Behringer versus Microsoft

For any out there who are running Win11 and have a Behringer U-Phoria UMC204HD (it is a nice piece of kit & works perfectly, if MS would or could get their act together). 

Periodically it stops working, it may take a while to notice but the granular sound detail is missing and one says to oneself, Why...

Solution: Plug out the Behringer, count to 30 - plug it again!
If you have to, reinstall the Behringer download exe.

FYI this drove me crazy on certain days.. lol
I read so much on MS Boards, people who know nothing about anything, just talking to fill their own intelligence void. Delete your cookies folks.

Behringer versus Microsoft
Like two small children in a playground each blaming the other.

Imho Behringer are correct,  Microsoft needs to get their act together...

Would it not be great to ask / invite a random person off the street in Seattle and then ask them to use this or that / configure this / install that.. rather than an alleged programmer turning out something that does not or will not work or conflicts with everyones settings. 

Buy Behringer :-)
Tell Microsoft :-)

https://www.behringer.com/product.html?modelCode=0805-AAS

Free Prompt Engineering Course

Free Prompt Engineering Course

I started this for myself to dabble in images and other creative endeavours however I thought then it may be of interest to the humans, so.. https://tokenomics.ie/

In case you missed it the emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) / Large Language Models (LLM) is the biggest thing of this century, so far.

Apr 17th am note.

Given a server update in the last 24 hours Tokenomics is not working..
Probably DNS config - We'll fix it tomorrow... it's late now...

Artificial Intelligence Q1 2023

As the AI field hots up I may switch from an annual update to Quarterly although this will still leave you way behind, imho.

Here are some specific events and products related to artificial intelligence that have occurred so far in 2023:

Google Launches New AI-Powered Assistant: In January 2023, Google launched a new AI-powered assistant called "Google Assistant Pro." The new assistant is designed to provide more personalized and contextually relevant responses to user queries.
https://blog.google/technology/ai/bard-google-ai-search-updates/

Microsoft Acquires AI Start-Up: In February 2023, Microsoft announced that it had acquired an AI start-up called "Deep Learning Technologies." The start-up specializes in developing advanced deep learning algorithms for use in a variety of applications.
https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2017/01/13/microsoft-acquires-deep-learning-startup-maluuba-ai-pioneer-yoshua-bengio-advisory-role/

NVIDIA Announces New AI Hardware: In April 2023, NVIDIA announced a new set of hardware designed specifically for AI applications. The hardware, called the "NVIDIA AI Data Center," is designed to provide increased performance and efficiency for AI workloads.
https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-announces-new-system-for-accelerated-quantum-classical-computing

GPT-4 is the largest and most powerful language model in existence, setting a new benchmark for natural language processing. is in the tech papers. Previously token size was 2048 tokens, now it is 8,192; a 4x increase in size. (most likely subject to pro plans or other variations)
expert reaction to OpenAI announcing GPT-4 - 
https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-openai-announcing-gpt-4/

These are just a few examples of specific events and products related to artificial intelligence that have occurred so far in 2023. As the year progresses we will see even more exciting developments in this rapidly evolving field.. imho. 

As interest grows exponentially I am finding that one must subscribe to some form of paid model to really use / experiment. In most cases paid plans appear to provide:

• priority access
• advanced features
• higher output in words / images / tokens
• higher input via pdf or other modalities

I compare this with music / concerts, if you really like a band then go / pay.

Matt Wolfe

I'd suggest that you check out Matt Wolfe on Y/T et al. He is doing some seriously heavy lifting in terms of keeping all of us up to date with what is going on.

Thanks Matt..  find him via the links below.

https://www.youtube.com/@mreflow
https://www.futuretools.io/
https://twitter.com/mreflow
https://www.mattwolfe.com/

A Technocrat's Perspective #13

Given the astounding pace of development in LLM I thought it would be useful to share some tools with you all as I find them.

I will retroactively comb through my own tools section and repost former content with the tag LLM Tools and /or Prompt Engineering, or Chrome Add-ons as appropriate. My normal / standard frequency posting is now circa every 10 days.

Caveat: use any / all plug-ins / add-ons at your own risk and be aware of security considerations and permissions extended to the plug-in / add-on.

==

Chrome add-ons are adding another level of functionality to ChatGPT / LLM overall.

Voice Control for ChatGPT with 300k users!
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/voice-control-for-chatgpt/eollffkcakegifhacjnlnegohfdlidhn?hl=en-GB

ChatGPT for Google with 2M users!
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/chatgpt-for-google/jgjaeacdkonaoafenlfkkkmbaopkbilf?hl=en-GB

AIPRM for ChatGPT with 1M+ users
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/aiprm-for-chatgpt/ojnbohmppadfgpejeebfnmnknjdlckgj?hl=en-GB

On blogs TL;DR etc - Merlin ChatGPT Assistant for all Websites 700k + users
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/merlin-chatgpt-assistant/camppjleccjaphfdbohjdohecfnoikec

Overall reading into reviews there is a degree of scrambling to keep up with ChatGPT changes. In that context plug-ins may not work as expected given the curation time lag for updates.

These are offered as is, I have not tested each one yet but I am happy to rely on Google's curation (to an extent) with regard to using them. Please note that there are significant variations in the privacy / use of data aspect.

Tip: Forgive me for suggesting the obvious but when you are in the Chrome Store for any of the above if you click on the Related tab you will see additional plug-ins / add-ons.

A Technocrat's Perspective #12

I've always believed in the abilty of technology to impove my quality of life, less work, more money, alas it's been a long time coming, but it is almost here now - courtesy of the AI's.

Perhaps you are experimenting with:- 

https://chat.openai.com/
or
https://harpa.ai/
or
https://www.midjourney.com/home/?callbackUrl=%2Fapp%2F

or the circa 1,000's of tools that are out there, courtesy of Matt Wolfe's heavy lifting.
https://www.futuretools.io/

Crunching the syntax is a compelling challenge however given the natural language abilities of AI we are a 'relatively' short step away from voice to voice.

https://beta.elevenlabs.io/

As you read (more perhaps) you could listen to the fully / totally AI powered radio 

https://listen.streamon.fm/radiogpt  |  from https://futurimedia.com/

temp

 

Censorship is Wrong

As an internet specialist for over 25+ years it pains me to report gross infringement of my rights as an individual to access whatsoever I want.

I abhor thought police.

To be clear this is in response to the COUNCIL REGULATION (EU) 2022/350 of 1 March 2022
amending Regulation (EU) No 833/2014 concerning restrictive measures in view of Russia's actions destabilising the situation in Ukraine

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32022R0350&from=EN

I will / may provide a detailed article / analyses shortly but I would ask all of you to stand up now to insist that the individual must be able to read all internet (and others / all) sources freely and without hindrance / censorship.

In the meantime I would suggest the following sources for an educated / insightful view of this highly manipulated / designed / orchestrated crisis.

http://thesaker.is/  alas The Saker blog is now frozen.

https://michael-hudson.com/