horsawlarway

If we're talking about license plate numbers, it seems fairly reasonable to just have the device download the entire target list.

Longest plates are 8 chars. It seems exceedingly unlikely that the target list is longer than 1,000,000 plates. They all use characters that fit in a single UTF-8 code point. So 8mb initial download, and very small incremental updates.

Likely much more power efficient than sending every plate over the network, and would use considerably less bandwidth over a couple months.

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Is that how they do it? No freaking clue.

But it seems like a very solvable problem, with correctly aligned incentives (ex - it's both cheaper and more private to NOT send the plate over the net, vs sending the list to the device).

Sure, not a jury recommendation in this case. But it absolutely is supported.

The whole resentencing judgement came in part because the original judge stated how much he liked the ai video of the victim.

fair - I've lived in places where juries can recommend sentencing. You're right here.

> The attorney thinks the best way to get the maximum sentence is to make an AI video of the victim asking for leniency in sentencing?

Ab-so-fucking-lutely. This paints the victim in the most positive light. And makes killing them seem even worse.

Again, attorneys understand that a lot of times you're looking for an emotional hook, not straight up "facts". This video made the victim seem moral, empathetic, full of forgiveness... as close to freaking jesus as you can get.

And that other person killed them.

Now go sentence that person.

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Instead imagine the video was of the victim smoking a cigar, laughing, and suggesting that he'd never forgive him and he should be put to death?

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Which video makes the jury more likely to actually come back with a tougher sentence? The one where he's a bastard, or the one where he's a saint?

You assume the intent of the video was to be listened to and accepted as actual input.

My assumption is roughly the opposite - the intent of the video was to prejudice the jury as far as possible against the accused (he killed a person honorable enough and empathetic enough to suggest a more lenient sentence! To the pit with him!)

It wasn't about the content of the video - it was about the emotional response to an AI generated facsimile of the victim.

bookstack

keycloak

immich

jellyfin

several personal sites

home assistant

unsloth studio

several synology tools on a nas (drive/security/backups)

etc...

If it's "just you" your laptop is likely fine. Hosted tools really start to shine when you've got a group of folks using them. Ex - Wife/Parents/Kids/Extended Family.

Simple k3s cluster and the shallow end of kubernetes actually saves you a ton of time and effort (don't go into complex orchestrators or helm charts - just write small deployments in static yaml). You can get to roughly the same spot with just docker/compose if you want, but the capabilities cap out earlier (ex - multi-machine, resilient to any one machine going down, gpu sharding, etc)

Maintenance is basically "sudo pacman -Syyu" on a cron job.

> Markets find equilibrium based on demand

This is decidedly untrue non-fungible item markets (ex - the market where you can only play Sony exclusives on a playstation).

> in markets for non-fungible goods - price formation and demand equilibrium do not rely on a single, continuous market-clearing price. Instead, they rely on discrete matching, asymmetric information, and social coordinates.

Basically - no. Fuck off. Sony is acting in their best interests with asymmetric information (ex - they know how much profit they make of those game sales and you don't, they know how much profit/loss they make from that playstation sale and you don't).

You know how we know? Because absolutely nothing is stopping you from still opting into a model where you don't pay costs up front.

> The problem is assuming everyone wants the hardware costs upfront model.

We have an absolutely smorgasbord of financial services that would LOVE to let you pay over time, or give you a moderate loan, to buy a playstation with low upfront costs... to just list some of the bigger ones: affirm, afterpay, klarna, paypal, zip, bread, upstart, albert, withcherry, etc... there are SO many of these.

By your own argument:

Sony prefers charging a tax on game sales that's high enough to recoup the cost of the hardware discount.

This means playstation owners are getting a discount on hardware, and then paying so much more for each game - to the point Sony prefers this because they get higher revenue than just selling the hardware at cost.

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You are literally advocating for the worse model for yourself.

Jailbreaks don't ruin anything other than a "predatory loan" style arrangement.

Personally, I fail to see the problem.

I think it's a more complicated discussion.

My read is that the US has over-indexed heavily on "intellectual property" and that position is profitable, but an overall net drag on innovation and research.

China is much less indexed on IP, and often outright ignores it. This allows them to be much more competitive in innovation over the long term, but at short term reputational damage.

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From the US side - if you're a company operating in a restrictive, patent encumbered space... it absolutely feels like an unfair field. Those other companies are able to ignore the restrictions you're hemmed in by (steal).

From the China side - if you're a company operating outside of compliance with licensing and IP, you get a reputation for "just stealing" even when your research is novel and impactful.

Of the two - I believe the US is "more incorrect". The current IP laws feel a lot less like encouraging innovation and a lot more like government enabled and funded rent-seeking.

QT base alone is 66mb on arch, not incl deps.

Chrome is ~100mb.

They're right along the same order of magnitude for size. Install size has very little connection to standards/api complexity. It's just a bad argument.

The right discussion (which you're nicely skipping by talking about install size) is "how does the complexity of QT widget selection compare to html?"

And... I find the spaces incredibly similar - this feels decidedly like browsing html components: https://doc.qt.io/qt-6/widget-classes.html

QT gets the perks of being able to remove deprecated items - so I fully expect theirs to be a more minimal set. That's a luxury not afforded to browsers.

So again...

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> What the system gives is exactly a canvas to render stuff on.

Render fucking how? The deliverable wasn't code, it was an html document. That's the defining history of browsers.

Look - even coming from a spot where I mostly agree that the end spot isn't wonderful and the standards are probably too complex, I think this glossed over the "conceptual shift" that has happened for browsers.

Browsers got complicated because they weren't seen as a platform to ship code to... They were seen as document renderers.

There wasn't anything to "compose with" for a meaningful history of browser development. You shipped a document (html) with some optional styling, and the browser handled EVERYTHING.

JS was a very minimal, underpowered, runtime that was decidedly NOT the thing to use for any real composition that resembled backend/desktop coding. The tools of the time for that were flash and activeX and silverlight.

Javascript was just a thing you used if your checkout form needed to be more complex than normal, or you wanted to show off a bit.

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Then Ajax came along in the early 2000s, sites got increasingly complex and interactive during the web 2.0 push, js got progressively more powerful (to the point where the js runtime is functionally not that far off a real OS in complexity and capability) frameworks hits the scene, and people finally had the right tools to actually implement a single page app using web tools.

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So...

1990 to 2005: Browser is solely a document renderer, every new cool thing has to be implemented by the browser.

2005 to 2015: Browser is mostly a document renderer, but you can do cool new interactive things, and you needed to paper over lots of rough patches with js.

2015 to 2025: Browser can ship meaningful applications that run entirely in the client, and the "document" model has faded a bit (although it's definitely NOT gone) while new complexity largely lives in expanded system access and capabilities (ex - usb access, crypto, complex networking, async processing, web-assembly, etc).

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The challenge is that people who want the "document" model still want it all implemented by the renderer, and there's enough historical momentum there that you basically can't undo it without starting from scratch to deliver applications instead of documents.

Further (and this one is entirely on you) the real comparision isn't "unixes" it's a graphical env. So compare the complexity and attitude to win32 dialog apis, QT, etc...

Often they also ship with a huge library of components built in. Because the users of those systems don't really want a canvas they have to render everything on... rendering is hard. Rendering performantly is really hard.

Yes. The intent is not that AM radio be "free" in the abstract. It's that charging for it means it's an optional upgrade.

One which consumers likely won't buy.

They don't care if the sticker price goes up by the cost of the am radio. They care that manufacturers install it, and don't make it optional.

And they don't care because it's like $5 worth of parts (honestly probably less).

> Sure, everyone would prefer to have all the stuff they want for low or zero cost. That’s Santa Claus economics.

This - this again implies you're not actually engaging in the conversation. I have zero interest in "free" things.

I do have interest in their being at least some real negotiation between parties signing a contract.

For pretty much all consumers - there is no negotiation. The contract says what the company wants it to say, and if you don't like it - fuck off. Same is mostly true for small business as well.

And yes - my WHOLE comment above is pointing out that often... they are literally the only provider. Or one of two or three providers that have essentially identical terms. (See - Apple and Google for mobile).

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So circling around again to the point - My stance is there are two functional paths forwards:

1. Break up the offenders into small enough pieces that meaningful competition around service levels, pricing, terms & conditions, and features exists again. When we go back in time - arguably this was the drive that ended the age of "Robber Barons" - laws like Sherman Anti-trust were a direct response to concentration occurring in the early to mid 1800s in railroads and oil.

To directly quote Sherman: "If we will not endure a king as a political power we should not endure a king over the production, transportation, and sale of any of the necessaries of life." Ring familiar when applied to Apple/Google in mobile today? (Be honest....)

2. Nationalize the fuckers. You and I probably disagree quite a bit here - but this is the route I'd argue is more productive long term. If a monopoly is natural (aka - market forces make it hard to avoid) then the people need to own it or regulate the absolute hell out of it. See - utilities.

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But no - continue blaming me for wanting "santa claus" economics instead of actually engaging or participating in the conversation. I'll leave it here. I don't think we're really conversing so much as you're ignoring what I'm saying and focusing on words where your presumed definition matters more than the context in which the discussion is happening.

So no - I don't want Santa Claus. I'd much prefer strong labor unions, a focus on consumer rights, and a political party in the US less interested sucking billionaire dick. Historically speaking - we'll get there, but its going to get ugly first.

Go actually read Kreitner - then consider the standard EULA you're required to accept for all services.

Consider whether his argument is at least a valid description of the issue of "free people transact[ing] business" when one side is literally the ONLY service provider, and the other is a utterly disposable customer.

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Your comment implies you don't actually understand the discussion.

Right, which is why I'm happy to see China continue to innovate in the open, and increasingly wary of the US stance given articles like

https://www.anthropic.com/research/glm-5-3-and-the-spread-of...

It's VERY clear that the US companies are trying to push for regulation to kill open models and open weights. I see this as much more hostile and authoritarian response than what we're seeing come out of China right now.

So is China going to always publish in the open? No clue. But right now they're modeling much better behavior.

Yes, we already discussed the US.

Yes - because "additional regulatory burdens" aren't the answer... breakups are.

Somehow we've settled into a spot where it's acceptable to have incredibly powerful monopoly/duopoly structures in American culture, sometimes with a "third wheel" of a small scattering of options to make it appear as though there's competition. Usually, the terms these companies operate under are substantially "the same" from a consumer point of view (whole related can of worms there - see: "tyranny of contract - starting with Engels and leading to Kreitner")

Want a computer? Choose: Microsoft or Apple.

Want a phone? Choose: Apple or Google.

Want to advertise? Choose: Google.

Want a credit card? Choose: Visa or Mastercard (third wheel: Discover/Amex)

Want a browser? Choose: Google (third wheel: Firefox/Safari/Edge)

Want a grocery store? Choose: Walmart or Kroger.

Want internet? Choose: ATT or Comcast.

Want to watch TV? Choose: Comcast or Disney (third wheel: Fox/Paramount/WB)

Want to stream a show? Choose: Disney or Paramount (third wheel: Amazon/Netflix)

Want to bank? Choose: JPMorgan Chase or Bank of America (lots of third wheels still, but they hold more than the next 6 combined in assets)

Want a political party? Choose: Republican or Democrat.

Want to sell a good online? Choose: Walmart or Amazon.

Want to do home improvements? Choose: Home Depot or Lowes.

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It's not about regulatory burden, its about a clear failure to provide competition by allowing a small number of dominate players to functionally own a market.

They're just competitive enough to shut down any real competition (by undercutting them via scale, cash-on-hand, and monopoly effects) but the impact is short-lived.

And I partly blame our response in 2008 - we appear to have decided that it entirely ok to be "too big to fail" and that's an acceptable state of the country.

And it's definitely "efficient" (in some respects - much like cancer is incredibly efficient at replicating and capturing resources) but I don't think it's particularly healthy for society. A very small number of folks are sucking up more and more wealth via a set of largely entrenched conglomerates. Meanwhile - any feedback mechanism or regulation that might stop that siphoning has been knocked away.

It feels like we had a nice breeze for a bit, but we're headed directly back to the "Robber Baron" age.

No open source weights is clearly the goal here.

These people are religious fanatics, and should be treated as such. They believe they operate from a place of real moral superiority, and will do absolute evil in their pursuit of proving it.

Which is why we're entering that fun stage of capitalism where the winners have won enough that they just buy up any possible competition in the market, and regulators absolutely fail to enforce any sort of anti-trust/anti-monopoly measures because they're just another thing that's been bought up.

Nothing like

- Major bank consolidation

- Major media condolidation

- Major tech consolidation

- Major grocery store consolidation

etc... to really provide wonderful competitive options.

No - the computer is not indispensable. The computer is just harder to replace than the man (in this imagined situation).

Hence - the man is much more dispensable...

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The water in my water bottle is much more dispensable than the toothpaste in my toothpaste tube. But both can be dispensed (in both meanings - distributed or replaced).

I've noted a similar shift, but I think it's a short-sighted path.

My experience (both in and out of management, and as a very high level IC at a mix of companies) is that while the management layers generally didn't understand what was going on in the code - the decent managers tended to have a "gut check" person they trusted to go and ask technical questions, and bounce ideas around with.

This was their "expert" who they trusted to be close enough to ground truth to tell them if a thing will work, how hard it will be, if there are shortcuts, etc... Often times, it wasn't even strictly technical questions that would get answered, it will be things like "how much of this project is technically in my sphere of control, and how much do I need to go align other teams? How many teams? Which teams? Which projects? etc..."

My problem is that AI SUCKS at this job. So yes - we're getting pushed into management roles as ICs... but instead of a decent subject matter expert who still understands ground truth... you get an LLM blabbering on about seams and load-bearing joints, and clickbait style headline summaries, but completely non-nonsensical judgement calls about how to interact with the people who make up the company.

Ultimately, work is also politics - and it's not just "writing code" that matters. It's knowing what code is worth writing, and when you should write it. And an AI will happily tell you that a single change-set in a single repo is "substantially larger then expected" and put a timeline of "two weeks" on the completion (especially if anything Jira related happens to be in context... blegh), and then knock it out in 5 minutes time... While also spouting off about how easily it can add "new feature X" it just needs to get PRs in across 5 different repos, owned by different parts of the org with non-aligned managers.

Yeah... My 7kwh generator is the size of a large wheelbarrow and weighs a good 250 lbs.

Not to mention, loud as all get out at that size.

It also needs a decent amount of maintenance to keep it running (or it needs to run frequently).

Personally... Ev with a swappable battery seems like a much better solution.

The only reason this even sorta makes sense right now is that we're in a really weird transition period where gas is available everywhere and it's still hard to find batteries/chargers.

This isn't a tech problem, it's an infrastructure problem. It should be treated that way.

I generally agree with this.

Personally, I'd also like to see party influence removed from elections. Completely removed at the time of actual election (ex - absolutely not allowed to list party on the ballot) but also reduced at the primary level (ex - no more closed primaries, maybe eliminate partisan primaries entirely).

Politics isn't a team sport with winners and losers, and this attitude (especially concerning given the recent moves by republican leaders to explicitly disenfranchise and withhold support for locations that trend democratic) is utterly reprehensible (which is fairly in theme with their overall moral character).

We're one nation. Politicians serve the populace, regardless of whether those people voted for them or not.

Go after providers. Not models.

Further

> If you believe capabilities will go to "Virtuoso AGI" or beyond, then it's not enough. A smart enough agent can appear to be loyal, transparent, etc. but how would you know? If your bank balance keeps going up 20% YoY, is the agent optimizing your long-term flourishing, or preparing for a rug-pull?

> Now, if you could somehow white-box these LLMs and mechanistically _prove_ that they were acting as your fiduciary, then that would get us somewhere.

This is exactly the same problem we have today with those who are bound by these rules (humans - to be clear).

The idea is not that it's impossible to violate these rules. It's that these rules create a boundary for expectations in the relationship, with legal teeth.

Ex - If I want an LLM that puts together a shopping list for me, with links to buy online... I expect that LLM to be serving my interests. If a provider (either inference or model weights) wants to influence the choices that LLM makes because they make backroom deals with specific store - I'd like that to be illegal.

Same for competition

Ex - If I want an LLM to put together a product that competes with the provider of that LLM (either inference or model weights) and that LLM refuses - I'd like that to be illegal.

The idea is not that they can't possibly do those things. The idea is that we preemptively define relationship expectations, and set hard boundaries around what things we fine/punish.

Misaligned models are a problem everyone wants to solve. Models created by misaligned companies are a god-damn disaster.

I mean - as much as it's the "better" of the two options right now... the modern democratic party is still a center-right party controlled mostly by corporate interests and lobbying money.

They favor keeping the system that is producing rampant inequity stable. With a laissez faire approach to social issues.

As opposed to republicans, who favor socially regressive and oppressive policies, double speak, and who's mantra is mostly "Don't get caught. But if you do get caught - deny, deflect, denounce" rather than anything resembling ethical behavior.

Neither of them are particularly good options for governance. They have no motivations to "learn" anything.

One is a fast moving, malignant cancer - the other a slow moving auto-immune disease. Both kill the host.

We desperately need fresh air.

> I just also want them to listen to me and not the creator of the model.

What you really want is fiduciary duty - A fiduciary is a person or organization that is legally and ethically bound to act in the best interest of another party (think financial advisor, attorney, guardian, trustees, etc...)

And I cannot agree more. I think we should be shooting to enshrine required fiduciary duty into law for LLM providers as quickly as possible.

To recap why:

Legally, fiduciary duty means basically 4 major tenets must hold

1. Duty of loyalty - it must put the interests of the client ahead of their own

2. Duty of care - it must make well-informed, prudent decisions

3. Avoidance of conflicts - it must avoid situations where personal gain conflicts with client obligations

4. Transparency - it must disclose fees, risks, and conflicts as soon as possible

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You can't have a reliable "agent" if those things aren't true, because an agent is (by definition) someone who is working on your behalf, for your goals. If it's not working on your behalf, for your goals... it's not your agent, it's an opportunistic spy (double agent) waiting for the best moment to sell you out.

It's much more difficult to buy the ESP32 as an MCU than it is to buy it as a SBC, with ports for power and I/O already on a PCB (often with through pins, to land on another PCB, like the arduino hats). And I don't mean "it's difficult because you have to solder" - I mean "it's difficult to find many places that sell it".

Ex - go check amazon, they're all the "dev kit" versions of ESP32.

Hell - even Alibaba has an overwhelming majority of the kits in the SBC form, rather than the straight MCU (although they at least exist in that form there, unlike amazon).

Even on digikey... there are like 4 listing for the straight MCU, and hundreds of listings for PCB board versions.

So I think for most consumers purchasing these... functionally they end up buying a form factor that is much closer to SBC than MCU.

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From my perspective... I'm old enough to remember when Arduinos were the hot shit in this space, and now ESP32 is basically the same value prop at 1/10 the price point (or better, if you are actually willing to solder it to the PCB yourself... then you get down to 1/50th the price point).

I'm on the other side of this problem, with a company that went multi repo for bad reasons (political, not technical) and I would give you serious money if you could solve my problems by just forcing me to check out 50gb every now and then...

Instead I deal with a 30+ repo clusterfuck (technically we have 60+ services, but I only have to run half...) that is held together by hopes and prayers, takes literal hours of actual effort to bring everything up to date on master, and has become a fractured hellscape where people are afraid to leave their tightly constrained silos of service combinations.

Long story short... I will take a bad monorepo over bad multirepo any day of the week.

The selling point of graphene is basically that you get the pixel software experience.

It just puts Google in the same sandbox Google puts everyone else.

Typing this on a pixel running graphene.

Yeah, I'm split on this because

1: I think people should be able to replace chips on an RPi as they desire, so I don't love that they're actively preventing this

2: As a buyer, I absolutely want to know if I'm buying an RPi that has had chips replaced

3: A shady seller changing the SKU to mimic a better board after changing chips is just flat out fraud.

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It's the classic "Mattress tag" case - it should be illegal to remove as a seller, and fine as the final customer.

But that's really hard to functionally enforce.