i am reginald reagan aka RAGIN' RAYGUNS

@raginrayguns / raginrayguns.tumblr.com

estimation, atoms, why people are wrong. reggie reagan is my pseudonym. he/him
Avatar
Nardwuar: And I love the way you thank the threads, too. You thank the threads, the threads!
Lil B: Yeah you know I love threads, shouts out to 4chan, all the Internet hackers, man, anybody that’s on the internet all day, and you’re slouch, your back hurts, you know what I mean?, carpal tunnel, I love you, internet all day, we’re hurting, radiation from the computer is hurting my eyes, I love it, I will not stay off the net,

2011

My favorite quote from any movie critic ever is from Roger Ebert, who once said “The Borg Queen looks like no notion of sexy I have ever heard of, but inspires me to keep an open mind”

i thought this was a joke, but. uh. nope.

i honestly don't get the point of attacking charles at this point? Like, he left kennet. Maricica is gone. So, go home, enjoy, right?

I guess it has become pretty unclear to me what is actually going on, on all sides, so it feels like a bunch of random shit is happening

i honestly don't get the point of attacking charles at this point? Like, he left kennet. Maricica is gone. So, go home, enjoy, right?

That moment when Sauron sees the One Ring in the heart of Mount Doom and realizes the magnitude of his own folly in a blinding flash is way too relatable

I too often become suddenly aware of something and then realize the magnitude of my own folly in a blinding flash

Avatar
We have put the world in danger with AI, admits ChatGPT creator

very particular choice to say "admits" instead of "claims" here

A LLM got 12th in a Leetcode coding contest (probably)

In Weekly Contest 344, a fresh account (gogogoval) solved all 4 problems in 12:13 with commented submissions and test cases that look a lot like LLM code.

This could've been faked, but I doubt it. There are a small group of people in the world (a thousand, maybe) who could solve this contest fast enough to get 12th and add comments (or solve the problems and then feed it to a LLM to add comments), but it would be a very odd thing to do on a fresh account. The code itself also looks like LLM code - it uses techniques like gets on dictionaries (instead of using defaultdicts like most competitive python programmers).

This isn't that impressive. Leetcode contests are pretty easy, and this was an unusually easy contest - all four of the problems are rated easy or medium. Leetcode contests at the top level are about speed, not depth of understanding, so it's not that shocking that a LLM could do very well.

It's still a pretty massive leap. The free version of ChatGPT can solve two of these questions with some prodding, but it's pretty helpless on the other two. In particular, the last problem (the paths through a binary tree) is not trivial - it took me about ten minutes to find and implement a solution last night, and I'm pretty good.

This isn't that big of a deal for competitive coding, but it is a big deal for both Leetcode and the online assessments companies give. I don't know how much prompting or bugfixing it took the human who submitted this code to get the LLM to a correct solution, but either way, it changes the game on how we think about easy problems. We've gone from models that were very dull to a model that could probably pass the first round of a FAANG interview for a new grad. Already, in the week after, a skilled coder used a LLM to solve the first two questions of the Leetcode contest while solving 3 and 4 manually, saving a bunch of time and getting rank 5 in the contest. Easy questions aren't useful discriminators anymore.

This is the first thing I've seen a LLM do that genuinely impressed me. We are steadily approaching a point where either the improvement will slow or these things will have massive economic impact, and I have no idea which will happen.

and what's up with bubbleyum's speech to maricica? Just showing off that as a goblin, she was prepared to deal with maricica's bullshit? Or... just pointing out that Maricica has become goblin-like, as an insult? So what's that mean, if a glamour-using goblin is insulting an ex-Faerie for being goblin-like? Goblins and Fae are supposed to be opposites, Bubbleyum thinks just inverting Faeness is a limited existence, and Maricica has just settled into the position that Bubblecum is transcending, maybe? Or I'm overinterpreting a few lines, maybe we'll get more explanation later

Pale starts out very good and becomes very annoying, and life would be much simpler if it actually became straightforwardly bad

have some thoughts about maricaca but whatever

like, she definitely becomes the most boring of the conspirators, right? Everyone else has something they're after, something complicated and difficult, and they become interesting people in their pursuit of that. Whereas Maricaca becomes a level boss from Diablo.

Is that a Faerie's idea of non-Fae? Non-Fae don't seek novel roles, so they must be satisfied with stock roles? Fae are self-consciously trying to be interesting, so to be non-Fae is to be boring?

She doesn't really have anything she's after anymore. She's described a few times as a sleepy kind of satisfied. But it's based on worship from an artificial religion, if I understand correctly even artificial worshippers. It has no substance or character, she doesn't have a message for her followers. Except that they can become semi-bogeymen I guess? So she's a goddess but she doesn't have a goddess's needs, to pursue worship, to offer answers or meaning or community to her followers, because they're just created for her.

I wonder if this kind of thing is what Guillherme was drawing on, when he said maybe she's halfassing being ex-fae. Is conjuring up a cliched evil cult for her, the way Charles did, really so different from using glamour and acting out a role?

Anyway, after making herself into a cartoon villain, totally appropriate for Avery to come after her with an Acme Corporation electromagnet.

not sure what you've read, but she does have something she's after

yeah, I had forgotten about that, but I just reread her explanation. Save her brother and get rid of the faerie courts. I don't really get how she was doing that.

OK... so I think what Guilherme was saying wasn't anything about her religion being artificial, but. It is related to her not having a substantial post-Fae life?

Like, she actually did meet her goal. Saved her brother, catalyzed the end of the courts (somehow?). All that is now going to happen without her.

But I think the idea is that she could have acquired a new life in the course of that? Because she maybe could have dodged the spear if Edith was around, or not been poisoned if she'd helped Gilkey. So, what does that alternate universe look like? I guess, the idea is that it's a universe where Maricica was acting like she really cared about the future after her plan succeeds?

And maybe that does kind of tie into the halfassedness that I was talking about earlier, though in a loose way. Like, she performed evil blood goddess well enough to carry out her plan, and it worked. But it does seem like a box-ticking effort, like an artist commissioned to make a cover for a black metal album getting it out of the way as fast as possible.

What I was writing about earlier was people being defined by their needs, by what they pursue. Like how animals' teeth is suited to what they eat. So what would Maricica be like, if she was also someone who would have followed through on her promises to Gilkey and Edith, beyond a box-checking effort? She would be someone equipped to do that. I'm remembering her conversation with Edith, I think in a Lis interlude, where she's just like "blah! I'm the blood goddess! Better not piss me off!" It's cliche villain talk, but it's all she needs, if her goal is just to blow Edith off, coast on the help Edith has already provided, and get to her confrontation with the Consort. If she was someone who worked with Edith to somehow achieve Edith's impossible-seeming dream, she would have to be different, be a fuller person, in order to communicate, cooperate and plan.

have some thoughts about maricaca but whatever

like, she definitely becomes the most boring of the conspirators, right? Everyone else has something they're after, something complicated and difficult, and they become interesting people in their pursuit of that. Whereas Maricaca becomes a level boss from Diablo.

Is that a Faerie's idea of non-Fae? Non-Fae don't seek novel roles, so they must be satisfied with stock roles? Fae are self-consciously trying to be interesting, so to be non-Fae is to be boring?

She doesn't really have anything she's after anymore. She's described a few times as a sleepy kind of satisfied. But it's based on worship from an artificial religion, if I understand correctly even artificial worshippers. It has no substance or character, she doesn't have a message for her followers. Except that they can become semi-bogeymen I guess? So she's a goddess but she doesn't have a goddess's needs, to pursue worship, to offer answers or meaning or community to her followers, because they're just created for her.

I wonder if this kind of thing is what Guillherme was drawing on, when he said maybe she's halfassing being ex-fae. Is conjuring up a cliched evil cult for her, the way Charles did, really so different from using glamour and acting out a role?

Anyway, after making herself into a cartoon villain, totally appropriate for Avery to come after her with an Acme Corporation electromagnet.

not sure what you've read, but she does have something she's after

yeah, I had forgotten about that, but I just reread her explanation. Save her brother and get rid of the faerie courts. I don't really get how she was doing that.

have some thoughts about maricaca but whatever

like, she definitely becomes the most boring of the conspirators, right? Everyone else has something they're after, something complicated and difficult, and they become interesting people in their pursuit of that. Whereas Maricaca becomes a level boss from Diablo.

Is that a Faerie's idea of non-Fae? Non-Fae don't seek novel roles, so they must be satisfied with stock roles? Fae are self-consciously trying to be interesting, so to be non-Fae is to be boring?

She doesn't really have anything she's after anymore. She's described a few times as a sleepy kind of satisfied. But it's based on worship from an artificial religion, if I understand correctly even artificial worshippers. It has no substance or character, she doesn't have a message for her followers. Except that they can become semi-bogeymen I guess? So she's a goddess but she doesn't have a goddess's needs, to pursue worship, to offer answers or meaning or community to her followers, because they're just created for her.

I wonder if this kind of thing is what Guillherme was drawing on, when he said maybe she's halfassing being ex-fae. Is conjuring up a cliched evil cult for her, the way Charles did, really so different from using glamour and acting out a role?

Anyway, after making herself into a cartoon villain, totally appropriate for Avery to come after her with an Acme Corporation electromagnet.

Actually insane that a CEO in an emerging industry is basically begging Congress to regulate him

Well, meh---- he's in the lead and it may be in his interests for regulation to keep the pesky upstarts away. Moat stuff.

i mean, if you're disputing that this is surprising, we can ask, is it unusual. Like, FDA approval is a moat that protects established drug companies, but do they actually go and testify in congress that approval standards should be higher?

I was going to make a joke about Virgo signs being unusually good at hockey (early school year birthdays giving kids a boost at a young age) except it turns out that was a claim popularised by Malcolm gladwell (bad sign) with a sketchy record in the real world. So I think I was hitherto trading in mystical birthday racism for like… pseudoscientific birthday HBD