barsoap

Oh, hi, second coming of Edgar Dijkstra.

I think anthropomorphism is worst of all. I have now seen programs "trying to do things", "wanting to do things", "believing things to be true", "knowing things" etc. Don't be so naive as to believe that this use of language is harmless. It invites the programmer to identify himself with the execution of the program and almost forces upon him the use of operational semantics.

He may think like that when using language like that. You might think like that. The bulk of programmers doesn't. Also I strongly object the dissing of operational semantics. Really dig that handwriting though, well-rounded lecturer's hand.

That's not hallucinations (in particular), that's concept bleed. Try the following:

0. Acquire a human experimental subject. Ask them:
1. What colour is snow?
2. What colour is the fridge (point to a white fridge)?
3. What do cows drink?

...and hear them answer "milk". "White, cold, drink, cow" are all wired to "milk" in our heads logic comes later. It's quite a bit harder to trick humans with this than AIs because we do have the capacity to double-check but if you simply want to bend an answer, not have it be completely nonsensical, it's quite easy.

Also your 40k or Iron Maiden result might very well still be Battletech. E.g. when it comes to image composition. Another explanation would be low resolution in the prompt encoding, that'd be similar to boomers calling your PS5 a Nintendo. Most likely though it has only seen two or three Battletech images (face it, it's not that popular in comparison) and thought "eh looks like a Nintendo that's where I'll store it", Humans and current-gen AI are different in principle in that regard as we can come up with encoding strategies, they can't. Something something T3 systems and need for exponential amounts of data.

AI-generated alt-text for images inserted into PDFs

Sounds more like classification so far. Things like summarising web-pages would be properly generative, LLMs in general could be useful to interrogate your browsing history. Doing feature extraction on it, sorting it into a graph of categories not by links, but concepts could be useful. And heck if a conversational interface falls out of that I'm not exactly opposed, unlike the stuff you see on the net it's bound to quote its sources, it's going to tell you right-away that "a cat licking you is trying to see whether you're fit for consumption" doesn't come from the gazillion of cat behaviour sites you've visited, but reddit. Firefox doesn't have an incentive to keep you in the AI interface and out of some random webpage.

Forget the music it's the overall sound design, music is just a small part of it. Villeneuve's vision for the whole thing was to make it sound like a documentary: The desert sounds like desert, not like music, the ornithopers sound like -- erm, they sound like ornithopters, not helicopters or music, everything sounds natural. As if shot on location, on actual Dune, and that atmosphere is given plenty of screen time, no grand musical scores interrupting the immersion.

EDIT oh wait you were talking Star Wars, not Dune. Yep, completely different beast. Also the THX logo not just the 21st Century Fox fanfare is part of the score I'm ready to die on that hill.

Not so much opportunistic but unavoidable. He's a slave to the powers surrounding him, and the more real-world power he attains the less choice he has in how to wield it.

The real gut-punchers of how his station is betraying Paul's actually and genuinely good character are going to come in the second book, that is, subsequent movies.

And, yes, Paul, the Atreides in general, are good people. Noble, honourable, just, wise, kind, upright, everything, to a fault. Which is the only way to tear down the Messiah archetype, the Messiah has to fail despite their virtues, the failure has to be dictated on them by the universe, in a way that's not incidental but an unescapable truth about how the universe works. Or at least humanity.

Bechamel is definitely the mother sauce here, yes. The general Mornay scheme could be called the mother of all cheese sauces, though, and after seeing Escoffier add fish I've never gone without it just harmonises so well and you can increase the total amount of umami because it's backed by more broad-spectrum subtle aroma than cheese alone.

Side note if you're cooking for vegetarians replace fish and veal / meat extract with mushrooms. Different, but hits just as good as the carnivore variant. Never managed a proper vegan version, the milk isn't the problem the problem is limited choice of different sources of umami. It's not supposed to be a yeast sauce, after all. Make Ratatouille instead never had one complain about it.

At the point of putting Gruyère in it you better be calling it Macaroni au Gratin Mornay.

Following Escoffier (as is proper and yes I know these aren't home kitchen amounts do the ratios yourself):

For the Bechamel: Steam in butter until white 300g finely diced lean veal, two small finely chopped onions, a bit of thyme, pepper, nutmeg, 25g salt, add it to a base of 650g roux and 5l milk. TBH that's too complicated for me, I put meat extract, thyme, pepper, and onions into cold milk, slowly bring it to temperature, then add cold roux and nutmeg. Also I don't pass it through a sieve do I look like a French Chef chunks are fine.

To turn that into a Mornay, add fish fonds (fish sauce works well use the good Vietnamese stuff), for 1l Bechamel melt in 50g "Swiss cheese" and 50g Parmesan, 100g Butter. Gruyere has become standard for the Swiss part of the cheese and works on its own, often people also use an egg yolk to aid emulsion. Especially useful if you have less aromatic cheeses and want to add more, it's not like you can't do this with Gouda.

Oh, and you might want to reduce the salt in the Bechamel if you add fish sauce.

If you're putting the whole thing in the oven to make a gratin (also consider throwing some veggies in, peas, carrots, nothing special the sauce is already fancy) adding the egg white is fine no harm done and extra protein, otherwise things can get complicated in actually getting it denatured properly. Without producing scrambled eggs, that is: Mix in the yolk once the sauce is cold enough to not instantly denature it, melt in the cheese, now it's even colder, add the white and mix it well, pour over stuff, then into the oven to finish up.

Noone is talking about medication.

Everyone is talking about reducing the active ingredient in a serving of a recreational psychotropic drug by serving more of the (not "a", but "the") carrier dilute. If Anon's GF doesn't get the nic she needs, she'll take more puffs. If you don't get the buzz you want, you'll ask for another cocktail.

Y'all can ride on the technical definition of "tampering" but a) the cocktail mix not being as expected (e.g. "as done last time round") would amount to the same, "Hey this Mojito is practically virgin!" and b) there's a rather huge difference between diluting or strengthening the active ingredient and c) on a whole another escalation scale, adding something that's not supposed to be in the serving at all. Like, dunno, CBD in a Bloody Mary. Yet another magnitude: Vitamin E acetate in vape juice (don't do that that's where the popcorn lung cases came from).

Can you make those distinctions in your mind or is the concept of "tampering" mushing it all together?

If I were to hand everyone shots of pure tap water when they're expecting vodka, would that be tampering?

Note if you say "no" then you're literally no fun at parties. Zero. Nilch. Less actually, you're negative fun.

If I was making a cocktail for a friend, and, eyeballing the ratios, ended up putting too little vodka in it, would that still be tampering?

Would you be saying the same thing if it was about diluting vodka with water?

...because that's what mixing vape juice with juice base is.

Pure water will work for a couple of percentage points but above that will not work properly because atomisers expect a certain range of viscosity or they won't wick properly. It's generally a mix of propylene glycol, glycerine, and water. More glycerine means more clouds, natural sweetness, and annoying hygroscopy (i.e. you'll get a dry mouth), while PG is an aroma carrier, less sweet, quite a bit less hygroscopic. It's also the standard solvent for nicotine and aroma, not just vape aromas most food aromas are PG-based, too. Water is there to make the liquid less viscous and/or reduce hygroscopy of the overall mixture.