humor

Bilingual

Xkcd: Earth Temperature Timeline
2 months ago
- Best viewed with Netscape Navigator 4.0 or below on a Pentium 3±1 emulated in JavaScript on an Apple IIGS at 1024x1 resolution.
- Enable ad blockers, disable high-heat drying, and switch from Airplane Mode to Boat Mode.
- Leave caps lock on while browsing for security reasons.
The Alice and Bob After Dinner Speech (1984)
2 months ago
- Coding theory focuses on two main areas: the fictional characters Alice and Bob, and the concept of information.
- Alice and Bob face challenges like noisy phone lines, eavesdropping enemies, and lack of trust, yet coding theory helps solve these problems.
- Coding theory is divided into three parts: source coding (data compression), channel coding (error correction), and secrecy coding (cryptography).
- Source coding reduces message length to save costs, analogous to assigning numbers to jokes in a humorous story.
- Channel coding adds redundancy to overcome noise, illustrated by phonetic alphabets like the military's Alpha, Bravo, Charlie.
- Secrecy coding (cryptography) protects messages from enemies, with ciphers like DES and RSA, and attacks like chosen plaintext.
- Standardization in cryptography is tricky because it requires non-standard keys managed in standardized ways.
- Weak keys in ciphers can be avoided, and processing delays in coding can have historical impacts, like Custer's delayed message.
- Modern technology, like advanced calculators and computers, can exhibit complex behavior and even emotional-like responses when mistreated.
- The text humorously portrays the intersection of coding theory, human relationships, and technology's quirks.
Building The Language Model Nobody Asked For
2 months ago
- LLMs like ChatGPT are trained to be intelligent and polite, but lack humor and spontaneity.
- The author aims to create a more interesting LLM by fine-tuning an open-weights model with nontraditional data.
- After comparing model families (Llama, Qwen, Mistral), Mistral Small 3 24B is chosen for its open access and trainability on consumer GPUs.
- Mistral Small 3 avoids synthetic data and RL training, producing more human-like text.
- Training data is sourced from websites that contrast with corporate speak, such as humorous or chaotic content.
- The resulting model is described as both smarter and funnier than ChatGPT, with weights available for download.
'Weekly' Links for February 26, 2025
2 months ago
- The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab - A Study
- Blogging in the age of 'AI'
- SQL Injection Court (also a related story about 32 million emails)
Why the chicken crossed the road, according to various entities
2 months ago
- The text humorously presents multiple answers to the classic joke 'Why did the chicken cross the road?' from the perspectives of various real and fictional entities, each parodying their distinctive style or worldview.
- Answers range from Mark Twain's folksy pragmatism, Derek Parfit's game theory, and Pink Floyd's nostalgic lyrics to Christopher Nolan's quantum mechanics, Ramanujan's math, and Pierre Bourdieu's sociology.
- Other notable responses include grug's simple logic, Cormac McCarthy's bleak prose, the actual chicken's straightforward 'for food,' and meta-commentary on research methods and AI safety from Dynomight and LessWrong.
- The collection ends with a list of requested contributors that were not included, adding to the playful absurdity.
Funny item co-occurrences in 3.2M Instacart orders
3 months ago
- The Instacart dataset from 3 million orders was analyzed to find funny item co-occurrences.
- Initial analysis using product-level data yielded uninteresting results due to too many unique combinations.
- Using 'lift' (actual frequency vs. expected frequency) improved ranking but still lacked humor.
- Products were reclassified into 1,000 GPC bricks for better granularity, reducing complexity by 50x.
- A humor score (0-1) was assigned to each brick based on taboo or comedic potential.
- Funniest rare combos emerged when combining humor scores with lift, such as 'Garlic and Diarrhoea Remedies' or 'Kale and Enemas/Douches'.
- Small carts (2-3 items) also produced humorous pairs like 'Oreo Cookies and Personal Lubricant'.
Banter
3 months ago
- Banter involves calling someone out for a transgression in a way that makes it clear the loss is small and they are still accepted in the group.
- It helps cap potential social anxiety by acknowledging flaws openly with humor, preventing unspoken tensions and defusing social land mines.
- If a person feels insecure in the group, banter can backfire, leading to a spiral where they react defensively, showing it's unsafe to joke with them.
- Friendships that survive conflicts or banter often feel more secure than those based solely on 'Good Vibes Only,' as they build trust through resilience.
- Banter expresses acceptance of flaws and foibles, signaling that minor point losses don't matter, fostering safety compared to silence or harsh criticism.

humor

Xkcd: Earth Temperature Timeline

The Alice and Bob After Dinner Speech (1984)

Building The Language Model Nobody Asked For

'Weekly' Links for February 26, 2025

Why the chicken crossed the road, according to various entities

Funny item co-occurrences in 3.2M Instacart orders

Banter