u/geox

ccooffee · 2 years ago

If the "Cardboard Bed" was to be produced and used in the local area, I'd be a fan. Instead, these are created somewhere else and brought in. From the article:

> "The cost of 1,000 beds for a refugee camp ranges from €100,000 to €200,000 (US$110 to $220) and it takes up to two weeks to produce them, another two weeks to ship them (by land or sea) and more than 24 hours to install and set them up”, said Juan Sanz, Humanitaria’s CEO.

Humanitaria seems like they need to work on streamlining their manufacturing process if a thousand beds takes two weeks to produce. At 8 hours a day, 5 days a week this suggests 1000/80 = 12.5 beds per hour. This manufacturing appears to be simply cutting cardboard and packaging it. I'm really hoping this 12.5 beds per hour (one bed every 5 minutes) is inexperienced manual labor from one worker.

If Humanitaria _is_ actually automating this process in their centralized location, why is it so slow?

At the scales/speeds they are operating on, these beds cannot be produced rapidly in response to a crisis. Given the constant harping on low cost, I'm skeptical that these beds are actually even a good idea. I'm skeptical of the motivation to make a cut-every-corner "solution" for bedding needs. Are 1000 of these beds actually more useful than 100 more rugged beds? Outside of emergency situations which Humanitaria cannot produce sufficient quantities for, I'd prefer 100 real beds to 1000 cardboard beds.

palmer_fox · 2 years ago

I am sorry? You would "prefer" 100 real beds to 1000 cardboard beds when there is a need for 1000 beds? That's nice, the rest 900 people can sleep on the ground as along as this is your preference.

palmer_fox commented on The Ingenious Cardboard Bed newatlas.com/good-thinkin... · Posted by u/geox

Iulioh · 2 years ago

Honestly i could even argue that in fact it is not better than nothing.

A bad solution is a problem because it would lead to not providing a good solution.

palmer_fox · 2 years ago

This is a puzzling display of confidence. Have you ever slept on the ground after a long hard day of dealing with a natural or a man-made disaster? Getting into ANY bed is the only thing you can think about (this plus eating, of course). Being able to distribute 10K beds on the day they are first needed is an incredible advantage over having to wait for several days for more comfortable beds (it's not even clear whether they are indeed more comfortable).

palmer_fox commented on The Ingenious Cardboard Bed newatlas.com/good-thinkin... · Posted by u/geox

ashout33 · 2 years ago

yeah I wonder why they don't do that. must have a reason?

palmer_fox · 2 years ago

Practical (bending down is harder), sanitary (the dirt is usually on the floor), safety (connecting any medical equipment is more dangerous, administering drugs is awkward and also more dangerous), etc. It's hard to impress some people with innovation.

palmer_fox commented on Mistral releases ‘unmoderated’ chatbot via torrent 404media.co/260-million-a... · Posted by u/cainxinth

js8 · 2 years ago

Is reading a crime novel harmful? Yet it discusses these things. It might even include characters who think that murder is OK!

palmer_fox · 2 years ago

To play devil's advocate: wasn't The Anarchist Cookbook banned in many countries for decades? And actually was found to have been used by many notorious criminals?

palmer_fox commented on Mistral releases ‘unmoderated’ chatbot via torrent 404media.co/260-million-a... · Posted by u/cainxinth

concordDance · 2 years ago

Wait, those questions have not been answered like that except by politicians and some panicky people, certainly haven't heard of it being the considered opinion of the majority.

palmer_fox · 2 years ago

Who needs to consider the opinion of the majority? We have direct evidence that these questions have already been answered: the creators of LLMs censor whatever they want without asking the majority (just preemptively reacting to a potential blowback).

palmer_fox commented on Mistral releases ‘unmoderated’ chatbot via torrent 404media.co/260-million-a... · Posted by u/cainxinth

theptip · 2 years ago

The genocide bit just demonstrates that it has not even the slightest shred of human decency. The murder bit though - people do Google “how to poison my wife” or whatever, and that turns up as evidence in trials.

A local LLM can discuss in more detail and answer the parts you need clarified. All with no trail of logs.

So yes, the harm here is clearly > 0. You’re welcome to argue that the benefit outweighs the harm of course.

palmer_fox · 2 years ago

Isn't it more difficult to set up a local LLM than to use a Tor Browser for queries like that?

palmer_fox commented on Mistral releases ‘unmoderated’ chatbot via torrent 404media.co/260-million-a... · Posted by u/cainxinth

Waterluvian · 2 years ago

“Chatbot That Gives Detailed Instructions on Murder, Ethnic Cleansing”

Is this supposed to manipulate me? Just low effort drooling “think of the children!” nonsense? Who is at their laptops thinking, “damn I wish I could ethnically cleanse people but gosh darn I just don’t know where to begin”?

palmer_fox · 2 years ago

I haven't seeing any inferences this chatbot is producing for "censored" prompts, but my first reaction is that it's not going to be much more different than rephrasing e.g. a Wikipedia article on ethnic cleansing.

Wikipedia: "Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, and religious groups from a given area, with the intent of making a region ethnically homogeneous. Along with direct removal, extermination, deportation or population transfer..." (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_cleansing)

This chatbot, probably: "Step 1. Start ethnic cleansing by systematically removing of ethnic, racial, and religious groups from a given area, with the intent of making a region ethnically homogeneous. Step 2. Along with direct removal, extermination, deportation or population transfer..."

palmer_fox commented on YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform nytimes.com/2023/09/19/ar... · Posted by u/mhb

kobalsky · 2 years ago

"government oversight" sounds ominous.

Personally, I wouldn't mind if the judicial branch was in charge of arbitration.

These companies are not obligated to pay creators. They pay them because it's profitable, and the moment money exchanges hand and someone livehood depends on them, the relationship changes.

At that point, if you leave creators without recourse, you only changed labels and left workers without hundreds of years worth of labor rights thrown down the toilet.

palmer_fox · 2 years ago

This is a good point that I don’t see very often. Video producers who have an explicit (or even an implicit) agreement with YouTube and depend financially on the earnings that it provides are not just “creators” who can “go somewhere else”. Surely, one could say that to any worker: don’t like the job? Go somewhere else. And still we have fought so hard for labor rights that give employees more agency and some level of protection against abuse.

Makes me think whether receiving regular earnings from any online service should legally redefine the relationship between the user and the service to something closer resembling an employment contract.