Yes you’re right, sorry I went off on a tangent about the reasons for the intense negativity in the Lemmyverse about LLMs. I’ve been using lemmy for four years, and definitely don’t think there has ever been any positive feelings towards LLMs here, especially as ChatGPT’s arrival predates the first surge of users on Lemmy (and the subsequent appearance of all the instances we see today). On reddit, yes, and there are still many people there who still think OpenAI is great.

I think it’s another example of “internet bubbles” - people with similar views tend to congregate together and this is particularly true on the internet, when going elsewhere is always just a mouse-click away.

When ChatGPT first launched, Lemmy was still pretty much a ghost town, and it did cause a lot of optimistic excitement e.g. on reddit. Lemmy got a big surge in numbers when reddit did its infamous API changes - enshittification driven by spez’s and other reddit executives’ insatiable lust to exploit the site for more and more money.

Perhaps for this reason, people on Lemmy are more averse to the enshittification trend and generally exploitive nature of large tech companies. I think this is what people on Lemmy object to - tech companies’ concentration of power and profits by ripping off the general public - not so much the concept of LLMs themselves, but the fact they could easily be used to further inequality in society.

It’s interesting isn’t it? “Guys” can include women, and can even be a group of only women, but you can’t talk about a single woman as a guy - “I snogged this gorgeous guy last night”.

Yes that’s pretty much it, with the extra detail being that he notoriously claimed to have a medical condition which made him unable to sweat and therefore his accuser must have been lying.

ooh a good game that doesn’t require an Amazon prime subscription! Thanks for the heads up!

For the penguins out there, it’s platinum on protondb so it should be easy to play on Linux via Heroic Launcher.

I’d say these books are important for anyone studying American literature - and probably essential for anyone studying American literature of the 20th Century.

They’re not so important for Welsh pupils and don’t need to be included in a general English literature syllabus for 15-year-olds in the UK. The reasoning outlined in the article for choosing not to include these sorts of works in the list of required and optional texts for this specific qualification is pretty convincing IMO and I completely support it.

No books are being banned from schools or anything like that. The article headline is I suspect just trying to get clicks from the anti-woke crowd.

The book hasn’t been banned, it’s just not been selected as a required or optional text in a new English qualification for Welsh schools. Steinbeck is a wonderful author and story-teller, and his stories provide a useful insight into America’s difficult recent past in regards to racial segregation (as well as other issues such as oppression of the poor). America is an important country, and it’s useful to understand why it remains such a damaged society with deep racial divides even today, but it’s not Wales is it.

No previous generation has ever wanted to spend time with family and friends before! This is unprecedented!! Every single old person has only ever wanted to go to work and help create value for shareholders by fucking over the disadvantaged!!!

Had a google to see what dog it was - couple of reports suggesting it was a “Bully XL” - STV https://news.stv.tv/north/family-devastated-after-much-loved-mum-killed-by-american-bulldog-in-aberdeen-home and I’m afraid the Sun https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/32210765/first-pic-of-mum-mauled-to-death-aberdeen/

And coconut milk. We now have to call that “non-mammary coconut secretion”?

I’m planning to buy this game this weekend. There’s a community mod for it that brings it up to date with enhanced graphics, QoL fixes and VR support - https://www.xwaupgrade.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=13107

Only a couple of quid on GOG right now - https://www.gog.com/en/game/star_wars_xwing_alliance

* paramount

A trackball can lead to a rather exciting life. You can operate them while they are perched on the very edge of an excitingly messy desk, or even on your thigh for those times when your desk is just too cluttered. My advice is to stick with a traditional mouse, and thus stick with a traditionally dull life.