Although the practicality of what you described towards the end of your original comment conceptually demonstrates an MoE-like architecture, the fact that you explicitly mentioned not understanding why larger models are smarter and then proceeded to try to couch-engineer a new, smaller architecture suggests that you were in fact not aware of the MoE architecture and thus the ELI5 LEGO approach was reasonably helpful. I’ve read your question carefully many times, and I’ve read others’ comments in the thread; you seem frustrated that folks aren’t answering your questions when in fact they have been answered — albeit not in the way you seem to want; how can we fix this?
I get your frustration with bugs but, what TVs (or any other consumer electronic product) aren’t reliant upon software for basic system control nowadays? Hardware isn’t inherently bug-free and the “quality” of old hardware is usually due to its narrow scope of functionality; the ability to (theoretically trivially) modify software means that hardware can/does become better/more capable. I see so many folks complain that software makes everything worse but I also see so many products that become more capable due to regular software updates. It seems like we can either build things that are “reliable” yet limited in functionality, or we can build things that are “buggy” but capable of evolving with expanded functionality.
> what TVs (or any other consumer electronic product) aren’t reliant upon software for basic system control nowadays?
How many of them can't get basic volume control to work?
Yes, the fact that modern TVs are so filled with SW is one of the reasons I haven't upgraded my TV in 15 years. More importantly, can anyone explain to me the benefit of these TVs (other than display) compared to the old ones? What smartness in modern TVs can I get that's important to me that I can't get via a Roku or similar device?
> Hardware isn’t inherently bug-free and the “quality” of old hardware is usually due to its narrow scope of functionality;
Same question as above: Why not have narrow scope? What expanded scope in new TVs is actually something I would care for?
And I've never come across a "HW" TV that failed at the very basics. I've never had to return one for a recall. One of the things that makes adding SW to any device really crappy is the "ship now, fix later" mentality. And a lot of things often never get fixed (e.g. my old, ATI video card had features that were broken in Linux, and they never got around to fixing it - never bought ATI/AMD cards since).
> the ability to (theoretically trivially) modify software means that hardware can/does become better/more capable.
Until the manufacturer stops supporting it. I recall when I bought my (dumb) TV, smart TVs were just coming out, and most of my friends opted for smart ones ("it already has Netflix"). Fast forward less than 3 years, and they all switched to Roku or something similar because the TV apps either sucked or stopped working.
Owning a TV is something one should be able to do for over 10 years. Can you guarantee that most of the nice features on your TV will work more than 10 years from now?
Likewise, I should be able to buy a 10+ year old used TV and have basic stuff just work without having to register, etc. If it doesn't, then these manufacturers are simply adding much more waste to the ecosystem than the dumb ones did.
(As you can guess, I have often bought old, used TVs and never had trouble with them).
> What expanded scope in new TVs is actually something I would care for?
I think this is the crux of our confusion; you may not desire the expanded functionality but others certainly do. You can suggest that manufacturers force unwanted functionality onto consumers but I have trouble accepting that premise unless admit our own complicity; maybe I’m part of that problem though.
> Owning a TV is something one should be able to do for over 10 years.
Again, that’s your preference and the choice you’ve already made; I choose to not set arbitrary time limits but instead make decisions on purchasing new TVs (and other non-essential products) depending on the available technologies and toys—and, of course, the girth (if any) of my wallet . We have different preferences, we make decisions based on those preferences, yet—as far as I can tell—we are both satisfied with our choices; why complain about a system capable of implementing a bug that doesn’t affect us?
> Can you guarantee that most of the nice features on your TV will work more than 10 years from now?
Almost certainly I can. There are both massive and minuscule communities, aftermarket solutions, and DIY makers/hackers/activists that focus on all kinds of technologies and products dating back over a hundred years. The original iPod is 25 years old and yet there are still folks making firmware updates for it. The Commodore 64 has a multitude of projects, products, communities, and marketplaces to keep the product alive — nearly fifty years after it was released! There are literally thousands of examples. Interestingly, and calling back to my original point, these kinds of secondary markets are only possible because of those products’ use of a combination of quality underlying hardware and user-updatable/modifiable software—well, and that nerds like us dig breaking things.
>What smartness in modern TVs can I get that's important to me that I can't get via a Roku or similar device?
Only you know what is important to you, but I like automatic volume levels, for example. I stayed at AirBnB a couple years ago, which had some commodity TV (Vizio?) w/o automatic volume and learned they still do loud commercials. My home TV keeps volume at the same audible level during commercials.
Same with auto-brightness, I get nice image all through the day and night illumination levels in the living room.
Voice control is handy when you don't live alone so other people may have a remote at the moment or it could take some time to find.
Apps on my 6 y.o. TV still work just fine, I don't need to attach devices to a TV, which neatly hangs on a wall without things hanging from it. The TV is running Android so it will keep updating from the Google's app store as long as the app vendor keeps maintaining it.
Something claiming to be X doesn't mean it's X at all least good at being X. This option on tube TVs that I had never worked for commercials, works so well that I don't notice it on a "smart" TV.
If you don't want auto-brigntness you don't have to enable it. I have a hunch that a TV sets it better (just for the reason that you are unlikely to adjust every time you turn lights on and off) but tastes do differ indeed.
Are you suggesting that since the third-party EV repair industry is still in its infancy that EVs are therefore objectively bad? If so, how is that perspective different from any other mass-market industrialized consumer product? I remember folks telling me that the iPhone would fail because nobody could make apps for it. Markets change, as evidenced by the fact that you’re now repairing/rebuilding Fiat and GM batteries; that wasn’t a marketable skill two decades ago.
>There are no parts from the OEs, there are no tools, the packs are not meant to be serviced, and it is SERIOUSLY DANGEROUS work.
The same was true for the ICE vehicle third-party repair industry 100 years ago.
It seems like your objection to BEVs (i.e. they can’t be repaired) is directly refuted by the fact that you yourself repair BEVs. Maybe I’ve misunderstood your argument though.
Sigh. It didn’t take 100 years to grow the ICE repair industry and I imagine you know that; I suspect you’re just being stubbornly argumentative for the sake of vanity.
There’s already a fledgling industry of third-party repair shops for BEVs—which you can attest to first hand. BEVs are not “disposable” like you claim—as evidenced, again, by your own experience of repairing BEVs.
You’ve suggested, in other threads, that BEVs are not designed for repair; every professional and shade-tree mechanic I’ve ever known (myself included) has used that same complaint (“engineers are idiots; they don’t think about repairs”) against ICE vehicles for decades yet the ICE repair industry is still massive and, importantly, constantly evolving—new tools, new aftermarket parts that are better/more reliable than OE, the sharing of knowledge so others can learn how to be safe, etc. This is how industries grow. The notion that all the support infrastructure must be in place before a product can be considered useful or reliable is absurd; we live in a world that iterates and evolves quickly.
Is the Fiat “totaled” or will you be able to repair it? What about the Bolt?
You’ve complained that working on the Fiat is difficult and poorly documented; have you seen what it takes to replace the oil-pan gasket on modern trucks? You have to remove the entire cab! I know well the frustration of working on products that have poor service documentation or seem to be engineered only for production with no consideration for service but that doesn’t mean a product has no viability or is unreliable; in fact, the opposite often seems to be the case—difficult to repair products seem to have better longevity and are therefore more likely to be viable.
I’m willing to admit I might be wrong about BEVs while it feels like you’ve already decided they’re utterly useless; why take such a hard-line stance?
Those cars are purpose built for that. You can’t retrofit them easily into another car and maintain the performance. People that I’ve seen that do plaid swaps basically take the plaid and slap a different shell on it.
Also, you’re talking about >100k. V8 cars are budget in comparison.
> Other cloud providers aren't part of PRISM and generally don't receive the same level of concern from the world governments.
Um, Microsoft, Google, Meta, Yahoo, YouTube, Skype, and AOL are/were PRISM Service Providers and I’d argue that they all receive(d) equal (+/- 5%) concern and scrutiny from those world governments.
> They can afford to resist legal demands from countries they don't respect because they have nothing to lose from denying them access.
Are you talking about the cloud providers I listed above? From my perspective, those guys all tend to honor the demands of any state that offers a statistically significant percentage of current/potential consumers, regardless of the demand. Perhaps they have some bright spots where they “did the right thing” (like refusing to unlock a device, or refusing to provide access to private data) but by and large they all—including Apple—are subject to the rules of the states within which they operate.
> Apple has not demonstrated that they have the willingness to resist this unlawful coercion, even recently.
Ten years ago, Apple refused demands by the FBI to unlock the iPhones of various suspects. Four years ago they did the same during the Pensacola Naval Base shooting investigation. I would guess there’s plenty of other examples but I’ve not been watching that stuff much over the past couple years. Were those instances just cherry-picked for marketing purposes? Maybe, but until someone shows me compelling evidence that Apple is /not/ acting in good faith towards both their consumers and the governments under which they operate, I see no reason to believe that they’re “lying about this one too”.
I do keep a salt-encrusted spoon nearby when reading about these things but that doesn’t mean I refuse to trust someone who has demonstrated what appears to me a good-faith effort to keep my privacy intact. Maybe what Apple is doing with PCC is just security theater; I doubt it but I also recognize that marketing and technology are often in conflict so we must always be cautious. But the important thing, both to me and GP, is that none of the other cloud providers have offered (whether it be sane and intelligent privacy controls or just snake oil-like scams) any solution beyond “encrypt your data before you upload it to the cloud”.
> Um, Microsoft, Google, Meta, Yahoo, YouTube, Skype, and AOL are/were PRISM Service Providers
Correct. I didn't say all cloud providers aren't part of prism, just that many (most?) aren't scrutinized like Apple is.
> From my perspective, those guys all tend to honor the demands of any state that offers a statistically significant percentage of current/potential consumers
I know. It's awful, we don't have to defend it just because "the other guy" does it. Microsoft and Google left markets over this sort of disagreement, but curiously Apple doesn't.
> until someone shows me compelling evidence that Apple is /not/ acting in good faith towards both their consumers and the governments under which they operate, I see no reason to believe that they’re “lying about this one too”.
...do I have to link you the notification thing again, or is that evidence that the government is acting in bad faith and Apple is entirely scott-free for deliberately lying about their security/privacy marketing while being coerced to pretend nothing bad happened?
See, part of the problem isn't just comparing Apple to their competitors, but to their own advertisements. Apple knew their security was compromised but continued to promote their own security and even fabricate entirely misleading documentation for their own supposed system. This is why I will never be satisfied unless Apple nuts up and shows everyone all of the code. They have proven beyond a shadow of doubt that they will exploit anything we take for granted or are told to accept as-written.
Seriously? So,what, mutes can’t incriminate themselves?
Even if you wanna stick to that shaky narrative, consider that text messages are speech. Notes to myself are speech. Pictures in my phone are a form of my self-expression—which is speech. Emails? Speech. Voice recordings? Speech. My ChatGPT history? Speech. My Siri interactions? Speech.
The concept of protection against self-incrimination is deeply rooted in protecting our privacy; I don’t see how they can be separated like you seem to have suggesting here.
Yes. If an officer tells you to admit guilt in a text message, that’s self incrimination. If they find an incriminating text, that’s just incrimination. It may also be an illegal search. But that’s orthogonal. (The closest they come to each other is in entrapment.)
Millions of people do—and have to—often because it’s the most effective way for a PA intern to be useful. Is the practice wise or ideal or “safe” in terms of security and/or privacy? No, but wisdom, idealism, and safety are far less important than efficiency. And that’s not always a bad thing; not all use-cases require wise, idealistic, and safe security measures.
The new Sonnet 3.5 refused to decode it which is somehow simultaneously encouraging and disappointing; surely it’s just a guardrail implemented via the original system prompt which suggests, to me, that it would be (trivial?) to jailbreak.
> That’s why we are seeing less and less innovation and diversity compared to the 1980s to around 2000
You think the pace of innovation has stalled and the tech industry is less diverse than it was 20-50 years ago? Really?
Having cut my teeth on the tech of the late-seventies, that’s not a perspective I share. I have long been impressed with how fast new tech makes it into our grubby little hands. From my perspective, if we were stuck at the pace of innovation present during my early days, well, I think it’s not unlikely we’d still be using feature-phones and WAP gateways so we could tinker with that new mobile-internet stuff everyone’s raving about.
