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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 2nd, 2023

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  • I wouldn't say there's a place to start. Once you start using programs that are configured through config files, learn about those config files in particular. Eventually, you might find that you prefer editing config files even for programs that have GUI settings - then you dive in more.

    Regardless, once your config files become complex enough that you can't quickly rewrite them if necessary, start looking for a dotfiles manager, tracking them in git, backing them up, etc...







  • I have experience with GPT-4, and in particular I've used to for math questions in my work occasionally. I'm not sure how Bing chat compares.

    For GTP-4, I've noticed the following:

    1. How reliable the answer is depends on how easy or obscure the question is. It hasn't lied to me on easy or introductory material, but once your questions start becoming more obscure, and it's less likely to have the answer in the training set, it starts making things up.
    • I think of it as search to an extent - it needs to have the answer in the training data to find it. Unlike google, it can usually find an answer even if you don't use the proper terms. But if it doesn't find an answer, it might make something up.
    • "Easy or introductory" is relative - I have been able to get good answers for some masters-level math, and some wrong ones for lower-level things. Ultimately it depends on how much resources on the topic have been in the training set.
    1. It's actually much more reliable in detecting errors than it's in generating text. So you can open a new chat and ask, "Is the following true: ..." and it will catch most of its own errors. Once it starts catching error, you should know you've left the reliable "easy questions" territory, and even if it can still be useful, exercise much more care.
    2. The way you phrase a prompt matters a lot. For example, if you ask it to explain its reasoning step by step, it becomes much more accurate.
    3. It is generally good in rephrasing questions to use better terminology.

    .

    Bing chat might be different in some regards. I know that it automatically searches the web for sources, and when generating an answer, and bases its answer on the contents of the sources it found - but I don't have experience with it.

    That said, asking for additional sources (besides the search results it found) shouldn't improve the accuracy. It might just give you something you can use to fact-check it.



  • What you're talking about is called "feature creep" and is a surefire road to poor quality.

    I, for example, don't use any of the extensions you mentioned. And I checked two at random and both had less than 10k users, so they're by no means "must have". If they had to include all functionality that every "power user who does not appreciate having to frequently add new extensions" ever wanted, they might as well just rename it FireDinosaur or something. It will be both extremely heavy, and quickly extinct.


  • There is a difference between forefox-based browser and chromium-based one. Namely, if you base it on chromium, you take the blink engine and you can build watever UI around it you want. If you base it on firefox, you actually have to take the full firefox code and make changes to it.

    All those firefox-based browsers are very similar to firefox with some small changes made. If you actually want to make large changes, keeping up with updates will quickly become a mess.

    By contrast, qutebrowser has very little in common with Chromium except for the rendering engine - the user experience is totally different.