Maybe a dumb question, but I think anyone reading this question would know a good answer for me. If I have a big pile of PDFs and wanted to get an LLM to be really good at answering questions about what's in all those PDFs, would it be best for me to try running this locally? "Best" in this case would be I would want to get the best/smartest answers from my questions about these PDFs. They're all full-text PDFs, studies and results on a specific genetic condition that I'd like to understand better by asking something smart questions.
You only started trying it out once they moved to GANS and VR headsets. You are not pathetic or anything, could get a real girl if you wanted to. Just don't have time. Have to focus on your career for now. "Build your empire then build your family", that's your motto.
You strap on the headset and see an adversarial generated girlfriend designed by world-class ML to maximize engagement.
She starts off as a generically beautiful young women; over the course of weeks she gradually molds both her appearance and your preferences such that competing products just won't do.
In her final form, she is just a grotesque undulating array of psychedelic colors perfectly optimized to introduce self-limiting microseizures in the pleasure center of the your brain. Were someone else to put on the headset, they would see only a nauseating mess. But to your eyes there is only Her.
It strikes you that true love does exist after all.
I can give you my list as I've also been watching lots of "old" movies. Though "old" can mean almost anything depending on who you ask. Note: I'm picky so while I love movies if I check my ratings (I take notes because I forget what I watched), it turns out I only like about one out of 10 movies. Or maybe to put it in a slightly better light, only 1 of 10 or so is worth recommending. Some might be okay but not okay enough to tell someone "you should seek out this movie"
Anyway, here's some from my list from the last year (the list of ones I didn't like is MUCH longer and includes many that are highly rated on IMDB)
"Now, Voyager" (1942)
"Boom Town" (1940)
"The Best Years of Our Lives" (1947)
"The Little Princess" (1939)
"Destry Rides Again" (1939)
"Baby Face" (1933)
"Adam's Rib" (1949)
"In a Lonely Place" (1950)
"It Happened One Night" (1934)
"The Woman of the Year" (1942)
"The Awful Truth" (1937)
"Broken Arrow" (1950)
"The Lady Eve" (1941)
"His Girl Friday" (1940)
"12 O'Clock High" (1949)
"You Can't Take It With You" (1938)
"The Far County" (1954)
"Random Harvest" (1942)
"The Bad and the Beautiful" (1952)
"The Philadelphia Story" (1940)
"Cry Danger" (1951)
"This Gun For Hire" (1942)
"Casablanca" (1942). I didn't get it at 23 where as I shook from crying at 50. Basically I needed to truly feel Rick's loss and what he was going through (Bogart's character). At 23 I didn't. At 50 I did. I suppose you could have similar experiences to Rick at a younger age or you could never have them and then not have it do anything for you.
I don't think any of them are "lesser known". Basically I just look up IMDB. If it's rated > 7 and sounds mildly interesting I'll take a look. Tons of them don't work for me. Those above did. As recent examples of ones that didn't "The Strange Love of Martha Ivers" (1946), "Dark Passage" (1947), "Waterloo Bridge" (1940), "The Bishop's Wife" (1947), "Spellbound" (1945), "Fort Apache" (1948). Those are just from the last 2 weeks (^^;)
There is a certain amount of misinformation in this post that I'd like to clear up:
1) In the 10th century, (Old) English and (Old) German were already somewhat divergent, and not really mutually intelligible, but closely related.
2) The same goes for Norman and French. While in the same language family, these were not quite the same language.
3) Have you read any Chaucer? I'm not sure I'd call Middle English "mostly comprehensible". It takes a lot of work and a good ME dictionary at hand. By contrast, Early Modern English (think Shakespeare) is more in the line of "mostly comprehensible".
4) It's not just the fact there was no central authority that caused English to massively change. There still isn't a central authority, but change has been slow and non-radical for the last 500 years or so. Having a central authority doesn't really prevent change, either, although it might help to slow it down.
5) It's not at all clear what you mean by "arbitrary" in your claim about language change and state control, but you certainly have not backed up any claim about languages under "state control" being more "regular".
6) The alphabet switch for Turkish did not succeed because the Latin alphabet is "simple and phonetic". The Arabic alphabet is also simple and phonetic, as is (or as could be) any alphabet. It was not a great fit for the Turkish language, however, and the Latin alphabet (with a few additions) mapped better.
7) But much more important than any facts about the Latin alphabet was the fact that Kemal Ataturk was a dictator who pushed through a massive literacy programme on the population (who, it should also be said, was basically supportive of this goal). Had he done an alphabet reform instead---adding a few letters to the Arabic alphabet to make it a better fit for Turkish---and accompanied it with the same literacy policy, it'd do just as well. (Better, arguably, because it would have left the writings of the Ottomans much more accessible to the literate modern population.)
You might be right about computers arising in alphabet countries (I'd broaden that to any non-ideographic writing system, including Greek, Korean, and those of the Indian subcontinent and southeast Asia), but it might be more accurate to say that if computers had arisen first in China they would have looked very, very different. (Even in Japan, they might have gone the route of kana-only systems first, in a similar way to how early western machines had ALL CAPS interfaces.)
Congratulations on the investment. The return is nothing short of spectacular. It's a truly excellent example of execution and timing.
But the point that keeps resurfacing in my mind is SpaceX. SpaceX, from nothing, created a low-earth orbit delivery system that is revolutionizing satellite launches and (soon) the cost of getting men into space... for less than the price that a bunch of people can send photos to each other with cheesy filters [1].
It would be difficult to overstate the impact Elon Musk has had, is having and will have on humanity (and no this isn't hyperbole) through SpaceX (and maybe even Tesla). And it didn't even require, relate to or is connected with some bullshit social network.
I'm also reminded of Steve Yegge's OSCON talk [2] from some months back. The computer power we have available now is stunning. used for the right purposes it could fundamentally change humanity for the good, whether that be in bioinformatics or whatever, is hard to overstate.
Yet we're using all this power and the brightest minds on the planet... to send cat pictures. It's actually reached the point that when I get unsolicited recruitment email or read about some new startup on HN that I tune out as soon as I see the word "social".
There's something astoundingly depressing about all this.
EDIt: I should add that my issue isn't that the founders and investors sought wealth. I don't begrudge them that at all. Not by any means am I anti-capitalist. Bill Gates, as one example, is doing huge amounts of good with his accrued wealth.
