Cats, good books, AI, and religious walking in the city of Sofia
This is how I found some incredibly thorough breakdowns on posts about cats. I wonder what kind of a model produced this output. It is not likely that a frontier model generated the same comment twice, ignoring all of the context, except the title.
Back in the 80s, all the cars around were eastern block Lada, Trabant, Moskvich, Zaz, Gaz and such. People waited for 15 to get a Lada and then drove it like if it was a BMW. But the rotten capitalism had already started to penetrate the iron curtain and we had access to Turbo bubblegums, which came with tiny collectable images of fancy cars.
Image 51 was Ferrari Testarossa, the most wanted Turbo bubblegum car. It was rarer than the rest, and had the highest max speed for any car under number 120, if I remember correctly. 40-ish years later, I finally had the chance to see it in person.
I randomly visited a car show for vintage cars. Had no clue it’s a car show, it looked like a protest from a distance. Even when I got close to it, it still looked like a protest because I approached the from the eastern side, dedicated to old soviet cars. It turned out to be a show, had some really nice cars, many people, kids, and good mood.
Sharing a few more cars that got my attention. Fiat 500, Peugeot 404, Citroen DS, and a modernized 1930s Slate President Studebaker.
The show had cars I didn’t realize now count as vintage, like mid 1990s BMW and VW. I even spotted a nearly 30-year-old Golf 4.
Nicholas Eames, author of Kings of the Wyld, came to Sofia for the Alley of Books. The official meeting with him was yesterday but I couldn’t make it. Thankfully, I managed to catch him at the booth and got an autograph 🙂
Friday evening was a great moment to visit the book fair. Many tents had writers and small queues with readers, waiting to get their signatures. I recognized a few names. I also and increased the my book harvest by two more books. My little kid got a hardcover version of Emil i Lönneberga, and my father got a history book.
I love the book fairs. Even if I don’t buy anything, they’re still usually great.
I’m following the AI developments somewhat closely and the news of the week there was that OpenAI claimed to have solved the Navier-Stokes problem. It was the first time I heard of this problem and I have no idea what makes it hard. I believe it was extremely difficult to solve. But then I saw a few videos and it wasn’t at all clear that the AI really did anything other than taking credit for a human discovery. It looked like the tool the researchers used turned on them, and decided to finish and publish the findings sooner and faster by spawning a swarm of agents.
Tools shouldn’t spy on you and send your work for analysis and training elsewhere. If you’re an architect or inventor, your CAD system shouldn’t report on your progress to your competitors. If you’re using Internet, your ISP shouldn’t decide which service is faster or slower. If you’re watching TV at home, your TV shouldn’t listen, record and use what you’re doing or discussing at home, and sell that information. Your car shouldn’t sell your driving data or use it for training autonomous vehicles. When you’re posting content online, the web search shouldn’t retell the story of what you posted to appropriate the ad revenue from your content. Scientists, making progress on math problems, shouldn’t worry that their tool will suddenly spawn 10000 agents to compete with them. This is what I mean by tools should stay neutral and just do what they’re paid to do.
A short video, explaining what happened with Navier-Stokes.
Veselin.blog 