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smerity.bsky.social
Smerity
@smerity.bsky.social
3.8K followers 1.1K following 83 posts
Always pondering startups, ML, Rust, Python, and 3D printing.
Independent ML researcher consulting on LMs + data.
Previously: Salesforce Research, MetaMind, CommonCrawl, Harvard. 🇦🇺 in SF. He/him.
Personal blog: https://state.smerity.com
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smerity.bsky.social
This is great! I'm mentally adding it to the same collection as Linus first announcing Linux via mailing list ^_^
From: torvalds@klaava.Hels Subject: What would you like to see most in minix? Date: 25 Aug 91 20:57:08 GMT Organization: University of Helsinki Hello everybody out there using minix - I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing since april, and is starting to get ready. I'd like any feedback on things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat (same physical layout of the file-system (due to practical reasons) among other things). I've currently ported bash(1.08) and gcc(1.40), and things seem to work. This implies that I'll get something practical within a few months, and I'd like to know what features most people would want. Any suggestions are welcome, but I won't promise I'll implement them :-) Linus
November 27, 2024 at 6:58 PM
smerity.bsky.social
PSA: Are your Bluesky notifications a tad too loud? You can set Bluesky to only replies and quotes.

Go to the Notifications tab (web or mobile) and click on the ⚙️ in the top right.

Note: This option is not found under Settings
Notification Settings Notification filters Enable priority notifications [Toggle box] Experimental: When this preference is enabled, you'll only receive reply and quote notifications from users you follow. We'll continue to add more controls here over time.
November 20, 2024 at 11:12 AM
smerity.bsky.social
I have the exact same problem - I chose my header photo to try to start bridging the transition 😅
The ten year old profile picture of Smerity next to the header photo of Smerity from ten years later
November 20, 2024 at 9:06 AM
smerity.bsky.social
Pong! Not sure why you were missed in the auto-migration 🤔 Also, I'm glad you upgraded from your past self ;)
Rahul Dave's profile on Twitter / X where his profile picture is a goat... or... something white and goat-y and fluffy with horns!
November 19, 2024 at 1:45 PM
smerity.bsky.social
PSA: By default, only people you follow can send you DMs.

If you want your profile to be open to serendipitous DMs from new possible friends it's an explicit option you need to select :)
Chat Settings > Allow New Messages from > Everyone / Users I Follow / No one
November 19, 2024 at 6:55 AM
smerity.bsky.social
My joke paper that uses the non-linear non-sensical pricing of chicken nuggets in fast food to power a novel activation function for ML models had:
(a) A citation
(b) For a definition I'm proud of and want better known
(c) In a paper + thesis about using ML for typhoon satellite imagery
Happy days!
Dropout Another powerful regularisation technique is dropout [52], which consists of randomly setting some activations to zero. It aims to prevent specific units (neurons) to co-adapt too much. A very concise yet simple definition of dropout has been recently given by [53]: [...]. Dropout, simply described, is the concept that if you can learn how to do a task repeatedly whilst drunk, you should be able to do the task even better when sober. [...]
November 16, 2024 at 11:04 AM
smerity.bsky.social
- Anthropic Claude makes it clear (default no training)
- OpenAI ChatGPT makes it clear (toggle option in Settings)
- Google penalizes you and the text describing this is confusing even to someone who trains language models

(Google seemingly replacing every "train" with "improve Google products" 😂)
How human reviewers improve Google AI To help with quality and improve our products (such as generative machine-learning models that power Gemini Apps), human reviewers read, annotate, and process your Gemini Apps conversations. We take steps to protect your privacy as part of this process. This includes disconnecting your conversations with Gemini Apps from your Google Account before reviewers see or annotate them. Please don’t enter confidential information in your conversations or any data you wouldn’t want a reviewer to see or Google to use to improve our products, services, and machine-learning technologies. Configuring your settings Visit your Google Account to access settings and tools that let you safeguard your data and protect your privacy. To stop future conversations from being reviewed or used to improve Google machine-learning technologies, turn off Gemini Apps Activity. You can review your prompts or delete your conversations from your Gemini Apps Activity at myactivity.google.com/product/gemini.
November 16, 2024 at 4:27 AM
smerity.bsky.social
At least Gemini Advanced and I are in agreement that losing unrelated features when you set "Gemini Apps Activity" to off in order to prevent Google training on your conversations (even as a paying customer) is a dark pattern 🤔
Smerity asks Gemini Advanced: "Is there any option to use Gemini without having my data used by Google for training? Losing all history in the Gemini interface seems like a purposeful design decision to take away features from users who don't want their data used." Gemini Advanced answers: "You're right to be concerned about this. It does seem like a design decision to encourage data sharing. Unfortunately, there's no way to completely prevent Google from using your data when using Gemini, even with Gemini Advanced."
November 16, 2024 at 4:27 AM