7 ms·

Interesting that Gemini said it was infeasible. It should be aware that using a Pico W as a transparent ethernet bridge has been done several times over in open

by polpo 3mo ago

Interesting that Gemini said it was infeasible. It should be aware that using a Pico W as a transparent ethernet bridge has been done several times over in open source projects, for example on BlueSCSI (emulating a Daynaport SCSI-Ethernet adapter) and PicoMEM and my own PicoGUS project (emulating an NE2000 Ethernet adapter).

byb 3mo ago
Exactly, bit banging an 8-bit bus isn't that different from pushing the data out of the USB port. It would be great to try an LLM trained on pre-1900 documents and ask it if powered flight is possible. Great work on PicoGUS.
- tonyhart7 3mo ago
  does the LLM speak old english ???
  - wongarsu 3mo ago
    English around 1800-1900 reads almost like modern English. At least if the author didn't write in an overly pretentious style, which was more common back then
    - tonyhart7 3mo ago
      I don't think people speak old english in 1800s
- dofm 3mo ago
  You can probably try this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46590280 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46590280
alexjurkiewicz 3mo ago
It was Gemini Flash, probably an even faster variant optimised for immediate response on search pages.
rvz 3mo ago
> Interesting that Gemini said it was infeasible. Unless there is a hardware limitation or the hardware does not support it, anything in software is possible. Gemini and all these other LLMs are designed to convince you that they have "awareness" which they do not have any of the sort. They are neither sentient nor do they have consciousness
- dTal 3mo ago
  Bad take. Some things are feasible and some things are not, "anything is possible" is a useless framework. Example: go convert two smartphones to communicate p2p over their 4g radios - it's all software! LLM "awareness" is similarly irrelevant. They process information usefully, in a way grounded in reality, and that's that.
  - rvz 3mo ago
    You seem to be all over the place, most of it by not reading the parent's comment. So let's break it all down. > Bad take. Some things are feasible and some things are not, "anything is possible" is a useless framework. It would help if you quoted the entire comment rather than removing the context and further giving a very bad example afterwards: > Example: go convert two smartphones to communicate p2p over their 4g radios - it's all software! Nice try. That is a hardware limitation in the 4G radio which is designed to connect to an operator mast. Even if you wanted to do it in software, the hardware does not support that P2P use-case which is what I already said. > LLM "awareness" is similarly irrelevant. Exactly. There is no such thing as awareness in LLMs. The parent comment I replied to believed that an element of awareness had to be present to give an answer because this was done "several times over" in open source projects. Which that is inaccurate in the context of LLM research. >> "It should be aware that using a Pico W as a transparent ethernet bridge has been done several times over in open source projects..." > They process information usefully, in a way grounded in reality, and that's that. Useful to those who know when it is either mostly correct or outright wrong. Clearly in this example, Gemini doesn't even know if its own answers are grounded in reality and consequently people using them are unable to determine if the results they bring are true or not and there are countless examples of that. So you know what you just said is not true.
tehlike 3mo ago
It's often good to approach what llm said as a guidance, and not as ground truth. You can ask follow up questions or point to potential feasibility and it will change its answer.
- bookofjoe 3mo ago
  Yes, but. I asked Perplexity Pro the same fact question (sports) three days in a row after correcting its error the first day and having the correction acknowledged with a promise to get it right in the future. Same error on second day, same promise. Third day: correct. Perhaps it needs to be in the "Slow" classroom....
  - SecretDreams 3mo ago
    Perplexity still exists? I just got major Dotcom vibes
  - rvz 3mo ago
    It is "grounded in reality" and changes its answer like the weather.
    - nekusar 3mo ago
      No, Claude, etm are for "Entertainment purposes only", as listed in their TOS. You know, like the same for horoscopes and psychics.
  - functionmouse 3mo ago
    perhaps we should stop personifying organized dirt
  - oarsinsync 3mo ago
    I've never used Perplexity Pro, but I would expect the exact same outcome from Claude, as I don't have cross-session memory enabled. If you do have cross-session memory enabled, I agree this is not glowing performance. If you don't, then I think it's working exactly as intended.
acimen101 3mo ago
[dead]
vlovich123 3mo ago
I just did this test with Gemini Flash-Lite 3.1: > Can you use a raspberry pi pico W as a USB WiFi adapter > Yes, it is possible to use a Raspberry Pi Pico W as a USB Wi-Fi adapter, but it is a project that requires custom firmware and a clear understanding of your goals. Then goes off and lists the things you’ll need which at a cursory glance seems like good starting points.
dsign 3mo ago
My experience with questions to LLM is that they mimic reddit a lot: ask them an apparently simple thing that is not possible, and they will bend backwards to tell you it's possible and give you tons of convoluted possible solutions. Ask them a thing that is possible but complicated, and they will be overly dismissive. The good thing however is that between those two banks there's a wide river of utility...more often than not they'll at least mention things I haven't considered before.
- hero4hire 3mo ago
  shallow immediate confident authoritative answers; upon inspection falls apart immediately. sometimes can be beaten by repeat questioning into wisdom. by accident, beauty witnessing unfathomable NPC stupidity, but also invokes a hidden genius operating as though designed to troll first ya, that is my experience as well
- overfeed 3mo ago
  I cannot fathom how people fall into the trap of thinking that LLMs have a consistent world view on any of the users bugbears (what would be an opinion in a human). CoT is a work-around and doesn't persist across sessions. "You are absolutely correct" and "I should not have deleted your production DB" prove the anthropomorphic facade only a facade.

by polpo 3mo ago

byb 3mo ago

Exactly, bit banging an 8-bit bus isn't that different from pushing the data out of the USB port. It would be great to try an LLM trained on pre-1900 documents and ask it if powered flight is possible. Great work on PicoGUS.

tonyhart7 3mo ago
does the LLM speak old english ???
- wongarsu 3mo ago
  English around 1800-1900 reads almost like modern English. At least if the author didn't write in an overly pretentious style, which was more common back then
  - tonyhart7 3mo ago
    I don't think people speak old english in 1800s
dofm 3mo ago
You can probably try this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46590280 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46590280

alexjurkiewicz 3mo ago

It was Gemini Flash, probably an even faster variant optimised for immediate response on search pages.

rvz 3mo ago

> Interesting that Gemini said it was infeasible. Unless there is a hardware limitation or the hardware does not support it, anything in software is possible. Gemini and all these other LLMs are designed to convince you that they have "awareness" which they do not have any of the sort. They are neither sentient nor do they have consciousness

dTal 3mo ago
Bad take. Some things are feasible and some things are not, "anything is possible" is a useless framework. Example: go convert two smartphones to communicate p2p over their 4g radios - it's all software! LLM "awareness" is similarly irrelevant. They process information usefully, in a way grounded in reality, and that's that.
- rvz 3mo ago
  You seem to be all over the place, most of it by not reading the parent's comment. So let's break it all down. > Bad take. Some things are feasible and some things are not, "anything is possible" is a useless framework. It would help if you quoted the entire comment rather than removing the context and further giving a very bad example afterwards: > Example: go convert two smartphones to communicate p2p over their 4g radios - it's all software! Nice try. That is a hardware limitation in the 4G radio which is designed to connect to an operator mast. Even if you wanted to do it in software, the hardware does not support that P2P use-case which is what I already said. > LLM "awareness" is similarly irrelevant. Exactly. There is no such thing as awareness in LLMs. The parent comment I replied to believed that an element of awareness had to be present to give an answer because this was done "several times over" in open source projects. Which that is inaccurate in the context of LLM research. >> "It should be aware that using a Pico W as a transparent ethernet bridge has been done several times over in open source projects..." > They process information usefully, in a way grounded in reality, and that's that. Useful to those who know when it is either mostly correct or outright wrong. Clearly in this example, Gemini doesn't even know if its own answers are grounded in reality and consequently people using them are unable to determine if the results they bring are true or not and there are countless examples of that. So you know what you just said is not true.

tehlike 3mo ago

It's often good to approach what llm said as a guidance, and not as ground truth. You can ask follow up questions or point to potential feasibility and it will change its answer.

bookofjoe 3mo ago
Yes, but. I asked Perplexity Pro the same fact question (sports) three days in a row after correcting its error the first day and having the correction acknowledged with a promise to get it right in the future. Same error on second day, same promise. Third day: correct. Perhaps it needs to be in the "Slow" classroom....
- SecretDreams 3mo ago
  Perplexity still exists? I just got major Dotcom vibes
- rvz 3mo ago
  It is "grounded in reality" and changes its answer like the weather.
  - nekusar 3mo ago
    No, Claude, etm are for "Entertainment purposes only", as listed in their TOS. You know, like the same for horoscopes and psychics.
- functionmouse 3mo ago
  perhaps we should stop personifying organized dirt
- oarsinsync 3mo ago
  I've never used Perplexity Pro, but I would expect the exact same outcome from Claude, as I don't have cross-session memory enabled. If you do have cross-session memory enabled, I agree this is not glowing performance. If you don't, then I think it's working exactly as intended.

acimen101 3mo ago

[dead]

vlovich123 3mo ago

I just did this test with Gemini Flash-Lite 3.1: > Can you use a raspberry pi pico W as a USB WiFi adapter > Yes, it is possible to use a Raspberry Pi Pico W as a USB Wi-Fi adapter, but it is a project that requires custom firmware and a clear understanding of your goals. Then goes off and lists the things you’ll need which at a cursory glance seems like good starting points.

dsign 3mo ago

My experience with questions to LLM is that they mimic reddit a lot: ask them an apparently simple thing that is not possible, and they will bend backwards to tell you it's possible and give you tons of convoluted possible solutions. Ask them a thing that is possible but complicated, and they will be overly dismissive. The good thing however is that between those two banks there's a wide river of utility...more often than not they'll at least mention things I haven't considered before.

hero4hire 3mo ago
shallow immediate confident authoritative answers; upon inspection falls apart immediately. sometimes can be beaten by repeat questioning into wisdom. by accident, beauty witnessing unfathomable NPC stupidity, but also invokes a hidden genius operating as though designed to troll first ya, that is my experience as well
overfeed 3mo ago
I cannot fathom how people fall into the trap of thinking that LLMs have a consistent world view on any of the users bugbears (what would be an opinion in a human). CoT is a work-around and doesn't persist across sessions. "You are absolutely correct" and "I should not have deleted your production DB" prove the anthropomorphic facade only a facade.