• 14 Posts
  • 34 Comments
Joined 7 months ago
Cake day: June 27th, 2025
  • BaconWrappedEnigma@lemmy.nztoSelfhosted@lemmy.world•Self-hosting in 2026 isn't about privacy anymore - it's about building resistance infrastructureEnglish
    6·
    6 days ago

    This does not look like it was generated by an off-the-shelf LLM. It could be from a custom fine-tuned LLM (or even few shot) but it’s likely not written by vanilla ChatGPT, Gemini, etc…

    It can be really difficult to detect LLM written text but the easiest heuristics are:

    • Specific keywords
    • The use of three examples, often bullet points (Hah!)
    • “Final thoughts” or a summary

    That said, there are many techniques to make an LLM sound more like an author; so, you never really know…

    Final thoughts

    In conclusion: we can’t be sure, but at first glance, this looks like it was written by a human.

    And when the government comes knocking - and they are knocking, right now, today - these companies will hand it over

    EDIT:

    I have seen many people convert the em-dash into a single dash, much like OP uses. e.g.

    And when the government comes knocking - and they are knocking, right now, today - these companies will hand it over

  • BaconWrappedEnigma@lemmy.nztoAotearoa / New Zealand@lemmy.nz•Interesting talk
    7·
    8 days ago

    Not sure why @[email protected] decided not to include any details about the talk. The host is

    Dr Lucy Rogers MBE is a Chartered Engineer and Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. Former Visiting Professor at Brunel University, she’s an award-winning engineer, author of Up: A Scientist’s Guide to the Magic Above Us and former BBC Robot Wars judge. Her creative projects span animatronic dinosaurs to carbon-negative technologies. She’s passionate about nature and sustainable engineering solutions.

    It looks like an interesting talk! Unfortunately, the title: “Up: A Scientist’s Guide to the Magic Above Us.” sounds like some pseudoscience bullshit.

  • BaconWrappedEnigma@lemmy.nzOPtoAotearoa / New Zealand@lemmy.nz•Gary Stevenson: 'They own your country' | 30 with Guyon Espiner S4 Ep3 | RNZEnglish
    5·
    2 months ago

    He does a good job of illuminating it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTlUyS-T-_4

    His basic message is that rich people own assets; everyone else operates with money. Every time there is inflation, like when countries borrowed massive amounts of cash during 2020, money becomes worth less (prices for things go up) while assets maintain their value, by going up in dollar value.

    There is an argument that Labour NZ and Democrats US are more neoliberal than left and their policies are largely based around giving subsidies or aid in a way that increases demand for things which drives up the price. One example of this is “University for Everyone” that was started during the Clinton era in the 90s. On the face of it, it sounds like a really positive idea. Unfortunately, when everyone had money for college, the price of tuition skyrocketed. Another way to approach this would have been to build state-owned schools that offered cheaper tuition.

    In New Zealand we do similar things, like the accomodation subsidy. We spend $2 billion dollars a year to help people who can’t afford rent. Again, on the face of it, it sounds like a really important thing to do. But when there is $2 billion dollars a year injected into the demand-side of the rental market, we get higher rents. Another way to approach this would be to use the $2 billion per year to build non-market housing.

    It almost seems like the two-party systems we find around the world are designed to make the rich richer, while one of them is designed to make it hurt slightly less while they still facilitate it. This creates the perpetual cycle of voting against one party instead of voting for the one we most align with. This is why the people in power do everything they can to prevent single-transferable voting (STV) or ranked-choice voting (RCV). We’re lucky to have it in local elections.

    For parliamentary elections at least we have MMP. So, there’s that.

  • BaconWrappedEnigma@lemmy.nztoAotearoa / New Zealand@lemmy.nz•Simplicity announces new infrastructure company InfraKiwi | Simplicity
    3·
    2 months ago

    InfraKiwi aims to own and operate key infrastructure assets in New Zealand for the long term. It is anticipated that it will initially be seeded with private equity investment from the Simplicity KiwiSaver and Investment Fund schemes, with the intention to list on the NZX once it achieves critical mass.

    It sounds more like they will “own” the resources, not just do contracts. I’m not very good at 4d-chess but one thing that popped into my mind was the Lake Onslow Project. Then I started thinking about Electricity Generation. So, there might be a world in which things that could be SOEs in the future are owned by a Kiwi business. If InfraKiwi is listed on the NZX, then it could be folded into a “fund” that is available for everyday people to buy using their KiwiSaver.

    This would be quite complimentary to Labour’s new Future Fund, so if Labour win the next election, InfraKiwi could be well positioned to work within that framework and receive government money from “Investment Fund schemes”. Labour said:

    The Fund will invest in New Zealand for the benefit of everyone, building infrastructure and backing innovative businesses to create secure, well-paid jobs and grow wealth in every region.

    InfraKiwi almost seems tailor-made for this. While it would need to be a for-profit company to be listed on NZX, the convenor company “Simplicity” has done some amazing pro-Kiwi things as a not-for-profit which gives me a high-level of trust for their CEO: Sam Stubbs.