From steffen at sdaoden.eu Sun Jun 1 08:00:11 2025 From: steffen at sdaoden.eu (Steffen Nurpmeso) Date: Sun, 01 Jun 2025 00:00:11 +0200 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] Wikipedia anecdotes - LLM generalizations [was On the unreliability of LLM-based search results In-Reply-To: References: <769a9c94-055d-4bdd-a921-3e154c3b492f@infinitecactus.com> <71936198-93c1-41bc-8a5f-41d95969da0c@technologists.com> <20250528145211.xBdhDA8m@steffen%sdaoden.eu> <0b4b5f13-9e45-4107-9904-86f6f238983f@case.edu> Message-ID: <20250531220011.OK6aDwFS@steffen%sdaoden.eu> Adam Thornton wrote in : |One could make a really good case right about now that: | |a) Vladimir Putin is doing his best to put the band back together, and Sorry, sorry to come back on a computer list. I stop thereafter. But, one can only press thumbs that it all gets through without further escalation; the desired block formation has resulted, at quite a price, but the river is still floating. If _there_ a really radical establishment would arise, though, and i mean really really (really!), if it were only the military, you know, there would be plenty of (pro) Russian(s) to protect in Transnistria; they had to sit in the cold without heating this winter, until a solution was found after months (and i *guess* and *bet* it is a very expensive and other-side-favouring solution); and their voted head is imprisoned, for, you know, in any case, much much less than a jumbo. You know; PJ Harvey sings On Battleship Hill's Caved in trenches A hateful feeling Still lingers Even now eighty years later So all that can be said is. Nothing changed, all the faults and idiocies happen over and over again. This is not "we have a liftoff", but we are plain as stupid as we always have been. (Btw. In this house where i work we have a middle-age Ukrainian Woman living here for many years, and a twin refugee couple. Thirty meters aways there is a German/Ukrainian (married) couple with lots of young children. More Ukrainians, Russians and Polish, all around here. And i always said i admire the men, and there are plenty, who deprive themselves from *that* government, even if "their country is calling" them. I only wish it would worked out that way for me, personally and environmentally, would i have lived during WWII. And the opposite for WWI.) |b) Republicans are acting as extremely willing Russian assets, so therefore |c) Associating them with the red of Soviet Communism is pretty accurate. The entire AI thing yet escaped me. I never looked and tested AI. I remember, on TUHS, and i think it was Steve Johnson who pretty much enthusiastically talked about "thousands of 8-bit processors" which understand a computer game "only by looking at the pixels" so good that after several hours they "beat the milk out of" it. From memory. That was fascinating, and my mind was busy looping over that on that evening, fwiw. I now have read that the Chinese approach they talk about uses that "8-bit" approach with the elder hardware that they are allowed to use, whereas the western guys use that super hardware, but nonetheless decline. Maybe that was what Steve Johnson was talking about. There are surely useful tasks for AI, when it is driven with green energy, and after is has been fully understood. Before that it is just another race that is raced at whatever cost there may be. The price is payed by the environment, and the grand children, but no longer further down the line. That is possibly the good thing about it. Exactly as said by the Club of Rome in 1972, and at least ever since also by the Catholic Church. As can be seen by reading the introductional words of Pope Franziskus "Laudati Si". De facto all this thread, and this entire email, is only about "structural disfunctioning" .. "that is unsuitable to guarantee respect for the environment". --steffen | |Der Kragenbaer, The moon bear, |der holt sich munter he cheerfully and one by one |einen nach dem anderen runter wa.ks himself off |(By Robert Gernhardt) From als at thangorodrim.ch Mon Jun 2 01:23:57 2025 From: als at thangorodrim.ch (Alexander Schreiber) Date: Sun, 1 Jun 2025 17:23:57 +0200 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] Wikipedia anecdotes - LLM generalizations [was On the unreliability of LLM-based search results In-Reply-To: <20250531220011.OK6aDwFS@steffen%sdaoden.eu> References: <769a9c94-055d-4bdd-a921-3e154c3b492f@infinitecactus.com> <71936198-93c1-41bc-8a5f-41d95969da0c@technologists.com> <20250528145211.xBdhDA8m@steffen%sdaoden.eu> <0b4b5f13-9e45-4107-9904-86f6f238983f@case.edu> <20250531220011.OK6aDwFS@steffen%sdaoden.eu> Message-ID: On Sun, Jun 01, 2025 at 12:00:11AM +0200, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote: > > There are surely useful tasks for AI, when it is driven with green > energy, and after is has been fully understood. What is currently being sold as "AI" is mostly LLM (Large Language Models), which are - to grossly simplify things - massive brute-force pattern matching engines. There are plenty of use cases where a well setup pattern matching engine is exactly what you need. My favourite example: SBB (Swiss Railways) uses "AI" (an in-house trained pattern matching model) to sift through the massive incoming stream of noise recordings from rail mounted vibration sensors, to identify (by matching known qualified patterns) those caused by damaged train carriage wheels. Additional support infrastructure then identifies train, carriage, wheel and notifies the owner/operator to fix the wheel - before gets worse and does more damage to the rails. There are lots of similar tasks where pattern matching engines are a great fit (e.g. optical QC on finished surfaces during manufacturing). If you try to use pattern matching engines for tasks that require knowledge, thinking, understanding (in short: a trained human mind), then you will be sorely disappointed while drowining in - potentially even superficially plausible sounding - bullshit (See Harry Frankfurt, "On Bullshit"). > Before that it is just another race that is raced at whatever cost > there may be. The price is payed by the environment, and the The current forecasts of both the use and the costs (some claim that we need to feed 90% of all power production to data centers eventually, which is clearly .. ill advised) of "AI" are looking wildly exaggerated. > grand children, but no longer further down the line. That is > possibly the good thing about it. Exactly as said by the Club of > Rome in 1972, and at least ever since also by the Catholic Church. Club of Rome did not see a lot of scientific developments coming that enabled growth way beyond their expectations. But then, predicting the future is never a sure business. That said, cheerfully burning down the planet for short-term profit is not exactly a sustainable business model, to put it politely. Kind regards, Alex. -- "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison From steffen at sdaoden.eu Mon Jun 2 23:14:30 2025 From: steffen at sdaoden.eu (Steffen Nurpmeso) Date: Mon, 02 Jun 2025 15:14:30 +0200 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] Wikipedia anecdotes - LLM generalizations [was On the unreliability of LLM-based search results In-Reply-To: References: <769a9c94-055d-4bdd-a921-3e154c3b492f@infinitecactus.com> <71936198-93c1-41bc-8a5f-41d95969da0c@technologists.com> <20250528145211.xBdhDA8m@steffen%sdaoden.eu> <0b4b5f13-9e45-4107-9904-86f6f238983f@case.edu> <20250531220011.OK6aDwFS@steffen%sdaoden.eu> Message-ID: <20250602131430.yQGXjEmw@steffen%sdaoden.eu> Alexander Schreiber wrote in : |On Sun, Jun 01, 2025 at 12:00:11AM +0200, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote: |> There are surely useful tasks for AI, when it is driven with green |> energy, and after is has been fully understood. | |What is currently being sold as "AI" is mostly LLM (Large Language |Models), which are - to grossly simplify things - massive brute-force |pattern matching engines. | |There are plenty of use cases where a well setup pattern matching engine |is exactly what you need. My favourite example: SBB (Swiss Railways) |uses "AI" (an in-house trained pattern matching model) to sift through |the massive incoming stream of noise recordings from rail mounted |vibration sensors, to identify (by matching known qualified patterns) |those caused by damaged train carriage wheels. Additional support |infrastructure then identifies train, carriage, wheel and notifies |the owner/operator to fix the wheel - before gets worse and does |more damage to the rails. That is possibly a great thing. I can assure everybody that Swiss freight trains pass by here in the many dozens / hundreds each day, and they are very well maintained. Most often they are quieter than even the much light German passenger trains. (Yes, there was that judgement in 2015 that the German (freight) trains have to become silent by December 2020, before that it was sheer unbelievable, especially during braking. And i still can recall the female DB speaker saying "und die Zeit brauchen wir auch" "and that time we really need". Unfortunately now the brakes are a bit more silent, but wheel imbalance and wheel bearings have massively increased (again).) I say possibly because i could imagine sensors in the locomotive should be capable to detect vibration irregularies? Not that i know. But vibrations is understated given the hammerings. Does this really need sound recordings? Interesting. |There are lots of similar tasks where pattern matching engines are |a great fit (e.g. optical QC on finished surfaces during manufacturing). | |If you try to use pattern matching engines for tasks that require |knowledge, thinking, understanding (in short: a trained human mind), |then you will be sorely disappointed while drowining in - potentially |even superficially plausible sounding - bullshit (See Harry Frankfurt, |"On Bullshit"). | |> Before that it is just another race that is raced at whatever cost |> there may be. The price is payed by the environment, and the | |The current forecasts of both the use and the costs (some claim that |we need to feed 90% of all power production to data centers eventually, |which is clearly .. ill advised) of "AI" are looking wildly exaggerated. I also do not use cryptocurrencies btw. I .. have heard Microsoft wants to buy a turned off nuclear plant to reactivate it, only for training AI? They also meddle within the "small nuclear plants" scene. I am thus against it. |> grand children, but no longer further down the line. That is |> possibly the good thing about it. Exactly as said by the Club of |> Rome in 1972, and at least ever since also by the Catholic Church. | |Club of Rome did not see a lot of scientific developments coming that |enabled growth way beyond their expectations. But then, predicting |the future is never a sure business. I would think at the 50th anniversary of the publication there was a profound review, and the pretty well got it. That was the great thing on Gore's campaign, in between the lines of that duel he mentioned it. With favouring "technology", of course, which i never believed will outgrow the bad effects. Not with that overall mental state, anyway. |That said, cheerfully burning down the planet for short-term profit |is not exactly a sustainable business model, to put it politely. Thank you. |Kind regards, | Alex. |-- |"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and | looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison --End of --steffen | |Der Kragenbaer, The moon bear, |der holt sich munter he cheerfully and one by one |einen nach dem anderen runter wa.ks himself off |(By Robert Gernhardt) From stuff at riddermarkfarm.ca Mon Jun 9 03:59:08 2025 From: stuff at riddermarkfarm.ca (Stuff Received) Date: Sun, 8 Jun 2025 13:59:08 -0400 Subject: [COFF] Article on bellmac-32 in Spectrum Message-ID: <83cb9923-527b-41da-2c16-e45d496d2d9d@riddermarkfarm.ca> From https://spectrum.ieee.org/bellmac-32-ieee-milestone "The group wrote its own version of Unix, with real-time capabilities to ensure that the new chip design was compatible with industrial automation and similar applications." Would that be in the archives? S From coff at tuhs.org Mon Jun 9 06:47:34 2025 From: coff at tuhs.org (segaloco via COFF) Date: Sun, 08 Jun 2025 20:47:34 +0000 Subject: [COFF] Article on bellmac-32 in Spectrum In-Reply-To: <83cb9923-527b-41da-2c16-e45d496d2d9d@riddermarkfarm.ca> References: <83cb9923-527b-41da-2c16-e45d496d2d9d@riddermarkfarm.ca> Message-ID: On Sunday, June 8th, 2025 at 10:59 AM, Stuff Received wrote: > From https://spectrum.ieee.org/bellmac-32-ieee-milestone > > "The group wrote its own version of Unix, with real-time capabilities to > ensure that the new chip design was compatible with industrial > automation and similar applications." > > Would that be in the archives? > > S If I had to assume this is probably related to DMERT and UNIX/RT. I'm unaware of any surviving code, but I have tossed some manuals up on my archive.org page for a few 2000's-era releases of the UNIX-RTR Generics for the 5ESS switches of the time. https://archive.org/details/5ess-switch-unix-rtr-operating-system-reference-manual-issue-10 Unfortunately I haven't secured any code from later UNIX-RTR releases either, just installation and maintenance curricula with some manuals and such thrown in. There is some early MERT stuff bumping around the archive but it predates the BellMAC-32/WE32000 and 3B by several years. - Matt G. From als at thangorodrim.ch Mon Jun 9 23:01:57 2025 From: als at thangorodrim.ch (Alexander Schreiber) Date: Mon, 9 Jun 2025 15:01:57 +0200 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] Wikipedia anecdotes - LLM generalizations [was On the unreliability of LLM-based search results In-Reply-To: <20250602131430.yQGXjEmw@steffen%sdaoden.eu> References: <71936198-93c1-41bc-8a5f-41d95969da0c@technologists.com> <20250528145211.xBdhDA8m@steffen%sdaoden.eu> <0b4b5f13-9e45-4107-9904-86f6f238983f@case.edu> <20250531220011.OK6aDwFS@steffen%sdaoden.eu> <20250602131430.yQGXjEmw@steffen%sdaoden.eu> Message-ID: On Mon, Jun 02, 2025 at 03:14:30PM +0200, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote: > Alexander Schreiber wrote in > : > |On Sun, Jun 01, 2025 at 12:00:11AM +0200, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote: > |> There are surely useful tasks for AI, when it is driven with green > |> energy, and after is has been fully understood. > | > |What is currently being sold as "AI" is mostly LLM (Large Language > |Models), which are - to grossly simplify things - massive brute-force > |pattern matching engines. > | > |There are plenty of use cases where a well setup pattern matching engine > |is exactly what you need. My favourite example: SBB (Swiss Railways) > |uses "AI" (an in-house trained pattern matching model) to sift through > |the massive incoming stream of noise recordings from rail mounted > |vibration sensors, to identify (by matching known qualified patterns) > |those caused by damaged train carriage wheels. Additional support > |infrastructure then identifies train, carriage, wheel and notifies > |the owner/operator to fix the wheel - before gets worse and does > |more damage to the rails. > > That is possibly a great thing. I can assure everybody that Swiss > freight trains pass by here in the many dozens / hundreds each > day, and they are very well maintained. Most often they are > quieter than even the much light German passenger trains. Ah, but there is a difference: Swiss (SBB & Co.) passenger trains are very quiet by design - because they carry passengers (aka "cargo that can complain"). Swiss cargo trains are slowly getting there as the rolling stock is replaced, but they were _not_ designed to be quiet, as cargo tends not to complain. > I say possibly because i could imagine sensors in the locomotive > should be capable to detect vibration irregularies? Won't work, because a sensor in the locomotive will have a hard time recording noise from the end of the train that might be 100+m away. The setup described about grabs a vibration recording of every wheel as it passes the rail-mounted sensor and (with the help of other data sources) the system then can identify the train/carriage/wheel. > Not that > i know. But vibrations is understated given the hammerings. Does > this really need sound recordings? Interesting. Well, it's vibration recording .. which is what sound is, just at possibly a different frequency range that what humans hear. Kind regards, Alex. -- "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison From steffen at sdaoden.eu Tue Jun 10 01:30:29 2025 From: steffen at sdaoden.eu (Steffen Nurpmeso) Date: Mon, 09 Jun 2025 17:30:29 +0200 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] Wikipedia anecdotes - LLM generalizations [was On the unreliability of LLM-based search results In-Reply-To: References: <71936198-93c1-41bc-8a5f-41d95969da0c@technologists.com> <20250528145211.xBdhDA8m@steffen%sdaoden.eu> <0b4b5f13-9e45-4107-9904-86f6f238983f@case.edu> <20250531220011.OK6aDwFS@steffen%sdaoden.eu> <20250602131430.yQGXjEmw@steffen%sdaoden.eu> Message-ID: <20250609153029.hJtGx5K6@steffen%sdaoden.eu> Alexander Schreiber wrote in : |On Mon, Jun 02, 2025 at 03:14:30PM +0200, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote: |> Alexander Schreiber wrote in |> : |>|On Sun, Jun 01, 2025 at 12:00:11AM +0200, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote: |>|> There are surely useful tasks for AI, when it is driven with green |>|> energy, and after is has been fully understood. ... |>|There are plenty of use cases where a well setup pattern matching engine |>|is exactly what you need. My favourite example: SBB (Swiss Railways) |>|uses "AI" (an in-house trained pattern matching model) to sift through |>|the massive incoming stream of noise recordings from rail mounted |>|vibration sensors, to identify (by matching known qualified patterns) |>|those caused by damaged train carriage wheels. Additional support |>|infrastructure then identifies train, carriage, wheel and notifies |>|the owner/operator to fix the wheel - before gets worse and does |>|more damage to the rails. |> |> That is possibly a great thing. I can assure everybody that Swiss |> freight trains pass by here in the many dozens / hundreds each |> day, and they are very well maintained. Most often they are |> quieter than even the much light German passenger trains. | |Ah, but there is a difference: Swiss (SBB & Co.) passenger trains |are very quiet by design - because they carry passengers (aka |"cargo that can complain"). Swiss cargo trains are slowly getting |there as the rolling stock is replaced, but they were _not_ designed |to be quiet, as cargo tends not to complain. Ah -- trains have an inside? Interesting. Hmmm, talking at least a decade. SBB and also, i hate private companies, BLS. Mostly i guess chemicals via tank wagons, and containers, lots of containers from an Austrian haulier. I mean, it is only snippets of time, when i am wandering in between, so numbers are scaled at bit, but from impressions of all day and night times. Here pass by quite a lot, Swedish double-deckers, French TGV (they renamed them, but slow german crawling..), German DB ICE of all sorts, of course, but still normal ICs with mostly 2nd class, for me it is Schnellzug and Eilzug but that cannot be helped, wonderful Austrian trains with two red locomotives (great ones which still aimed in record breaking performance, and deliver for the quarter of a century), and in between them dove gray waggons with red roof -- i love these trains, i think four times a day, surely good cake and coffee within, their Nightjets. BASF trains with Diesel and not FuelCell technology; we are back. And lots and lots and lots of private freight train companies which surely do not pay enough for being able to use the rails, just for the sake of allowing "competition" .. at the cost of the people, effectively. And for ruining the name of the DB, which actually pays for it. Tax payers that is. Loudest passenger train thinkable is by the way FlixTrain who seems to run generators or what at one pair, but their bearings and wheels scream to heaven "i have to live a long life" or what. They surely spend not enough for using the rails, let alone for the ear pain i have to suffer when that shit passes. Whatever. Luckily they pass by quick and do not brake, i cannot comment on their brakes. Swiss freight trains run smoothly and to a very large extend very silent, and they break silent, too. (Squealing happens at times, for practically anything. All the development for isolation, aka decoupling, and materials technology aside.) So, that is that. |> I say possibly because i could imagine sensors in the locomotive |> should be capable to detect vibration irregularies? | |Won't work, because a sensor in the locomotive will have a hard time |recording noise from the end of the train that might be 100+m away. Mostly americans on this list i presume, and they still remember the Wild West listen-at-the-rails trick, for whatever purpose. Our rail bus with its diesel engine btw does not use engine bearings. "Boy the rail hums" quite a bit in advance. So to say. |The setup described about grabs a vibration recording of every wheel |as it passes the rail-mounted sensor and (with the help of other data |sources) the system then can identify the train/carriage/wheel. Well, .. sure. I mean, in summertime i would consider talking the job for an hour at weekdays, but i need tea, and i surely would not be as exact. For freight trains in particular, they are put together at classification yards, often at little hills so that they start rolling after some initial moment. You know. In Germany we say (or used to say, when we were still Germans) "Where there is a will, there is a Way". Something like that.. |> Not that |> i know. But vibrations is understated given the hammerings. Does |> this really need sound recordings? Interesting. | |Well, it's vibration recording .. which is what sound is, just at possibly |a different frequency range that what humans hear. It seems to me in rails it ranges further than in the air. |Kind regards, | Alex. |-- |"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and | looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison --End of --steffen | |Der Kragenbaer, The moon bear, |der holt sich munter he cheerfully and one by one |einen nach dem anderen runter wa.ks himself off |(By Robert Gernhardt)