MetaFilter

ChatGPT Just Beat Stockfish using techniques that attentive observers of politics over the past few decades will recognize and appreciate. GothamChess, YouTube, 16m1s
posted by flabdablet at 11:43 PM PST - 43 comments

Double Fine and 2 Player Productions present PsychOdyssey, a 20+ hour & 32-episode documentary seven years in the making about the development of Psychonauts 2. Trailer, playlist
posted by juv3nal at 11:03 PM PST - 11 comments

Even so: Read the book. “Timeless and timely” is a cliché, but sometimes it happens to be true. Feminist debates aside, the novel’s conflicts between solipsism and human connection, sexual agency and the need for love, echo and anticipate today’s conversations about sexual freedom; its world of endless socializing and fear of social “ruin” evokes today’s social media and “cancel culture”; and its rarely equaled ability to create characters who are “problematic” yet riveting, hateful and sympathetic, goes to the heart of the modern war over art and morality. Les Liaisons Dangereuses, which triumphantly survived more than a century of censorship and suppression, tells us that in this war, the right side of history is the one where great art is. from Love and Libertinism: The Endless Fascination of ‘Dangerous Liaisons’
posted by chavenet at 2:48 PM PST - 8 comments

Chick-fil-A (PR Newswire release) is testing a fried-cauliflower sandwich (Southern Living and USA Today reviews) in certain markets. Conservatives are pissed (Gizmodo tweet roundup), and not because it isn't vegan (VeggL).
posted by box at 2:13 PM PST - 115 comments

How to Play “Diagram Critique Bingo” by Abby Covert, information architect and author of How to Make Sense of Any Mess.
posted by spamandkimchi at 12:21 PM PST - 7 comments

Meet the last man without a cellphone Beyond breaking down on the freeway, the 3% of people without cellphones are finding society is blocking them out more than ever. Yet they can memorize directions, read a ton, and are possibly the most chill dudes on the planet.
posted by SituationNormal at 9:05 AM PST - 107 comments

Tonight seven countries (Estonia, Romania, Denmark, Croatia, Latvia, Italy and Malta) hold finals to select their entries for the 2023 Eurovision Song Contest. With 87 days to go, ten songs have already been chosen. In other Eurovision news, John Lydon will not represent Ireland with his song, Hawaii, a moving tribute to his wife Nora. And the Worst Kept Secret in Norway has been revealed: the identities of 2022's entry Subwoolfer, of Give That Wolf a Banana fame.
posted by Orange Dinosaur Slide at 8:57 AM PST - 11 comments

Ted Chiang explains how ChatGPT is better understood as a lossy compression algorithm (New Yorker; archive link; Chiang previously).

Imagine what it would look like if ChatGPT were a lossless algorithm. If that were the case, it would always answer questions by providing a verbatim quote from a relevant Web page. We would probably regard the software as only a slight improvement over a conventional search engine, and be less impressed by it. The fact that ChatGPT rephrases material from the Web instead of quoting it word for word makes it seem like a student expressing ideas in her own words, rather than simply regurgitating what she’s read; it creates the illusion that ChatGPT understands the material.

posted by automatronic at 5:22 AM PST - 100 comments

The FDA's power to approve drugs faces sweeping challenge in lawsuit seeking to pull abortion pill from U.S. market - "Just how far the FDA's authority extends into states with abortion bans that conflict with the agency's decisions on mifepristone is a question which will be decided in federal courts in the months ahead, [ASU Center for Public Health Law and Policy's Jennifer] Piatt said."[1] [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 12:12 AM PST - 22 comments