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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 28th, 2023

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  • This is also why those power strip lights can sometimes flicker in the dark. They are sometimes over-driven for extra brightness; this does cut their lifespan, but they usually still last for many years regardless. However, towards the end of that shortened lifespan, the accumulated damage to the electrodes leads to flickering as it struggles to keep the neon excited. However, incoming photons can give just a little extra nudge, which sometimes is enough to keep the neon excited and glowing.



  • Interesting. I remember there was a brightness concern with the satellites reflecting too much light, but assumed it was all ok because IIRC they hit their reflectivity reduction targets.

    However, this seems to be about transmissions from the satellites interfering with non-visible observations.

    In a study, published in the Astronomy & Astrophysics journal, scientists used a powerful telescope in the Netherlands to observe 68 of SpaceX’s satellites and detected emissions from satellites are drifting out of their allocated band, up in space.

    … “Why this matters is because of the number,” Dr Di Vruno said. “Suppose that there is a satellite in space that radiates this kind of signal, there is a very, very small chance that this satellite will be in the beam, in the main site, of your telescope.”



  • I still use free GPT-3 as a sort of high level search engine, but lately I’m far more interested in local models. I havent used them for much beyond SillyTavern chatbots yet, but some aren’t terribly far off from GPT-3 from what I’ve seen (EDIT: though the models are much smaller at 13bn to 33bn parameters, vs GPT-3s 145bn parameters). Responses are faster on my hardware than on OpenAI’s website and its far less restrictive, no “as a large language model…” warnings. Definitely more interesting than sanitized corporate models.

    The hardware requirements are pretty high, 24GB VRAM to run 13bn parameter 8k context models, but unless you plan on using it for hundreds of hours you can rent a RunPod or something for cheaper than a used 3090.




  • No? Up until very recently, Mastodon essentially was the Fediverse, and it was laughably tiny compared to Meta. It cracked 2.5 million active monthly users in January, which sounds like a lot until you realize Instagram has 2 billion active monthly users. More importantly, the active user count for the whole Fediverse was in decline since that January number, down to 1.4 million monthly users at the start of June. The Reddit drama drove an increase in users, but no way Meta is agile enough to shove this out the door in response to something that recent. Its not like Mastodon has a glowing public perception outside of the Fediverse, either.

    Truthfully, I don’t think Meta gives a damn about the current Fediverse; it’s too small to matter. Whatever their goal, I don’t think we were a consideration.


  • I doubt that is the plan. The Fediverse is tiny, even after the recent growth. Prior to June it was basically just Mastodon, and I doubt Meta is agile enough to start this from scratch in response to the June growth. This is a lot of effort to take down a competitor that’s widely considered to be rough around the edges, and is only just now hitting 2m active monthly users.

    Realistically Threads has been in the works for a while as a way to eat Twitter’s market share while Twitter destroys itself. I suspect they see value in the ActivityPub protocol in the same way Yahoo saw value in email in the 90s. Regardless of whether EEE is their intention or not, Meta’s presence in the Fediverse is going to have major implications for its long term stability.

    EDIT: on further reflection, I suspect the value they see is pressuring other would-be competitors to also implement ActivityPub. I suspect they do genuinely want to grow the Fediverse… because doing so would increase the amount of data they could collect and sell from it.