toasteros (u/toasteros)

toasteros commented on FLX1s phone is launched furilabs.com/flx1s-is-lau... · Posted by u/slau

neilv · 3 months ago

> My biggest question is if they use Halium/libhybrys at all,

That would be a showstopper for now, IMHO. Doing it with maintainable open source Linux drivers is the hard part of having a viable device, from everything I've seen.

Another concern are that I can't find who the developers are, nor even definitively what country they're based in. (I don't see it on their About Us page, ~~and the GitHub repo contributors are hidden.~~ I saw a reference to Sydney, but unclear.) (Edit: my mistake regarding GitHub contributors; they aren't hidden)

Also, it would be nice to have the option of a better hardware provenance than a generic whitebox(?) phone from some unidentified manufacturer in China. Even for individual hobbyist users, and certainly for corporate ones. (This is why I'd like hardware options combinations like Purism for the premium device, and a cheaper device that runs the same software but is still from a brand that at least has a reputation to preserve, like Pine64 or (ha) Google.)

toasteros · 3 months ago

Github repo contributors are not hidden.

eg: https://github.com/FuriLabs/rootfs-templates/graphs/contribu...

toasteros commented on FLX1s phone is launched furilabs.com/flx1s-is-lau... · Posted by u/slau

Hamcha · 3 months ago

My biggest question is if they use Halium/libhybrys at all, something that is hard to figure out from the marketing but their GitHub repos does have hybris-related stuff. That makes it a non-Linux device to me. Hybris breaks a lot of linux stuff that should just work like flatpak, something I found out incredibly quickly when using SailfishOS.

I don't think depending on Android drivers and having to run a small android just to access said hardware makes it a "linux phone". Especially when the linux experience is compromised because of it.

postmarketOS has no hybris and everything works great, but no device has all the drivers (in fact, no device at all is reported as having a fully functioning camera, let alone everything else) so there isn't a "flagship" device.

If I were to overspend on a linux device I want it to actually run Linux, not a handicapped version of it.

And even then, why stop at the OS? Why is this overpriced "linux" phone not boast having user-friendly and sustainable things like a replaceable battery (probably because it doesn't?). People in this niche don't want just a Linux phone, they want a phone that respects them.

toasteros · 3 months ago

It uses halium and libhybris. Flatpak apps work perfectly fine on my FLX1. I have no usability issues with the phone at all.

toasteros commented on OpenAI releases image generation in the API openai.com/index/image-ge... · Posted by u/themanmaran

Gud · 8 months ago

I suppose you walk by foot everywhere?

toasteros · 8 months ago

Sometimes. My feet don't have a random chance to send me in a random direction to that which I intend.

toasteros commented on OpenAI releases image generation in the API openai.com/index/image-ge... · Posted by u/themanmaran

aigen000 · 8 months ago

Fabricating evidence of weapons of mass destruction in some developing nation.

I kid, more real world use cases would be for concept images for a new product or marketing campaigns.

toasteros · 8 months ago

...you can do that with a pencil, though.

What an impossibly weird thing to "need" an LLM for.

toasteros commented on ToS;DR tosdr.org/en... · Posted by u/ColinWright

hackernewsdhsu · 9 months ago

Name.com just changed their "privacy policy". I leveraged an LLM to analyze the differences, and to identify which party benefitted from the change.

Surprise, surprise ... The people get 1 change, Name.com getall the rest; including making parts of it more ambiguous.

But it was easy to understand using the LLM analysis and it took longer to read than generate.

toasteros · 9 months ago

If you haven't read it yourself how do you know that the LLM is correct?

toasteros commented on Debian bookworm live images now reproducible lwn.net/Articles/1015402/... · Posted by u/bertman

Joel_Mckay · 9 months ago

The Debian group is admirable, and have positively changed the standards for OS design several times. Reminds me I should donate to their coffee fund around tax time =3

toasteros · 9 months ago

I always want to donate more to open source projects but as far as I know there aren't any I can get tax credits for in Canada. My budget is strapped just enough that I can't quite afford to donate for nothing.

Any Canadian residents here know of any tax credit eligible software projects to donate to?

toasteros commented on Revealed: How the UK tech secretary uses ChatGPT for policy advice newscientist.com/article/... · Posted by u/adrianhon

graemep · 9 months ago

When the politicians consult experts they usually consult experts who give them the answers they want. They get rid of experts (e.g. Professor Nutt) who give them advice they do not like.

Sometimes they go to the other extreme and think experts are gods, and do not question the advice, check whether other experts would disagree with it etc.

toasteros · 9 months ago

LLMs literally only tell you what you want to hear. They are Dunning-Krueger machines.

Ask it about something you don't know: you'll learn something new.

Ask it about something you do know: you'll raise your eyebrow, "huh that's not quite right..."

toasteros commented on Revealed: How the UK tech secretary uses ChatGPT for policy advice newscientist.com/article/... · Posted by u/adrianhon

snozolli · 9 months ago

Really? How have policies been made for the past hundred years without it then?

In the United States, lobbyists have approached lawmakers with pre-written legislation and pitched it to them.

I would rather have lawmakers asking LLMs to explain concepts to them than the absolute mess we had back when a House committee was trying to evaluate SOPA with absolutely zero domain knowledge:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xrrj9Wc2L84

toasteros · 9 months ago

The current administration is using LLMs which are telling them to instruct the NSA not to talk about privilege escalation.

I addressed that: bad policies and decisions don't go away just because of LLMs. They will always exist, it's just that now they'll exist at the same time as people gaslighting themselves into believing that LLMs are helping to eliminate them.

toasteros commented on Revealed: How the UK tech secretary uses ChatGPT for policy advice newscientist.com/article/... · Posted by u/adrianhon

tim333 · 9 months ago

Humans in that time gave us WW1, WW2, the great depression etc.

toasteros · 9 months ago

Ignoring the fact that this comment is literally nihilist and simultaneously anti-natalist (read: you are simply advocating for the elimination of the human race)... yes I addressed that.

> Now you'll likely come back and say "but X policy was bad and it was because it was poorly researched". Absolutely! Yes, bad policies exist. Poorly researched policies exist. Poorly implemented policies exist.

> Good policies researched well also exist. And the bad ones aren't going away because of the magical word generator.

You will notice that the US is gearing up for additional warfare with the help of AI.

toasteros commented on Revealed: How the UK tech secretary uses ChatGPT for policy advice newscientist.com/article/... · Posted by u/adrianhon

worewood · 9 months ago

It sounds bad, but the alternative is policy makers making decisions out of their arses, so maybe this really is a tool that can improve public management.

Problem is that the owner of the AI service has power over the model and thus can influence government decisions.

Maybe we should require that government use of AI should be required to use open models only.

toasteros · 9 months ago

Really? How have policies been made for the past hundred years without it then?

It's completely bonkers that people keep saying stuff like this, virtually implying that we didn't have a functional society before LLMs.

LLMs are tools that generate word salads that sound compelling. They are not research aids and they can't help you understand things better than the plethora of tools we already developed over the centuries can.

So no, the alternative is policy makers doing what policy makers have always done: research, polling, reading, talking, and more research.

Now you'll likely come back and say "but X policy was bad and it was because it was poorly researched". Absolutely! Yes, bad policies exist. Poorly researched policies exist. Poorly implemented policies exist.

Good policies researched well also exist. And the bad ones aren't going away because of the magical word generator.

Seriously. Stop using LLMs to "help" you do stuff you already know how to do.