I’m just gonna play devil’s advocate here.

Before the invention of the police, communities took it upon themselves to enforce the law. Oftentimes, militia members would directly write to governors asking for arms, and would also be present in their communities during public events where an armed presence might be necessary. Arrests for members of the community would happen by way of court order first, and then a posse would be formed as a means to enact that court order. Nowhere in the US constitution does the word “police” appear because the idea hadn’t even been conceived at the time of foundation.

Comparatively, today’s police have far more authority to enact violence and effect arrests than even the courts. Could a court today order a dog to maul a surrendering man? Probably not. But when the police do it, apparently, that’s just the cost of doing business.

I think the lie is that we need the police and not the other way around.

Immediately, probably not. Privacy is one of those things where when you really need it, you can’t get it… unless you already have it.

Also, it’s not like you know the motivations of all 7 billion people on earth. If you’re out in the open, it just makes it easy for the lazy to find you.

I can get behind using a VPN, a phone with Graphene or Calyx, adblocker, user agent switcher, librewolf, and stuff… you give up some convenience for privacy, but it’s not overbearing. Tor, however, isn’t exactly useful as a daily driver.

So is there a visible benefit? Hopefully not. If you’re doing it right, you’ll just live a normal life and not be bothered.

That’s a good question. Apparently, these large data companies start with their own unaligned dataset and then introduce bias through training their model after. The censorship we’re talking about isn’t necessarily trimming good input vs. bad input data, but rather “alignment” which is intentionally introduced after.

Eric Hartford, the man who created Wizard (the LLM I use for uncensored work), wrote a blog post about how he was able to unalign LLAMA over here: https://erichartford.com/uncensored-models

You probably could trim input data to censor output down the line, but I’m assuming that data companies don’t because it’s less useful in a general sense and probably more laborious.

There’s a ton of stuff ChatGPT won’t answer, which is supremely annoying.

I’ve tried making Dungeons and Dragons scenarios with it, and it will simply refuse to describe violence. Pretty much a full stop.

Open AI is also a complete prude about nudity, so Eilistraee (Drow godess that dances with a sword) just isn’t an option for their image generation. Text generation will try to avoid nudity, but also stop short of directly addressing it.

Sarcasm is, for the most part, very difficult to do… If ChatGPT thinks what you’re trying to write is mean-spirited, it just won’t do it. However, delusional/magical thinking is actually acceptable. Try asking ChatGPT how licking stamps will give you better body positivity, and it’s fine, and often unintentionally very funny.

There’s plenty of topics that LLMs are overly sensitive about, and uncensored models largely correct that. I’m running Wizard 30B uncensored locally, and ChatGPT for everything else. I’d like to think I’m not a weirdo, I just like D&d… a lot, lol… and even with my use case I’m bumping my head on some of the censorship issues with LLMs.

I’m currently considering setting up Jellyfin to host movies for the times I lose internet. Something small, you know? No more than a terabyte… but that’s a lie. I’m looking at NAS and I’m already realizing that this could turn into a problem.

Man. That AIMS low frequency inverter is nice.

I actually bought one of those cheaper Chinese pure sine wave inverters, but found that they don’t run motors/power tools that well. The surge current demand just exceeds anything they can provide. They’re great for resistive loads like PCs/LEDs/Hotplates, but if you wanted to run a table saw or something the AIMS is the only way.

Anyone living or dead? Definitely dead. I think I could reliably win a fight against a dead guy.

I’m using the Quest 2 and loving it. I recently moved my router (a Netgear Orbi) into my office and I’ve been using AirLink instead of the tether and it’s actually working super well. Probably gonna shell out the cash for the Quest 3 when it comes out because I think the fresnel lenses are the biggest drawback of the Quest 2.

For games I’ve been playing Into the Radius, a heavily moded version of Skyrim VR, and Demeo. If you like the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series, Into the Radius is almost like an unofficial sequel and is soooooo immersive. Skyrim VR is worth the trouble of modding. Feels like a new game. Demeo is just a lot of fun to play with friends, but the amount of time it takes to play a full game usually kills my headset battery.

Yeah man. Lemmy definitely has that early internet feel. I love it. Hope you’re having a good day.