The model provides verbose answers even when I asked for more succinct ones. It still struggles with arithmetic (for example, it incorrectly stated "7739 % 23 = 339 exactly, making 23 a divisor"). When tested with questions in French, the responses were very similar to those of GPT-4.
It is far better in knowledge based questions, I've asked this difficult one (it is not 100% correct but better than other LLMs) :
In Anna Karenina what does it mean: most of us prefer the company of Claras ?
I agree with you, maybe books are not the ideal format for acquiring knowledge.
I read a lot of fiction books, mainly classics for pleasure. And what I found unique is that only in books I have access to the interior monologue of the characters, their thoughts, and on some occasions, direct access to their "stream of consciousness".
I love it, and I discovered that some characters (but in reality it's the authors) have a similar process of thought, and some others do not, and notice and sense things differently ...
Yeah the funny thing is that the result of my realization above, is that I end up reading much more fiction - and appreciating fiction more than nonfiction.
There is a general assumption, I think, that fiction isn’t really worth reading and that serious people only read nonfiction. I don’t think I could disagree more. Really good fiction is entirely its own unique thing.
From the same report, "U.S. Foreign Assistance to the Middle East": Israel has been the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign assistance since World War II, receiving $158 billion. Jordan for example received $26.4 billion from 1951 to 2020.
>> Similarly with lifting sanctions on Iran, which resulted in giving them $10B.
In the case of Iran, it was not a matter of receiving $10 billion in aid, but rather the release of $10 billion of Iranian funds that had been frozen.
> From the same report, "U.S. Foreign Assistance to the Middle East": Israel has been the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign assistance since World War II, receiving $158 billion. Jordan for example received $26.4 billion from 1951 to 2020.
Check again, the majority of the "aid" got to our enemies in MENA (and that excluding non-Arab enemy and semi-enemy countries, which are for some reason not included in MENA).
Look at:
- Figure 2. U.S. Foreign Aid to MENA Countries: FY1946-FY2020
- Figure 3. Israel, Jordan, and Egypt in the FY2024 Assistance Request for MENA
- Table 1. U.S. Bilateral Aid to MENA Countries: FY2021 - FY2024 Request
The majority of this "aid" (~56%) goes to enemies and semi-enemies (and that's even excluding hostile non-Arab countries in the region).
--
>> Similarly with lifting sanctions on Iran, which resulted in giving them $10B.
> In the case of Iran, it was not a matter of receiving $10 billion in aid, but rather the release of $10 billion of Iranian funds that had been frozen.
Did I wrote somewhere that Iran got $10B aid?
What you wrote is factually correct, but the net effect is that Iran got $10B which they didn't had access to before.
> from 1989, both Egypt and Israel became major non-NATO allies of the US.
Just b/c somebody is an ally of the US, doesn't make them automatically an ally of Israel.
Paraphrasing: An ally of my ally is not my ally.
But with the current leadership and State Dept we are not sure that even US is our ally.
--
Türkiye is a member of NATO, with antisemitic leader. Is Türkiye a friendly country? It used to be, but now it's a gray area.
[Trans-]Jordan's royal family is on life support from Israel, but it still openly acts like an enemy.
Egypt is the most obviously an enemy, even though there is "peace" on paper. Instead of asking me, ask an average Egyptian or [Trans-]Jordanian if they see Israel as an enemy.
Just b/c US pays them extortion or "protection" fees, doesn't make them any less of an enemy. It only delays the coming inevitable military conflict with them.
--
We are not that far from NATO planes bombing Tel Aviv and carrying out SEAD operations[1].
If in the past it was a Sci Fi scenario, nowadays it becomes much more plausible.
> We are not that far from NATO planes bombing Tel Aviv and carrying out SEAD operations
I think you might be perceiving things as more threatening than is warranted. Lebanon and Egypt are complicated neighbours and may not quite be friends. NATO isn’t going to bomb Tel Aviv.
The truth is, US giving "aid", imposing or lifting sanctions exactly to protect their interests, and to increase their leverage, not because they care about other countries in question.
For decades our country tries to get rid of this "aid", but it's virtually impossible.
No, we don't need it. This "aid" is a net loss for us.
It’s the reason US State Dept treats us like Puerto Rico, without giving us any of the perks of Puerto Rico's status, like tax exemption and unrestricted access to the US mainland.
Netanyahu tried to get rid of American military "aid" in the past, but he failed to do so.
Aid must be spent to purchase arms from American suppliers at greatly inflated prices.
It also creates perverse incentives that ultimately weakens, if not cripples, our military.
Israel without US backing seems a perilous place for Israel to go, and if accepting the aid keeps the alliance alive, surely that’s in Israel’s interest?
Thanks for the explanations - I haven’t come across these viewpoints before.
I've also updated my M1 Pro to macOS 14.4 and use Java (versions 21 and 17) daily with IntelliJ IDEA without encountering any issues so far even when using debuggers and profilers. Not sure how to explain it !
Same here regarding Insomnia: all my requests have disappeared. I was searching for an alternative, and this is a godsend :) somehow I missed it when searching for alternatives.
I find it difficult locate the core search features ... please correct me if I'm mistaken, but it appears that the search feature is a wrapper built on top of Qdrant ?
I think "wrapper" is a bit of a reductive term, but we do use Qdrant for indexing and search. There are a lot features we implement client-side though like the ingestion-microservice, relevancy weighting, hybrid with cross-encoder, date-recency biasing, etc.
There's nothing arbitrary about it and both being located in North Africa means nothing. Tunisia has somewhat strict personal data protection laws and Algeria doesn't. That's the difference.
I know both countries, and in Algeria the Law No. 18-07, effective since August 10, 2023, establishes personal data protection requirements with severe penalties. The text is somewhat more strict than Tunisia.
In Anna Karenina what does it mean: most of us prefer the company of Claras ?