Perhaps code licensing is going to become more similar to music.
e.g. Somebody wrote a library, and then you had an LLM implement it in a new language.
You didn't come up with the idea for whatever the library does, and you didn't "perform" the new implementation. You're neither writer nor performer, just the person who requested a new performance. You're basically a club owner who hired a band to cover some tunes. There's a lot involved in running a club, just like there's a fair bit involved in operating a LLM, but none of that gives you rights over the "composition". If you want to make money off of that performance, you need to pay the writer and/or satisfy whatever terms and conditions they've made the library available under.
IANAL, so I don't even know what species of worms are inside this can I've opened up. It seems sensible, to me, that running somebody else's work through a LLM shouldn't give you something that you can then claim complete control over.
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Edit: For the sake of this argument, let's pretend we're somewhere with sensible music copyright laws, and not the weird piano-roll derived lunacy that currently exists in the U.S..
I find the music example very illuminating, thanks!
Looking into US Copyright for songs there are two different kinds:
- one for the composition, the musical idea, music, lyrics.
-one for the recording, the music taking shape in a format that someone can listen to
I don't think this is how software licenses work, as they cover the code itself, rather than the ideas (the specific recording rather than the composition, in the music example), but it's an interesting way to frame why using LLM this way is, if not illegal, at least unethical.
Sans contract? Probably like if I take a photo of you holding a copy of a recent book. I own copy right of the photo. The author still has copyright of the book.
The ceremony, pomp and reverence we pay to soldiers and the fallen are all aimed at making sure the young remain willing to do an ugly job at affordable prices. For every poem like this there is a parade, monument, wreath-laying ceremony, or the modern equivalent of young girls handing white feathers to young boys.
It seems ungrateful to view it this way. We owe a real debt to the soldiers who died for the world we live in. It seems like we should owe them respect. However, we need to recognize that this kind of respect, while indeed owed, is also sometimes abused by politicians to field armies at affordable prices in the service of their own greed and vanity.
If, "War is the continuation of politics by other means", then we must demand better policy from our politicians than what we're seeing today.
War is the poor dying for the rich. The only way to pay respect to those who have died at the behest of the rich is to explicitly recognize who sent them, why they were sent, and to do everything we can to prevent it happening again.
>sometimes abused by politicians to field armies at affordable prices in the service of their own greed and vanity.
After Khamenei death Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement that Russia is "against killing of the leaders of sovereign countries". Somehow they didn't mention nor regular citizens nor rank-and-file soldiers of sovereign countries.
In the Spanish series "El Cid" there is a nice depiction of how a battle and the whole war immediately ends once the king of one side is killed in that battle. Everybody just went back to their regular business.
A translation of saying in Russian, not sure whether it exists in English - "One's heroism is always a result of incompetency and idiotism of somebody else."
> After Khamenei death Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement that Russia is "against killing of the leaders of sovereign countries". Somehow they didn't mention nor regular citizens nor rank-and-file soldiers of sovereign countries.
Rich, coming from the state that sponsored more than a dozen assassination attempts on Zelenskyy. But russians get over this hypocrisy by not recognizing a country as sovereign, so it's fair game.
> We owe a real debt to the soldiers who died for the world we live in.
Why? It's a job. Chosen voluntarily (usually), with known risks. Never mind the propaganda part that they are dying for a "world we live in". How a soldier dying for some war with dubious morality is owed any "debt" is beyond me.
I submit that we owe others who died doing some kind of public good much more debt than some dude who was duped into sacrificing his life to gun down others for some made-up reason. It's really hard to find any soldier who died for a good cause for most of the past century actually.
"Voluntarily". I guess that word fits if being a cog in the capitalist machine is voluntary. Lots of US soldiers are poor kids with no prospects, the USA offers subsidized education and healthcare, but only after you put your body on the line to be shot at because the child-rapist-in-chief and a Fox News alcoholic wants to please their corrupt Israeli daddy...
Amongst Netanyahu's corruption charges is that he and his wife used taxpayer money to rent a celebrity chef. Imagine expanding a genocide to WW3 because you wanted to escape accountability for stealing public money to pay for some overpriced dinner...
"I inadvertently ended up with a paraphrased version of Shambaugh’s words rather than his actual words,” Edwards continued. He emphasized that the “text of the article was human-written by us, and this incident was isolated and is not representative of Ars‘ editorial standards."
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A reporter whose bailiwick is AI should have known that he needed to check any quotes an LLM spat out. The editorial staff should have been checking too, and this absolutely is representative of their standards if they weren't.
It would probably be worth checking to see if any other articles or employees have similarly disappeared.
There was such a thing, in newspapers up until 2000. Then, as profits nosedived, these sorts of things largely disappeared.
Purely online entities have no way to pay for real editorial staff.
News has no money, compared to news of old. It's part of the reason 99% of modern news is just reporting other people's tweets or whatever.
I can't imagine many news companies having much money for court battles (to force disclosure of documents, or force declassification, or fighting to protect sources). Or spending months or years investigating a story.
> There was such a thing, in newspapers up until 2000. Then, as profits nosedived, these sorts of things largely disappeared.
In a lot of ways you're right, but our public radio station (cpr.org) has the largest newsroom in the state, and that newsroom makes up over a third of our staff. So yeah "news companies" don't have news rooms but that's because their business isn't news. It's funneling user data to their parent companies and getting people to click ads.
However, thanks to "listeners [and viewers, and surfers] like you" public media is still working its ass off to make a difference despite being cut lose from the government. It won't work unless you switch your perspective to local news (where most of the real information is anyway) and unless you donate.
Apologies for turning a comment into a mini fund-drive :)
Agreed. Modern news is beyond lazy, and is not journalism by any means. Too many talking heads do nothing but sit behind a screen watching others for what to say next.
Granted, a few of the remaining newspapers I'm aware of run business awards (Best restaurant, etc), and the way to win is via wining and dining them, even though the paper claims it's based on people's votes.
That style of thinking - of entitlement - probably brought the lack of interest in both cable news and traditional web/paper outlets - as the younger generations started to see through it more.
I think you missed the point of the parent comment.
The money (from advertising) that used to go to news now goes elsewhere (Google and Meta).
It’s left very little in terms of resources for staff.
Think about what the quality of commercial software would be like if there wasn’t enough money for QA and testers and top tier devs capped out at $180k with starting roles at 30k and 40k.
That’s the news industry right now. Poorer quality product.
I can’t talk for the US but here in Sweden most news media have fewer journalists today. Is that not the case in your country or in what way is it a mirage?
Maybe it's different in Sweden, but when I read old American newspapers, from a hundred years ago, 90% of it is absurd slop that people would laugh out loud at today.
A few of the remaining newspapers I'm aware of run business awards (Best restaurant, etc), and the way to win is via wining and dining them, even though the paper claims it's based on people's votes.
Is that how it works where you are? Because over here, the best way to win an award from a publication is to advertise in that publication. Advertise enough, and you'll also become their go-to when they need a quote about anything vaguely related to your restaurant or other business, and once a year or so they'll print some hagiographic article about the amazing things going on under your leadership.
Wikipedia: "Journalism is the production and distribution of reports on the interaction of events, facts, ideas, and people that are the "news of the day""
Britannica: "Journalism, the collection, preparation, and distribution of news and related commentary"
Stories from British Newspaper Archive[1]:
- June 1950 Cat in Tree in Sheffield - Sheffield Daily Telegraph
- July 1939 A cat which has sought refuge the top of a tree on Somerlayton Road, Stockwell, defied all attempts to get it down. - Sunderland Daily Echo.
- June 1956 A cat was rescued from a 60ft. oak tree by Southgate firemen at Abbotshall Avenue, Southgate. - Wood Green weekly herald.
- Ocober 1959 CAT UP TREE I was sorry to hear that your cat had been lost Frances, I hope he is none the worse for his experience up the tree, now. - Penrith Observer.
- July 1956 Cat in tree rescued. Worthing firemen rescued a cat - Worthing Herald.
- July 1955 RESCUED CAT IN TREE - Percy Kemp climbed 40ft up a tree to rescue a cat - Bradford Observer.
- November 1956 An emergency tender from the Eastbourne Fire Brigade went to the rescue of cat in a tree in Brassey-avenue, Hampden Park - Eastbourne Gazette.
- August 1953 Clifford Morton (25) climbed 120ft up a swaying fir tree to rescue a cat - Coventry Evening Telegraph.
- March 1950 Persian cat belonging to Mrs M. ___ ... heard meow-ing from a 40ft. tree in field nearby - Dundee Evening Telegraph.
- February 1950 CAT UP TREE A telescopic ladder. belonging to Birkenhead Fire Service was rushed three miles to Arrowe Park Road. Woodchurch. this afternoon. to rescue a cat which had climbed over 40 feet up a tree - Liverpool Echo
- October 1924 SHOTS AT CAT IN TREE .. It was stated that the boys saw a black Persian 'cat up a tree on the farm, and they fired at it - Daily Mirror
- July 1939 CAT IN TREE FOR TWO DAYS - Harlepool Northern Daily Mail
- August 1962 CAT IN TREE RESCUED BY FIREMEN - Lincolnshire Free PRess
- May 1956 The story of a stray cat, Mr. Budd and a 45ft, fir tree, was told at Wednesday's annual meeting of the Torquay and South-East Devon branch of the R.S.P.C.A. - Torquay Times
- etc. etc.
When was this imaginary wonderful time you're implying when newspapers were only speaking truth to power with mighty investigative reporting, and not literally a journal of things people did and said in a local area (or on a certain topic)?
It's the editor's responsibility to set processes and standards to try to make sure this doesn't happen. If the rules exist but the reporter breaks them, then it's the reporter's fault and they get fired. As happened -- that's part of the process of maintaining standards. It's not the editor's fault. What exactly do you expect them to do? They can't fact-check and verify every single fact and quote in every article. They're not superhuman.
That's not how any management position works, which is what an editor is.
You're responsible for verifying that the output looks sane and that processes are good and appear to be followed.
You can't double-check every tiny detail. That's absurd. At some point, you simply have to rely on the word of your employees, and fire them and do damage control if it turns out they're not following procedures but claiming they are.
You seem to be asking for an impossible level of quality control, with the budgets available.
When more and more typos started to creep into news articles of our state-owned, national news feed and people started to notice, the explanation we got was basically that the frequency of news articles is so supposedly so high that it is supposedly impossible to catch them. If news orgs can't even do as much proof reading that they catch typos and grammatical errors, I highly doubt anyone is still doing editorial checking...
It's the editors responsibility to make sure fabricated quotes don't get published, but it's also the journalist's responsibility to not paste fabricated quotes from a chatbot into their articles. The responsibility of the former doesn't negate the responsibility of the latter.
I can't just submit shit work all day long then blame QA when some of it goes through. That's like a burglar saying it's the cops fault that people got burglared.
In what world should the editor double check third-party quotes in an article submitted by a journalist? Do you think the Washington Post phones the White House every time an article quotes the president (ok, bad example, pretend I asked this question about a serious paper in a healthy democracy)?
There's also such a thing as journalistic confidentiality -- the editor may not even know the identity of the quoted source. That doesn't apply to this specific case but your claim was generic, and I think there's a serious misapprehension here if you think it's the editor's job to verify citations in journalists' writings.
"I inadvertently ended up with a paraphrased version of Shambaugh’s words rather than his actual words,” Edwards continued. He emphasized that the “text of the article was human-written by us"
The breakdown probably varies according to the time of day. In the middle of the night (for North America) I'd expect to see a higher proportion of international users, although I'd also expect the numbers aren't quite so high since HN is U.S.-centric and predominantly English only.
The number of Canadians is relatively easy to estimate though, since the geographic distribution is similar and the majority do speak English. I'd expect a roughly 8.5:1 ratio of Americans to Canadians based solely on population.
"I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics."
--Richard Feynman
You're far from alone. Quantum physics is tricky because it frequently doesn't agree with our physical intuition. Humans are used to dealing with macroscopic objects. They surround us for our whole lives. Matter behaves in surprisingly different ways at the level of single quanta. Seemingly impossible things flop out of the math and then clever experiments show that reality is consistent with the math, but we struggle to reach the point where that reality feels correct. When we try to translate the math into human language, we often wind up overloading words and concepts in a way that can be misleading or even false.
Perhaps we just haven't reached the point where things are sufficiently well explained and simplified, but it may be be that quantum physics will always seem strange and counter-intuitive.
> Quantum physics is tricky because it frequently doesn't agree with our physical intuition.
Quantum physics tricky for two separate reasons.
(i) The mathematical theory (Schrödinger equation, wave function, operators, probabilities) is solid and well-defined, but may feel unintuitive, as you say.
(ii) But quantum mechanics is also an incomplete theory. Even if you learn to be at peace with the unintuitive aspects of the mathematical theory, the measurement problem remains an unsolved problem.
"The Schrödinger equation describes quantum systems but does not describe their measurement."
"Quantum theory offers no dynamical description of the "collapse" of the wave function"
Feynman, a famous man from an older era who tried to inspire, remind, and spur people...
> macroscopic objects
It's not about scale at all though. It's just that small systems tend to be observed with this other, specific property that we associate with causing "quantum" like effects. Not only do those effects happen at mesoscopic scale but aside from gravity, quantum theory already can be and is used to describe things on large scales too. Classical computers and desks are still "quantum" systems. Recently theory and experiments have developed to connect with gravity in many ways. I'm more confused when people say something is mysterious. They're usually referring to apparent randomness but I think even that is explained already with partitions or even just wave math (complementarity).
The most powerful advertisement is a recommendation from a friend.
Has a friend ever brought some product up, completely out of the blue, and had you ready to buy it almost immediately? The biggest challenge traditional ads have is breaking down your defences. For friends, they're down by default. If someone is a friend, an ad doesn't have to be subtle or context sensitive, although it does help. Random suggestions from friends work.
A lot of people have friend-zoned AI and will be especially vulnerable to this novel form of manipulation. If you're the sort who treats AI as a friend, even a little bit, even subconsciously, change that. You're setting yourself up for a serious mind-job.
Ah the science of influence : the masterpiece on influence is this book [0]. Came my way by a mention in one of Charlie Munger’s speeches. All the things you mention here and more are there in case you want to broaden your understanding
In the first gulf war, Bush Sr. refused to occupy the country. He viewed it as too difficult and too expensive. In the second gulf war, Bush Jr. declared victory from the deck of an aircraft carrier, occupied the country, hunted and executed its leader, and then opened the U.S. treasury to deal with the aftermath. Thousands of Americans died. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi's died. The occupation was long and difficult, but its end was still premature and left a power vacuum that ISIS raged into, causing even more destruction. Perhaps Iraqi's can say they're better off today than under Hussein, but a terrible cost was paid. Most of the blood was Iraqi, but most of the treasure was American.
The financial drain on the U.S. was extreme enough to expose the world's preeminent superpower as being unable to bring the occupation of a somewhat backwards and minor dictatorship to a successful conclusion. Iraq is not a big country, in either population or area, but it was still too much for the U.S. to control, even with willing allies. This failure made the world realize there were severe limits to what the U.S. can do. Sure, it might defeat the military of a middle or even major power, but occupy and control it? Fat chance!
In the days ahead, the U.S. military is going to bomb anything that moves and looks like it might shoot back, as well as a lot of infrastructure and probably a decent number of civilian targets by mistake (or design). Trump has framed this invasion as being directed towards eliminating Iran's nuclear program, so expect a lot of facilities in close proximity to civilians (and many of those civilians) to be vaporized.
If Trump is listening to his generals even slightly, he will not try to occupy the country. He'll declare victory and move on to whatever outrage is next to maintain his "Flood the zone" strategy and keep the Epstein heat from finally catching up with him. If that's all he does, this will be another war like Bush Sr.'s. Expensive, but not ruinously so. U.S. deaths will be in the hundreds and not the thousands. Iran will most likely fall into the hands of another mullah or descend into chaos, becoming a long-term security quagmire that will probably continue to bleed the U.S. for decades to come. Even if democracy does take root in Iran, it likely won't be a democracy that's friendly to the U.S..
If Trump isn't listening to his generals (who reportedly advised against the invasion to begin with), he might try to occupy Iran. Iran has double the population and four times the land area as Iraq. Unlike Bush Jr., Trump has not even tried to stitch together a coalition to share the costs. It's unlikely that many countries would be dumb enough to sign on now. There's no NATO article 5 pretext to drag in other NATO countries. There isn't even a falsified pretext like WMD's to quiet the howling in the UN. Israel isn't the kind of help the U.S. needs because the U.S. pays most of Israel's military bills to begin with. In short, if Iraq strained the U.S.'s finances close to the breaking point, Iran will ruin them completely. There's absolutely no way the U.S. can afford to occupy Iran.
Even if Trump cuts and runs, this war will ensure American's can't afford socialized medicine for another generation.
Not a long time ago, the previous time when USA had bombed Iran, Trump claimed to have destroyed completely anything that Iran could use to make nuclear weapons.
It would be weird (or not?) to contradict himself now by claiming that they were able to make nuclear weapons.
I avoid listening to the current POTUS as it’s hard to make sense of his illogic, but his video said, “ they attempted to rebuild their nuclear program and to continue developing long-range missiles that can now threaten our very good friends and allies in Europe, our troops stationed overseas and could soon reach the American homeland.”
People need to go back and use Win 3.1 or MacOS 7.x to realize what a leap forward Win95 was. MacOS 7.x didn't even have preemptive multitasking! The start menu and task bar made their debut and immediately anchored the whole UI. Since then, Windows has made incremental advances (with the occasional step backwards), but no change has been nearly so radical. OS X would not have been possible without the influence of win95. We're still living in the Win95 age.
I have used both Windows 3.1 and Windows 95. Windows 95 does have some significant benefits (e.g. you can start Windows programs from the DOS prompt (I seem to remember that you cannot do this in Windows 3.1 and in Windows 95 you can, but I am not sure if I remember correctly), and the WIN+R shortcut, and some others), but also many problems (although some can be avoided by changing stuff in the registry; I had done that to force it to display the file name extensions for all file names, rather than hiding them even if you tell it to display them; I also dislike their decision to use spaces in file names).
> You could change the option to hide file extensions in the explorer settings windows; no registry tweak was needed.
The is a setting in Explorer, but it does not affect all file types; some (such as .lnk) are not affected by that setting and hide the extension anyways.
I don't have strong feelings either way, but I can see the perspective that underscores should suffice, and that introducing white space into filenames makes certain file and data management tasks more difficult and unpredictable.
Windows 3.11 loads in less than a blink of an eye on my Pentium MMX, while Windows 98 takes at least a minute to boot. This is with a 8 GB CF card as the HDD too, so the I/O is going as fast as possible.
It's because of drivers and PnP and especially USB. When you load Win3.1, WinNT4 and lower, drivers load without scanning for hardware presence. It's just a disk to memory copy. In Win95, the first PnP OS, it scans for PnP hardware at every boot. That's slow.
To prove my point, you could try loading some of the USB drivers for DOS or one of the ISA PnP configuration utilities (such as ICU - Intel Configuration Utility), see how fast it boots then!
Also, if you left the network config untouched, it defaults to TCPIP+DHCP, and when DHCP doesn't respond (cable unplugged), it's another 30s delay. Win311 didn't have TCPIP unless you install it manually. It also asks you to configure it during installation - less likely to select DHCP if you don't have it. And then, in Win311, network is started by DOS (NET START in autoexec.bat), not by Windows.
Besides the boot (which windows 3 didn't even do so I don't see why we are comparing it), from clicking on the start menu the 1st time after boot, to the start menu actually appearing on screen it would take 1-2 minutes to populate on windows 95, while on windows 3 on the same machine there would be no such issue.
Were you running a 386-16 MHz with 4 MB of memory? And you had hundreds of apps listed on the start menu? Because on anything faster it would absolutely not take that long.
It wasn't always instant on boot on my 486-SLC 33 MHz with 8 MB of memory but at most several to ten seconds for it to appear on first boot after clicking.
And on the Pentium MMX that I'm running now it's always instant on Windows 98 SE.
Korea, Vietnam, Iraq (I and II), Afghanistan, etc. were not technically wars in the sense that there was any form of formal declaration by congress. The U.S. constitution allocates the authority to declare war to congress but, in practice, it's been under the sole authority of the POTUS since long before Trump.
This reallocation of authority hasn't been a huge problem until now. Now you have a POTUS whose motives for starting a war are entirely suspect. It's true that negotiations between Iran and the U.S. would have had significant trust hurdles to overcome. The U.S. and Iran had a deal that granted Iran relief from economic sanctions in exchange for a halt to Iran's nuclear program. It was working, but Trump is the president who unilaterally broke that agreement in his previous term[1]. Trump has also repeatedly broken his own agreements in his current term. Even his own signature is now completely worthless. What would it have taken to assure Iran the U.S. could be trusted to honour its word with Trump in power?
Moreover, the timing of this war makes it hard to view as anything other than the bloodiest case of "Wag the Dog" of the modern era. Americans need to put this "president of peace" behind bars or he'll just keep starting wars. Once that's done, serious consideration should be given to restoring many of the powers the constitution allocates to congress, including the authority to declare war.
> Korea, Vietnam, Iraq (I and II), Afghanistan, etc. were not technically wars in the sense that there was any form of formal declaration by congress.
(1) A declaration of war is not necessary for a war to legally exist, except in the context of specific US laws that might rely on a declared state of war,
(2) Congress constitutional power to declare war is not dependent on the use of special words; every (conditional or unconditional) “authorization for the use of military force” (including the broad but time limited authorization in the War Powers Act) and similar is an application of the Constitutional power to declare war.
e.g. Somebody wrote a library, and then you had an LLM implement it in a new language.
You didn't come up with the idea for whatever the library does, and you didn't "perform" the new implementation. You're neither writer nor performer, just the person who requested a new performance. You're basically a club owner who hired a band to cover some tunes. There's a lot involved in running a club, just like there's a fair bit involved in operating a LLM, but none of that gives you rights over the "composition". If you want to make money off of that performance, you need to pay the writer and/or satisfy whatever terms and conditions they've made the library available under.
IANAL, so I don't even know what species of worms are inside this can I've opened up. It seems sensible, to me, that running somebody else's work through a LLM shouldn't give you something that you can then claim complete control over.
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Edit: For the sake of this argument, let's pretend we're somewhere with sensible music copyright laws, and not the weird piano-roll derived lunacy that currently exists in the U.S..
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