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Jon Ayre @jonayre.uk · 9h

Tailored filth

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Jon Ayre @jonayre.uk · 1d

Yup.
Basic first world survival skill.

bleary @bleary.off-the-records.com · 2d

If anyone needs me I will be in the museum, lying down next to the bog bodies.

Did people really memorize phone numbers before cell phones, or is that just a movie thing?
2? Questions
I was watching some old shows from the 90s and noticed people would just dial numbers from memory - like they'd call their friends or family without looking anything up.
Made me wonder if that was actually normal back then? Did people genuinely have all their important numbers memorized, or did most folks keep a little address book or written list nearby?

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Jon Ayre @jonayre.uk · 1d

The literature we're made to read in school is a minority interest forced on a diverse majority in order to put them off reading.

Jon Ayre @jonayre.uk · 2d

When it comes to energy matters, best to listen to engineers rather than politicians and businessmen.

Adrian = engineer

Adrian Bowyer @adrianbowyer.bsky.social · 2d

"...hoping to compete with grid-scale lithium batteries..."

The overall thermodynamic efficiency of this is about 70%.

Grid-scale batteries can do 90% and have no moving parts*.

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* Except a few cooling fans.

Go Green @ecowarriorss.bsky.social · 2d

The liquid air alternative to fossil fuels
When the grid needs extra energy, the liquid air is put to work. It is pumped out of storage and evaporated, becoming a gas again.
www.bbc.com/future/artic...

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Reposted by Jon Ayre

Adrian Bowyer @adrianbowyer.bsky.social · 2d

"...hoping to compete with grid-scale lithium batteries..."

The overall thermodynamic efficiency of this is about 70%.

Grid-scale batteries can do 90% and have no moving parts*.

---
* Except a few cooling fans.

Go Green @ecowarriorss.bsky.social · 2d

The liquid air alternative to fossil fuels
When the grid needs extra energy, the liquid air is put to work. It is pumped out of storage and evaporated, becoming a gas again.
www.bbc.com/future/artic...

The liquid air alternative to fossil fuels

An overlooked technology for nearly 50 years, the first liquid air battery facility is finally set to power up in 2026.

www.bbc.com

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Jon Ayre @jonayre.uk · 2d

Truth

Prototype electronic circuit constructed on a single strip of breadboard

3D printer robotic arm with gripper in white plastic, sitting on the lift of a grey laptop

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Jon Ayre @jonayre.uk · 2d

That's the timeline I used, but it was littered with toxic and abusive replies that destroyed the constructive conversation I was there for. You couldn't see the wood for the trees.

Reposted by Jon Ayre

Lars Rosenquist @calvobianco.com · 2d

Folks saying: "With a coding assistant I can finally focus and design and specs. This makes me x more productive."

Serious question: How were they not doing that before? They just jumped into IDE without doing any design whatsoever? Whacking code together they gobbled from SO and hope for the best?

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Jon Ayre @jonayre.uk · 3d

It's a tool that can assist in coding but only if carefully driven. It has advantages, but massive acceleration isn't one of them. When I started out there were no IDEs and no auto complete. Things have come along way and the process is quicker - but not by orders of magnitude. Same goes for LLMs

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Jon Ayre @jonayre.uk · 3d

It's not like working with a junior engineer. A junior engineer can self guide based on limited input, can learn independently through research and experimentation and can come back to you with clarifying questions when they realise they're out of their depth.

An LLM does none of those things

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Jon Ayre @jonayre.uk · 3d

I've seen that look before...

A helmeted soldier stares blankly past us. In the background are scenes of war.

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Jon Ayre @jonayre.uk · 3d

Because of the training data

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Jon Ayre @jonayre.uk · 3d

It's not that they're even designed to sound certain. They're just trained on material written by humans published via a medium where sounding certain is key to getting read. They're just regurgitating those grammatical constructs that imply certainty.

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Jon Ayre @jonayre.uk · 3d

That's the fundamental weakness of a language model. Language is generally believable even when it's incorrect.

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Jon Ayre @jonayre.uk · 3d

Once you've checked over what the LLM produced (assuming you do) or tested and debugged (assuming you do) you've spent as long using the LLM as you would have done with a web search and copy and paste.

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Jon Ayre @jonayre.uk · 3d

If you know how to do it and it's a common use case that the LLM can regurgitate it's because it's an example that appears regularly in blogs and advice forums.

You can get an approximation from the LLM or a tested example plus explanation from a simple web search.

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Jon Ayre @jonayre.uk · 3d

You can certainly interpret meaning from what it produces but that meaning, although convincing, is very often wrong.

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Jon Ayre @jonayre.uk · 6d

Green + LibDem are the biggest "party" according to the polls

#justsaying

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Jon Ayre @jonayre.uk · 7d

I think you missed my point. It isn't about decentralisation.

Jon Ayre @jonayre.uk · 7d

Early Bluesky proved to be a bit of a clique that reacted badly to people talking of their experiences with racism. There was a strong fingers-in-the-ears, not-listening vibe. IMO this was a driver for the creation of Blacksky. Blacksky is the success story that arises from Bluesky's failing.

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Jon Ayre @jonayre.uk · 7d

The existence of Blacksky is not a sign of Bluesky's success. It is a sign of one of its core failings.

Rudy wants revolution. @rude1.blacksky.team · 8d

I hear and see your concerns. Over the weekend, a couple users hosted on Blacksky's PDS were banned from the Bluesky app and thus the Bluesky API servers. This was a weakness of our system I've been aware of and hoped we had more time to address before any kind of public incident. 1/11

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Jon Ayre @jonayre.uk · 7d

Crunchy!

Jon Ayre @jonayre.uk · 8d

If you're really worried about losing all the meaningful things you've said because you have to move to a new social media platform, do what the rest of us do:

Don't post anything meaningful.

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Jon Ayre @jonayre.uk · 8d

New game show format just dropped

Jacqueline Sweet @jsweetli.bsky.social · 9d

I just watched a video of an ICE agent trying to find a costumed frog's rear air hole to stick pepper spray in it, and, like, why are we paying people to do this

Jon Ayre @jonayre.uk · 8d

ChatGPT ftw

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