• 1 Post
  • 43 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: September 14th, 2023
  • ralakus@lemmy.worldtoTechnology@lemmy.world•Despite tech-savvy reputation, Gen Z falls behind in keyboard typing skillsEnglish
    7·
    9 days ago

    Gonna defend gen z a bit here. Unlike older generations, gen z was raised in a large part only on locked down, touch screen interface devices like smartphones and tablets. These devices are designed to not be tampered with, designed and streamlined to “just work” for certain tasks without any hassle.

    If you only have a smartphone or tablet, how are you supposed to learn how to use a desktop os? How are you supposed to learn how to use a file system? How are you supposed to learn how to install programs outside of a central app store? How are you supposed to learn to type on a physical keyboard if you do not own one?

    I worked as a public school technician for a while and we used Chromebooks at my school system. Chromebooks are just as locked down if not more locked down than a smartphone due to school restrictions imposed via Google’s management interface. Sure they have a physical keyboard and “files” but many interfaces nowadays are point and click rather than typing. The filesystem (at least on the ones I worked with) were locked down to just the Downloads, Documents, Pictures, etc. directories with everything else locked down and inaccessible.

    Schools (at least the ones I went to and worked at) don’t teach typing classes anymore. They don’t teach cursive classes. They don’t teach any classes on how to use technology outside of a few Microsoft certification programs that students have to chose to be in (and are awfully dull and will put you to sleep).

    Gen Z does not have these technology skills because they largely do not have access to anything that they can use to learn these skills and they aren’t taught them by anyone. Gen Z is just expected to know these skills from being exposed to technology but that’s not how it works in the real world.

    These people aren’t dumb as rocks either like so many older people say they are. It’s a bell curve, you’ll have the people dumb as rocks, the average person, and the Albert Einsteins. Most people here on lemmy fall closer to the “Albert Einstein” end of the tech savvy curve so there’s a lot of bias here. But I’ve had so many cases where I’ve met Boomers, Gen X, and Millennial who just can’t grasp technology at all.

    Also, before someone says “they can just look it up on the internet”, they have no reason to. What’s the point of looking up these skills if they cannot practice them anywhere? Sure, you’ll have a few that are curious and interested in it but a vast majority of people have interests that lie outside of tech skills.

    Tl;dr Gen Z is just expected to know technology and thus aren’t taught how to use it or even have access to non-locked down devices.

  • ralakus@lemmy.worldtoAI@lemmy.ml•How reliable are modern LLMs?
    4·
    22 days ago

    If you’re using an LLM, you should limit the output via a grammar to something like json, jsonl, or csv so you can load it into scripts and validate that the generated data matches the source data. Though at that point you might as well just parse the raw data and do it yourself. If I were you, I’d honestly use something like pandas/polars or even excel to get it done reliably without people bashing you for using the forbidden technology even if you can 100% confirm that the data is real and not hallucinated.

    I also wouldn’t use any cloud LLM solution like OpenAI, Gemini, Grok, etc. Since those can change and are really hard to validate and give you little to no control of the model. I’d recommend using a local solution like running an open weight model like Mistral Nemo 2407 Instruct locally using llama.cpp or vLLM since the entire setup will not change unless you manually go in and change something. We use a custom finetuned version of Mixtral 8x7B Instruct at work in a research setting and it works very well for our purposes (translation and summarization) despite what critics think.

    Tl;dr Use pandas/polars if you want 100% reliable (Human error not accounted). LLMs require lots of work to get reliable output from

    Edit: There’s lots of misunderstanding for LLMs. You’re not supposed to use the bare LLM for any tasks except extremely basic ones that could be done by hand better. You need to build a system around them for your specific purpose. Using a raw LLM without a Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) system and complaining about hallucinations is like using the bare ass Linux kernel and complaining that you can’t use it as a desktop OS. Of course an LLM will hallucinate like crazy if you give it no data. If someone told you that you have to write a 3 page paper on the eating habits of 14th century monarchs in Europe and locked you in a room with absolutely nothing except 3 pages of paper and a pencil, you’d probably write something not completely accurate. However, if you got access to the internet and a few databases, you could write something really good and accurate. LLMs are exceptionally good at summarization and translation. You have to give them data to work with first.

  • ralakus@lemmy.worldtoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•What is your default sort?
    4·
    1 month ago

    In small datasets, the speed difference is minimal; but, once you get to large datasets with hundreds of thousands to millions of entries they do make quite a difference. For example, you’re a large bank with millions of clients, and you want to get a list of the people with the most money in an account. Depending on the sorting algorithm used, the processing time could range from seconds to days. That’s also only one operation, there’s so much other useful information that could be derived from a database like that using sorting.

  • ralakus@lemmy.worldtoClimate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.@slrpnk.net•Hurricane Beryl is intensifying at an unprecedented rate. What to know.
    22·
    3 months ago

    Hurricane Beryl becomes Category 4 storm on its way through Caribbean

    Beryl exploded into a Category 4 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 130 mph Sunday — the earliest a storm of that intensity has been recorded in the Atlantic — leading Caribbean islands to prepare for violent storms.

    The National Hurricane Center said Beryl could pose “life-threatening” problems in the Lesser Antilles, an island chain on the eastern side of the Caribbean Sea. Hurricane warnings have been issued for Barbados, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadine Islands, Grenada and Tobago, while a tropical storm warning covers Martinique.

    “All preparations should be rushed to completion today,” the Hurricane Center posted at 11 a.m. Sunday. Forecasters expect Beryl to move across the Caribbean and toward the northwestern region of the sea, affecting the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica and the Cayman Islands.

    Researchers have been warning for months that the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season could be one for the record books, and now it is.

    What to know about Beryl’s location and islands’ preparations

    As of 1:45 p.m. Eastern time, Beryl was about 300 miles east-southeast of Barbados and was moving due west at 21 mph.

    St. Lucian Prime Minister Philip J. Pierre said on Facebook that emergency service officials declared a national shutdown for the country of about 170,000 people starting at 8:30 p.m. local time Sunday.

    “We need to be together and support each other as we prepare but hope and pray we are spared,” he said in a video message.

    The St. Vincent and the Grenadines Meteorological Service on Sunday issued a flash-flood warning to its 100,000 residents.

    At midday Sunday, Michael Tiller was looking at blue skies and calm, clear blue water from the patio of a rented vacation home in Barbados.

    “You can’t really tell there’s a hurricane coming,” the Michigan resident said. “It’s a really beautiful day out here.”

    Tiller plans to hunker down as soon as the winds pick up. The property managers of the home he is sharing with his family for the week came in earlier Sunday and boarded up the windows and glass doors.

    He was surprised, however, that they didn’t take away the patio furniture or provide him with any other instructions.

    To stay up to date and keep his family safe, Tiller is following weather updates online from a Barbados-based meteorologist, Sabu Best, who provides updates every three hours.

    The family is bracing for strong winds and power outages, but Tiller isn’t too concerned.

    “I’m calm and not particularly worried,” he said. “There will be adversity, but in the grander scheme of things it will be fine for us.” The family is planning to return to the United States on Wednesday.

    How fast the storm strengthened

    Beryl went from a tropical storm to a Category 3 hurricane in 36 hours; it intensified by 75 mph during that time frame. According to Sam Lillo, a researcher at DTN Weather, that level of rapid intensification has never happened in June and has happened only twice in July.

    On Sunday morning, it reached Category 4 intensity.

    What makes this so unusual

    There is no precedent for a storm to intensify this quickly, nor reach this strength, in this part of the ocean during the month of June. Records date to 1851.

    While flukes happen, there is a firm link between rapid intensification (the strengthening of hurricanes) and human-induced climate change. Ocean waters are running 3 or 4 degrees above average, reminiscent of August rather than June. In some cases, records are being set. It’s unsurprising that the atmosphere is responding accordingly.

    Before now, the Atlantic has only ever seen two major hurricanes during June — Audrey in 1957 and Alma in 1966. “Major” hurricanes are those rated as Category 3 or higher. Both Audrey and Alma occurred in the Gulf of Mexico as early-season “homegrown” storms. The Atlantic’s Main Development Region, located between northern South America and Africa, was always believed to be inhospitable to major hurricanes during the month of June — until now.

    In addition to extremely warm ocean waters, relaxed upper-level winds played a crucial role in its development. If high-altitude winds are too harsh, they can tear apart a fledgling storm. Winds are ordinarily hostile during June, but not this year.

    The juxtaposition of low pressure to the northwest and a high to the north and east helped evacuate air away from Beryl in a narrow filament, “venting” it and helping it to intensify more quickly. (Imagine placing a fan at the top of a chimney — the more air you blow out the top, the more the flames will grow as air rushes in to fuel the fire at the bottom.)

    Where Beryl could go next

    Beryl will slam the Lesser Antilles on Monday, probably the Windward Islands, with winds of 130 mph or more. Because its strongest winds are concentrated in the center, the specific track of the storm’s eye will determine its exact impacts.

    The National Hurricane Center is also expecting a storm surge of 6 to 9 feet, as well as 3 to 6 inches of rain.

    High pressure to the north will act as a force field over the central Atlantic, preventing Beryl from escaping out to sea. That’s why Beryl will continue moving west.

    By Tuesday, Beryl will enter the eastern Caribbean, still moving westward or slightly west-northwestward. It may be weakening acutely by then as it encounters shear, or changing winds with height, that work to knock it off-kilter.

    Its eventual track in the Caribbean is unknown. Jamaica and Cuba could both be in play. So could the Yucatán Peninsula. At this point, it does look like Mexico is more likely to be hit.

    There’s also a potential scenario — least likely at this point — where Beryl threads the gap between Cancún and western Cuba, entering the Gulf of Mexico. The feasibility of that scenario, and range of possible impacts, won’t be known for days.