jamez

My same thought, precisely. Funny how certain expressions are now toxic telltale sign.

We're in good hands! /s

The article reads a bit parochial, with scarce mentions of market dynamics. Capers are definitely an uncommon sight in the US.

In Italy you will occasionally spot this bad boy: https://www.amazon.it/Capperi-Sotto-Sale-secchiello-1Kg/dp/B...

Also: preserve your capers in vinegar and say goodbye to their flavor. All you get is tiny vinegar capsules.

No, or at least: not yet.

I'm probably not the best person to elaborate on why societal anxieties arise every time our place in the universe shrinks. I guess observing reactions to copernican heliocentrism could be a good starting point. We're witnessing something similar, and while we may accept it at the individual level, the objections of the many will stir painful reactions.

Well spotted. The agent does in fact assess whether or not the information it's processing is already in its vector DB. I'm still unclear if what you noticed is due to the LLM failing (Mixtral is good, but not great), or something else, but it needs fixing. Thanks for letting me know.

I did! I want to switch to Mixtral-8x22B, time permitting. During the development of Stream of Consciousness I already swapped LLMs twice. This space is moving incredibly fast.

LLM: Mixtral-8x7B text-to-image: one of the leading commercial models, whose TOS I may or may not be violating.

The text-to-image model is an important component, but the current model in use is IMO good enough. My view for this project is that the internal monologue is more important than the output, so my wish is instead for a better open-weight LLM.

Glad you like it! One of the things I tried to emulate is the notion of obsessions, which I believe is an important component of the creative process. It seems like Livia got obsessed with Dutch Proverbs and slowly drifted to "Dutch protest culture".

I have no control over what happens during the live streaming and I'm sure this autonomous agent could become a source of embarrassment, though I hope the few precautions I've built might be enough. :-)

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I fully agree re: the importance of art and the absurdity of the concept which, I hope it's clear, is embedded in the spirit of this project.

On the topic of the performance and worries that something is not working: the real-time generation is currently bottlenecked by the GPU used for this project. We try to approximate human reading speed for the recorded sessions (which you can find in the archive).

Thanks for reporting. Fixing that pronto.

So great to see interest in ePaper screens. Picture frame projects specifically seem to be gathering steam. Shameless plug: I built a solar ePaper frame that displays Google Photo albums or loads pictures from an sd-card. https://jamez.it/blog/2023/05/16/version-2-of-my-solar-power...

So far, I've shared the instructions on how to build a custom solar engine, which was the most time-consuming portion of the project. Coming up next: high level directions on how to build one from scratch.

I did, though I appreciate the appeal of recycling a screen no longer loved.

Just a few days ago I stumbled upon Exeger and its promising Powerfoyle material. Looks like Big E Ink is already on it: https://www.powerfoyle.com/news/exeger-and-e-ink-partner-to-... To me, the most elegant way of re-doing the frame would be to coat the entire visible surface in this material.

Indeed, it doesn't! I've been splurging on UV protecting glass for my frames and I hope that will make them last longer. Other than that, I try to position the frames close to windows, but not so much that they would receive many hours of direct light. I think there's a goldilock zone there somewhere.

Nicely done. Have you tried connecting it with a larger panel and see if you can get rid of that battery draining during Winter? I'm curious to hear how your battery copes over time.

I agree. The brain does a lot of the interpolation that fools us into thinking there's more colors. Here's another example of interesting results: https://twitter.com/liviopacifico/status/1361928583405391875

I really enjoyed the work you put into finding the best images for the medium. It matters! For instance, I noticed that in the black-white-red ePaper, photos with a subject containing a lot of red hue really pop out. Container and content should always go hand in hand.

Thanks for your comment. You are definitely right about "forever" not matching reality, which is why I placed it between quotes. In this case, what this means to me is a device that could outlive its creator.

I take your point about lifespan of electronics, however I stick to my guns regarding the word "heirloom". Grandpa's clocks did not last forever either without some maintenance, but still managed to pass through generations with the help of repairing hands. My C64 from way back 1980s still works, and the only thing I ever needed to do is replace a fuse and... treat it nicely.

Giving new life to an old eReader using solar power is as optimistic an image of the future as I can get right now. There are dozens of us... DOZENS! Ditto for the build-your-own kit.

This is excellent, I could see using this as a foundation to build a set of drink coasters. A couple of years ago I used wad2svg to penplot every level in the original DOOM. The result: https://twitter.com/liviopacifico/status/1396540463432146944

Thank you both, this is a good suggestion. I'll leave the short connection on screen, comparing it with the long and windy path is fun.

To be clear - the point is not to display what can or cannot be connected. The emphasis on this project is about the long and tortuous path chosen.

I take your point about the limits of knowledge graphs written manually vs LLMs. IMHO it's not either/or. We need both curation and statistical approaches, and when they are merged they give the best results. Just ask Wolfram: https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2023/03/chatgpt-gets-its... Edit: fixed link to Stephen Wolfram's blog.

TF-idf would definitely be something very interesting to try, though I also treasure the serendipity brought by the "blindness" to the content.

When you can't find a connection, always try the reverse! https://www.wikibinge.com/#Great_Pacific_garbage_patch/Cleop...

Cool path! The last bit of the tour you described is fairly common - the algorithm is just doing its job, getting closer to the target, avoiding articles with larger PageRank. It's very uncommon to pass through "important" pages. Glad you enjoyed it!

I think channels like Primitive Technology[1] play with this sense of dizziness, the realization that crafting even basic tools of survival requires a chain of dependencies and non obvious skills to acquire.

Separating from society, and thriving in the process seems to me increasingly unlikely. Another fantastic reason to try and get along with one another and not let the hive die.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitive_Technology

This YouTube video (in Dutch, but with English subs) is also fascinating: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1ODwgX_KkQ

You can browse Tatjana van Vark's personal website here: http://www.tatjavanvark.nl/projects.html