nudge

@Mel81x, what are your thoughts on GPT-3? I spent a good chunk of my weekend exploring the available samples of its capabilities, and must say I find it very impressive for what it is... The bloody thing can write workable code, do machine translation, answer questions, one-shot learn novel words, write passable poetry, folk tales, generate news articles and pretty much anything else, in a much, much better, more human-like quality than its predecessor - which is of course not surprising, given the vast amount on data it was trained on (half a trillion words) and the number of parameters used that's even hard to comprehend (175 billion!!!), but nevertheless, the results are mind blowing; especially its ability to meta-learn, generalise to other tasks with barely any or none finetuning and solve tasks it has never encountered. One area where it impresses me in particular is the AI Dungeon "Dragon" model upgrade; the level of coherence in the world, story and dynamic characters generated by the GPT-3 are nothing short of amazing... Also this is some next level Westworld inspired shite: I'm getting serious Dolores vibes here... Have you ever seen anything so full of splendor?

No worries, I have just added it into my calendar so that such a fiasco can never happen again!

Happy birthday, Phil!

@Carnivore Chris UK has reinstated the 14 day quarantine for travellers returning from Spain. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-53540691

Sounds good! If you plan taking quite a few trips during your time there, consider getting the Berner Oberland Regional Pass, as transportation is expensive and it will save you a lot of money!

Look at Grindelwald or Lauterbrunnen as one of the options, any other towns/villages in the Jungfrauregion are similarly great as well, but smaller with less options. You can quite easily move between them though without spending a fortune on transportation. If you want more city experience, I'd go to Lucerne if I were you.

How long will you stay and what activities are you interested in?

Bali to open up for international tourists from mid September!

I'm sure there are people out there with little to no formal qualifications who are still doing a stellar job; I also knew someone who got hired in Vietnam without it, but took the job seriously and got certified later on, not because the school required it, but because he wanted to improve as a teacher and give more to his students. So even without formal qualifications, one's attitude can make a huge difference. As you said though, the problem is that the majority of the teflers are only looking for means to finance their prolonged holiday or travels, not realising (or rather not caring) that they are doing so at the expense of the kids and quality of their education, especially in countries where education is the absolute key to development and improving the living standards.

Well, that's how it should be, but unfortunately, that's not always the case. Pretty much all over Southeast Asia, many private schools with good reputation, international schools and language centers only require a bachelor's degree (NOT necessarily in teaching - can be completely unrelated, which is bloody ridiculous) and a native speaker status (or proof of fluency if you're a non-native), some ask for TEFL/TESOL/CELTA in addition to that. Sadly, actual teaching qualifications, experience and relevant educational background are seen as a plus (and a bargaining chip for better salary), but not as a non-negotiable requirement. There are obviously some exceptions, but the massive shortage of foreign teachers means that even proper schools are often forced to fill their positions with people who don't necessarily have appropriate qualifications.

Sadly, there have been quite a few similar cases in numerous countries...

I can finally go back to watching the old seasons! Every weekend is F1 weekend

Now official! Nürburgring in October, could get very cold and rainy! Love all new additions...

@Mel81x @IgnisExcubitor @Asura @Stan - has anyone read anything by Ashwin Sanghi? Got recommended his latest book, The Vault of Vishnu, today.

Kruse as #10, with Lücke and Selke upfront. Schmid and Osako as backup for Kruse, Sargent for Selke if the latter underperforms again, Woltemade as a young talent. Quite tasty... Don't know where to put Bittencourt though.

I was losing around 700-800 each month when the EUR-USD rate tumbled down in 2016-2017

Nah, they keep the good stuff for themselves and sell the counterfeit crap for cheapskate westerners on wish

This one is also nice as the Chinese are partnering with ESA, CNES (French National Center for Space Studies), CONAE (Argentine National Space Activities Commission) and FFG (Austrian Research Promotion Agency) on this mission in various aspects. ESA is providing telemetry and communications support, CNES helped build the laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy instrument on the rover, FFG similarly assisted with the orbiter's magnetometer, CONAE operates the deep space tracking station in Argentina for the mission. So both a competion and a collaboration.

Good stuff; the more "competition" in space, the better. February next year with all the orbital insertions and landings will surely be very interesting...

Klaassen stays!

I wanted to, but I can't get past that moustache and inevitable throwback to Borat

Nürburgring

Also great music. Too much crime and violence for my liking though.

Yeah that IS weird as fuck if true