Excellent article; the argument towards the end for allowing distillation for US companies is compelling:
> To that end, here’s an even more interesting question around distillation: why exactly is it bad? After all, what are large language models but the distillation of all of the knowledge on the open Internet, scraped by the frontier labs and distilled into the models that are themselves being distilled? Who is exactly being wronged here?
> In fact, this paradox is the solution. I believe that open weight models are good for innovation (and, per the above, I think that labs on the frontier will be fine), but it’s a problem to be dependent on China. The U.S. should pass a law that (1) makes explicit that collecting data for training models is fair use, and (2) bars terms of service that forbid distillation, for U.S. companies at a minimum. Stopping distillation — which is literally just querying the API — is nearly impossible; the U.S. should go the other way and lean into a new copyright policy that both indemnifies the labs and also guarantees that what they learned fuels further innovation for everyone else.
I noticed emojis in the top-right corner the other day; I thought, “oh, that’s interesting”, and continued browsing – even though Indeed has more jobs, like Marketplace (1) has more for sale, I far prefer Craigslist for being simple and easy-to-navigate.
1: How many people don’t delete Facebook because of it? When I left Facebook for good, losing access to Marketplace felt like a real sacrifice.
It was worse in a rural village here in Alaska, where everything was on Facebook, much to my dismay. But the upside of a small community is that I heard about things anyway via word-of-mouth.
My Kindle Touch, judging by the plastic, is old, on its second battery. I love that the reading experience has not changed at all in the time I’ve had the device. I never thought of it as a bookshelf, but that’s a great way to put it.
In contrast, my iPhone changes with each update, but often I find not for the better – I hated the new control center at first, and while I made it mostly match the old one, the tap targets are smaller than they used to be, on my 4.7” display.
Different context, but I sent a message like that in Signal the other day to a family member with a link to my IP, pointing to `Python -m http.server` running in a directory with a file for them to try (1). Easier than having them open my Samba share.
1: To get an Android app working that has been delisted and requires a 'key' app that you purchase. We did purchase it, but didn't think to make any backups.
RE: 3D printer as a tool, I recommend Teaching Tech's video (1) as a guide to choosing the right 3D printer. His first question is "Will you use your 3D printer as a tool or a hobby?", followed by the priorities that flow from that choice, e.g. pretty looking prints, or accurate parts that fit together.
“Composition must be one of our constant preoccupations, but at the moment of shooting it can stem only from our intuition, for we are out to capture the fugitive moment, and all the interrelationships involved are on the move. In applying the Golden Rule, the only pair of compasses at the photographer's disposal is his own pair of eyes. [...]
If you start cutting or cropping a good photograph, it means death to the geometrically correct interplay of proportions. Besides, it very rarely happens that a photograph which was feebly composed can be saved by reconstruction of its composition under the darkroom's enlarger; the integrity of vision is no longer there. There is a lot of talk about camera angles; but the only valid angles in existence are the angles of the geometry of composition and not the ones fabricated by the photographer who falls flat on his stomach or performs other antics to procure his effects.” (“The Mind’s Eye” p34, 1999 Aperture ed.)
I transfer books by running `python -m http.server` on my phone or computer, then opening my Kindle’s browser to my IP and downloading my .mobi book. It doesn’t take long, and I can do it all over Wi-Fi.
I can mount it via SSHFS for anything more than copying a single book.
I stopped buying anything from Amazon on principal a couple years ago, books included; and anyway, most books I read these days are in the public domain – Project Gutenberg is a treasure trove!
I read up until the following quote, attributed to an unnamed “industry observer” - something aroused my curiosity:
> "In essence, EyeMed is merely an instrument to protect the market share of the Luxottica family of companies, and it provides little to no substantive cost amelioration to consumers, what many would regard as the principal purpose of insurance."
Searching with Kagi, the quote comes from a post on forums.studentdoctor.net by ThazinJayne (1), who prefaces the text “Here is an e-mail I received from a friend”.
An industry observer? More like an unnamed friend of an anonymous forum member.
P.S. I like my Oakleys, both sun- and prescription glasses, but cannot deny they are way overpriced for what they are – a little bit of plastic and metal.
It says the distance from Earth right now is 154,000km, but the other trackers, including NASA, say 30,000km (numbers rounded). The velocity is different as well, 7km/s vs NASA's 4km/s.
More on what astronauts found “objectionable” and “distasteful” with Apollo's system, from the PDF linked in the OP (1):
"In general, the Apollo waste management system worked satisfactorily from an engineering standpoint. From the point of view of crew acceptance, however, the system must be given poor marks. The principal problem with both the urine and fecal collection systems was the fact that these required more manipulation than crewmen were used to in the Earth environment and were, as a consequence, found to be objectionable. The urine receptacle assembly represented an attempt to preclude crew handling of urine specimens but, because urine spills were frequent, the objective of “sanitizing” the process was thwarted.
The fecal collection system presented an even more distasteful set of problems. The collection process required a great deal of skill to preclude escape of feces from the collection bag and consequent soiling of the crew, their clothing, or cabin surfaces. The fecal collection process was, moreover, extremely time consuming because of the level of difficulty involved with use of the system. An Apollo 7 astronaut estimated the time required to correctly accomplish the process at 45 minutes.* Good placement of fecal bags was difficult to attain; this was further complicated by the fact that the flap at the back of the constant wear garment created an opening that was too small for easy placement of the bags.** As was noted earlier, kneading of the bags was required for dispersal of the germicide.
*Entry in the log of Apollo 7 by Astronaut Walter Cunningham.
**The configuration of the constant wear garments on later Apollo missions were modified to correct
this problem."
I laughed at this bit, because I've also tried to debug things only to find it wasn't telling me what was wrong with my code (my own error, perhaps - a forgotten --verbose or -v):
> Turns out macOS's IOHIDManager silently blocks the longer HID++ report format you need to actually write to it. The OS just drops the packets. No error, no explanation, nothing. I found this out after writing a pile of probe code and staring at empty responses for longer than I'd like to admit.
> Victor Cruz Gamez, the leading named plaintiff, has lived in the US for 25 years and has a work permit and protection against deportation. The father of three was nonetheless arrested by ICE in October when agents mixed him up with a different Victor Cruz, and he spent three weeks in detention before he was released. In an interview, he said he wanted to protect others and show that the government was not targeting “criminals and rapists”, as DHS has claimed.
> “They just see us as numbers. They don’t see us as human beings,” he said. (1)
I'm with you! After I lost my gen 1 AirPods a couple years ago, I paid $20 for a pair of Apple's corded EarPods and used them until they failed (1) a few months ago. They had a good mic + music controls, sounded fine, and didn't need a dongle.
Now I'm down to my Shure IEMs (via an Apple lighting-to-3.5mm dongle) and a borrowed pair of old Galaxy buds - wanted to give wireless buds a try, since it's been so long. I don't like them.
1: emitting an earsplitting screech as they did so - the cable must have gone.
My sister just ordered a battery & some hinges for her Framework and they practically overnighted it to us here in Alaska. They included a colorful sheet of stickers, too - fun!
One of the worst places are company "About pages". I've come across new products, some linked here; interested, I click through to the "about us" page, only to find meaningless marketing fluff that tells me zero about the people behind the product. That's a signal to me to close the tab and move on.
For me, Framework is super cool as a brand, both for the quality of their product and the ethos that backs it. When everyone else in the coffee shop has an apple or another brand so widespread that you don't even notice it, the gear is something different. I like that.
"Вот его, нет, не допустили (сама знаешь, почему)))"
My translation:
"But him - no, they didn't let him in (of course you know why :)"
When I went from texting friends in Russian or Ukrainian back to English, I missed right parentheses as a smiley; one or two - hi), hello)) - to me are like a smile, by ))) and )))) there's some laughing or some other joke going on. Native speakers could weigh in; my native tongue is English.
I replaced the battery in my Kindle Touch with one from Aliexpress (1 & 2). It was an easy project; finding a battery with the correct dimensions took more time than soldering. With a new battery, my Kindle Touch is still a great device to read on.
> To that end, here’s an even more interesting question around distillation: why exactly is it bad? After all, what are large language models but the distillation of all of the knowledge on the open Internet, scraped by the frontier labs and distilled into the models that are themselves being distilled? Who is exactly being wronged here?
> In fact, this paradox is the solution. I believe that open weight models are good for innovation (and, per the above, I think that labs on the frontier will be fine), but it’s a problem to be dependent on China. The U.S. should pass a law that (1) makes explicit that collecting data for training models is fair use, and (2) bars terms of service that forbid distillation, for U.S. companies at a minimum. Stopping distillation — which is literally just querying the API — is nearly impossible; the U.S. should go the other way and lean into a new copyright policy that both indemnifies the labs and also guarantees that what they learned fuels further innovation for everyone else.