As a developer, I use LLMs as sort of a search engine, I ask things like how to use a certain function, or how to fix a build error. I try to avoid asking for code because often the generated code doesn’t work or uses made up or deprecated functions.
As a teacher, I use it to generate data for exercises, they’re especially useful for populating databases and generating text files in a certain format that need to be parsed. I tried asking for ideas for new exercises but they always suck.
I realized that people didn’t really give a shit about me and just used me for my skills. I was always there for them when they needed me, but when I asked them for anything they were always busy or had some excuse. I started using the same excuses on them and they all disappeared almost immediately.
I still help people of course: some close friends, some colleagues, my students, but I no longer show myself to be competent in certain things so I can avoid parasites.
If you only have 8gb you’re probably swapping a lot, depends on what you do with your PC.
Anyway, to set up zram the easiest way is to try this: https://github.com/systemd/zram-generator/tree/main Also, take a look at the zram page on the arch wiki, even if you’re not using arch it’s very well made: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Zram
I generally wouldn’t recommend this, especially if you’re using a cheaper SSD without cache or with QLC memory.
As you already know, cells on an SSD have limited write cycles (as low as 700 for QLC memory) and things like TRIM and wear leveling make sure that your SSD wears uniformly, but on cheaper SSDs the endurance is so low that without cache you will run into wearing issues in a few years of regular use or a few months if you’re using it a lot or with swap enabled. I have seen it first hand many times working in a repair shop.
Keep in mind that endurance is not just a number of terabytes written that will cause your drive to suddenly switch to read-only mode, before it fails it will usually slow down to the point of making your PC unusable, I’ve seen SSDs write as slow as 9MB/s (specifically a Yucun drive from 2018 with TLC memory and no cache), it’s not defective it just has to do a lot of error correction during writes.
Also, another issue that plagues cheap SSDs is that their controllers usually die well before the memory does, keep that in mind when choosing an SSD because this usually happens without early signs of failure or SMART errors.
So in general, unless your PC has a lot of RAM and that swap area will rarely be used, don’t use swap and use zram instead (or just buy more RAM?).
Various reasons over the years:
- Don’t want to risk making the workplace unpleasant (twice)
- Wrong race that would upset my parents (twice)
- Lives too far away (twice)
- Age gap (once)
- Me being exposed to porn at a very young age (first time I was 3 or 4, and I grew up with unsupervised internet access) gave me a completely broken sexuality and I don’t want to bring other people into this mess
- Feeling inadequate, ugly or uninteresting (I used to be very fat so you can imagine how I grew up)
- Feeling that my interest in the other person is not genuine and that I only see her as a sexual object
In the end, I’m 32 and single, my friends are getting married and starting their own families and I have this dreadful feeling that I missed out on something important in life, I drown this feeling in work, video games and all sorts of projects, but when I’m alone and I can’t think of anything to do and I start thinking about the future, I want to kill myself.
Ebay, by far!
In 2020 my account got locked for suspicious activities, I got it unblocked and it got blocked again after 1 login. I called them again and told them what happened. Basically, they said that if you log in with literally any privacy respecting browser (Librewolf in my case), your account gets immediately locked and you have to call them, you must use Chrome, Firefox (without antifingerprinting) or any other “normal” browser. So I stopped using ebay (their loss really) but I didn’t close the account since I couldn’t log in.
In September 2021 the account got hacked (I used the same password on multiple sites, one of them got hacked and the password ended up in a public database), it was used to pull some GPU scam and I ended up getting billed for 135€. Obviously I called the bank and blocked the transaction, then I called ebay to explain the situation. They said they would lock the account and mark it as hacked and not to worry about the 135€.
A few months later I get a call from a debt collecting company! They want the 135€. I explained the situation again, and they said to call ebay. So I call these idiots again and they said they would contact the collectors to explain that the account was hacked and not to bother me again. A few weeks later, the collectors call me again! Ebay did not provide any evidence that the account was hacked. So once again, I called ebay and this time I finally had the “debt” cancelled and the account closed.
Fast forward to June 2023, and I really need to buy something from ebay (old and rare PC part). Thinking that by now they would have improved their detection systems, I create an account and log in. Motherfuck. It gets locked immediately.
This time, the experience is even worse. The support page keeps redirecting me infinitely between the italian and english versions instead of giving me a phone number. Eventually I find it on google and call them. I ask them to unlock the goddamn account and they say they can’t because they can’t verify my identity since. At this point, I’m feeling Karen’s wrath running through my body and ask to speak to a manager. They transfer me to some guy who doesn’t even speak italian. I explain the situation and after nearly a hour of wasted time he unlocks the account and I can buy the item. I don’t dare try to log in with that account again.
Never again, fuck you ebay.
Crypto were a good idea on paper, they could have rid us of centralized banks and provide fully anonymous transactions, instead we got massive exchanges that require your identity to do anything, massive speculation, money laundry, ponzi schemes and GPU shortages.
At this point I don’t even care anymore about what it could have been, fuck crypto.
AI is to computer science what black magic is to science.
Seriously, what do you get after you’ve spent days and days to train a model? An inscrutable blob that may as well be proprietary software written for an alien CPU; studying it is damn near impossible, understanding how it works would require several lifespans, and yet it works, and we trust these models and use them to get solutions to problems that would normally be impossible to handle by computers using “real” computer science. And one day, this trust will bite us in the ass, not in the form of an “AI rebellion” but with every system that uses AI becoming unreliable because of situations outside its training.
“You couldn’t draw a circle with a round glass”