nirv

This Reuters article provides some useful context about Yandex: https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/after-months-negotiati....

Yandex was split for a while into a Russian-controlled part and an independent part in the Netherlands, controlled by the original co-founder, which later become Nebius AI. Nowadays, these entities are completely detached, and Arkady Volozh has renounced his Russian citizenship.

Do you suggest using manual brushes instead of content-aware fill, or am I supposed to not want to retouch the images in the way that GenAI makes so quickly and easily? My argument is that applications probably should provide useful tools for solving practical problems, regardless of their implementation details.

Exactly. Meanwhile, I have to use the en_DK.UTF-8 system locale as there's no better alternative.

he believes GOG’s approach is more relevant than ever: no lock-in, no forced platforms, sense of ownership

I really hope that we'll be freed from the forced Windows platform. Sure, you can download and install GOG games today using a third-party client, but it'll never be as good as official support. There's also the issue of syncing saved games and achievements, not to mention the additional friction for less tech-savvy users.

CachyOS would require Arch Linux to implement the support first. Progress is slow but steady:

- https://lists.archlinux.org/archives/list/arch-dev-public@li...

- https://rfc.archlinux.page/0032-arch-linux-ports/

Here are benchmark rounds of CachyOS against current Ubuntu and Fedora workstations as fresh as early November:

https://www.phoronix.com/review/cachyos-ubuntu-2510-f43

This is why I dismissed Penpot as even the simplest tool for quick, basic prototyping. I could tolerate some visual and workflow bugs, but encountering this limitation was a deal breaker.

I appreciate your viewpoint and the time you took to share it.

I see your point about the scope, which is why I led with "framework" as a fallback in my question.

With that in mind, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on what a practical FOSS implementation of such a framework might look like. Or at least a FOSS alternative to Fusion 360. Would you use ready-made geometric kernels, improve on existing ones (OpenCASCADE?), or start from scratch? Would you adapt to existing standard formats (import/export), or go with a new one? Would you build on FreeCAD, use another suite as a basis (source code if FOSS, or inspired UX/workflow if not), or do you see no point in that and think it would be better to start fresh? I was rather expecting a discussion along these practical lines.

Thanks for your perspective.

Could you share your thoughts on interesting and worthy development paths or vision for a universal FOSS CAD tool/framework? If you were leading a funded team, what goals would you set for the project and how would you achieve them?

It’s hard to believe that Mistral isn’t the right choice to invest €1.7B in for economic reasons.

Why? Cursor, essentially a VSCode fork, is valued at $10B. Perplexity AI, which, as far as I'm informed, doesn't have its own foundational models, boasts a market capitalisation of $20B, according to recent news. Yet Mistral sits at just a $14B.

Meanwhile, Mistral was at the forefront of the LLM take-off, developing foundational (very lean, performant and innovative at the time) models from scratch and releasing them openly. They set up an API service, integrated with businesses, building custom models and fine-tunes, and secured partnership agreements. They launched user-facing interface and mobile app which are on par with leading companies, kept pace with "reasoning" and "research" advancements; and, in short, built a solid, commercially viable portfolio. So why on earth should Mistral AI be valued lower? Let alone have its mere €1.7B investment questioned.

Edit: Apologies, I misread your quote and missed the "isn't" part.

That's an interesting point that I'd never considered before. Thank you for sharing it.

Chinese government [...] gives tons of freedom for business owners to run wild

This claim is provably incorrect.

Analysis of all 37.5 million registered firms in China reveals that 65% of the largest 1,000 private owners have direct equity ties with state owners […] The number of private owners with direct equity ties with the state almost tripled between 2000 and 2019, and those with indirect equity ties rose 50-fold.

Provincial and local government officials in China enforce laws and control resources, such as land and loans, but these officials change positions every few years. […] Publicly listed firms increase perk spending (travel, dining, and entertainment) by an average of 3.6 million yuan (20%) when new local officials take charge. […] The results are consistent with the view that local officials are important gatekeepers and firms seek to influence them with perks and positions of power within SOEs.[1][2]

China’s domestic politics have changed significantly over the past decade, with the top leadership enacting much more muscular policies to limit the power of large corporations while also deploying extensive measures to support firms, especially in key industries. According to Hsieh, this trend means that companies need to navigate the state’s “two strong hands,” one supportive and the other restrictive which aim to increase the party’s control over the economy even as the private sector continues, in one form or another, to grow. Moreover, political control is likely proving oppressive for companies as the party-state increasingly weights national security over economic growth. […] These findings […] suggest that not all government intervention in the economy is welcome by Chinese companies, especially if it comes with national security strings attached. The findings from the experiment suggest that state and party influence on private firms may have evolved to prioritize politics above economic growth, creating new challenges for companies that would naturally seek to maximize political support alongside autonomy.[3]

[1] https://sccei.fsi.stanford.edu/china-briefs/rise-state-conne...

[2] https://sccei.fsi.stanford.edu/china-briefs/how-do-chinas-fi...

[3] https://bigdatachina.csis.org/unpacking-linkages-between-the...

Rather than bombarding your interlocutor with a barrage of questions, please articulate your position clearly and save everyone's time instead.

Very open to ideas on things to improve...

Grade 316 stainless steel SD cards by Lexar come to mind[1].

[1] https://www.lexar.com/global/news/Lexar-Announces-Worlds-Fir...

No browser on Linux supports any other backend for video acceleration except VAAPI, as far as I know. AMD and Intel use VAAPI, while Nvidia uses VDPAU, which is not supported anywhere. This single fact means that with Nvidia graphics cards on Linux, there isn't even such a simple and important feature for users as video decoding acceleration in the browser. Every silly YouTube video will use CPU (not iGPU, but CPU) to decode video, consuming resources and power.

Yes, there are translation layers[1] which you have to know about and understand how to install correctly, which partially solve the problem by translating from VAAPI to NVDEC, but this is certainly not for the average user.

Hopefully, in the future browsers will add support for the new Vulkan Video standard, but for now, unfortunately, one has to hardcode the browser launch parameters in order to use the integrated graphics chip's driver (custom XDG-application file for AMD APU in my case: ~/.local/share/applications/Firefox-amdgpu.desktop): `Exec=env LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME=radeonsi DRI_PRIME=0 MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 __NV_PRIME_RENDER_OFFLOAD=0 __GLX_VENDOR_LIBRARY_NAME=radeons i /usr/bin/firefox-beta %u`.

[1] https://github.com/elFarto/nvidia-vaapi-driver/

I suppose you didn't accompany the command `uvx` with the necessary `--with=` arguments[1] for each dependency.

[1] https://docs.astral.sh/uv/guides/tools/#commands-with-plugin...

I tried it once, and I couldn't run RAG without the GPU either (only using external APIs). Considering that they pull all the heavy deps even with the local compute flags disabled, I assume this is just a poorly supported case. Which is really unfortunate.

Not sure about the moat, it's mostly a SvelteKit web app with extra utils after all. But it has a rather unique combination of advanced features (RAG integrations, workspaces[1], pipelines[2], code execution[3], MCP integration[4], etc.) and a user-friendly "production grade" interface. I've built a dependency for OWUI using many of these advanced features, and now I'm trying to figure out where to migrate with no obvious alternatives.

My only gripe with the project was the (exorbitant) size of the docker containers, especially for cases where you need a tool with no local models, just a gateway to third-party APIs. Now another and more serious one has been added.

[1] https://docs.openwebui.com/features/workspace/

[2] https://docs.openwebui.com/pipelines/

[3] https://docs.openwebui.com/features/code-execution/

[4] https://docs.openwebui.com/openapi-servers/mcp

Sorry for the resubmission, you beat me for a minute while I was typing the title.

#275727

Dozens of megabytes of text, jokes, arguments, dramas, casual and professional socialising, and hundreds of new acquaintances that have shaped my interests in life. Thanks for an interesting 2000s.

As far as I understand from what I've read, Iran even separated the attack times of missiles and UAVs to make them easier to monitor and shoot down without overloading air defense systems. For example, Russia deliberately syncs these attack with large numbers of aerial weapons to overload Ukraine's air defenses beyond their capacity—Iran could not have been unaware of this tactic, but it chose not to.

Right after the attack Iran's permanent representative to the UN stated that "The matter can be deemed concluded. However, should the Israeli regime make another mistake, Iran’s response will be considerably more severe". It looks convincing that Iranian pyrotechnic show is more of a reputational response, given that some of the targets were shown in propaganda videos days before the attack (if not directly leaked to Western counterparts so that Israelis had time to prepare and/or evacuate personnel).

You're either pretending or incapable of understanding the point that is being reiterated in this thread.

The OpenAI company, that was supposed to be non-profit open research think lab, has been taking investments of dozens of millions from different funds, while producing highest quality research material for the public good. Up to the point when the CEO sold it for Microsoft's $1B deal that solved their infra & GPU resource problems for… completely locking the company as an unofficial division of Microsoft Research. This deal, essentially, entirely distorted the raison d'être of the non-profit company, closed the "open research" part, and made it a for-profit extension for MS/Bing services.

Here, perspectives fork in two ways: either you believe it's a great development that you can benefit of by using closed paid OpenAI/Microsoft commercial services, OR you believe that metamorphosis of the leading open AI research shop into it's exact antipode is embodiment of disappointment. From your boorish, superficial remarks, I can see which side you are on.

I don't care if Sam Altman took money from Microsoft, or Sam Bankman-Fried (before he was charged), or US govt — that entirely misses the point. I do care that Sam Altman orchestrated a complete relegation of the research lab to an overpowered for-profit "Clippy" assistant for a single huge corporation, depriving us from the open research. He had to work on attracting investments from several corporations and other entities to avoid centralisation of control. But we see that he acted according to his own personal agenda, not in the interests of the company's charter. In that perspective, I don't give a damn if he could have raised a billion or not as a non-profit company. I'd rather it was $300-500M that would have kept the company open than a $1B and what we have today. I'd rather the company didn't survive this crisis than what we have today.

I gave you the benchmarking of other LLM models that are several months (up to a year) behind GPT4 in performance development. I don't care if they are founded by megacorps or not, if they do what non-profit "Open" AI no more does, i.e. publishing open research and supplying us open models. Comprehend? Your argument of "if it weren't for Microsoft OpenAI wouldn't exist" is irrelevant, if OAI no longer produces open research that it supposed to; it better wouldn't otherwise. Let others for-profit multi-billion corps take over, if we can't have better.

To further refute your $MSFT shill demagoguery, narrowly focused on compute accelerators, I'll add that Abu Dhabi's TTI (UAE gov money for academia) has produced and released open model Falcon 180B, while French nonprofit research lab Kyutai has just raised €330M. In Europe, for a minute, not even SV! Apparently, funding open research is possible? Q.E.D. I'd rather Ilya and Andrej move to this lab than peddling "Laundry buddy" GPT Bing API tokens BS disgrace, but it's up to them.

And you can stay in your delusions where only OpenAI+Microsoft is capable of leading AI research, lead by an ego inflated CEO. Don't forget to scan your eye pupils for $worldcoin.

Very interesting, thanks for posting this.

You can work on and compile Linux on a home PC, even more the case with their other projects. Try training GPT-4 on a home PC.

Sam Altman was happy to join the venture and lead OpenAI knowing that it was the non-profit AI research company from the beginning. As a CEO, he was supposed to lead the company as it was created. As a result of his management, the company first ceased to be open, then in fact non-profit, then safe (according to it's leading scientists), then the number of published research whitepapers fell sharply, then has taken steps to become a gatekeeper for government regulations, and finally, the communication between Sam and the board (which really should be running the company) was lost. If a CEO was unable to manage a company, including attracting investment and resources, without violating the fundamental principles of that company, that CEO should have been dismissed — what has been effectively attempted by the board. Otherwise, it's a power grab and a de facto reformatting of the company into a different entity. Do you comprehend that?

I have no idea what compiling Linux kernel, or running GPT-4 locally, does anything in common in the context of large non-profit organization management. My argument is that the company should have been run in such a way that one corporation could not seize complete control. Never, under no circumstances. In spite of this, the CEO made all the effort to make it so. As a result, we have now in fact a for-profit company with good product, tons of money and GPUs, that belongs to the Microsoft. Was it worth it? Does this justify it for you? If you are not a $MSFT shareholder the answer should be obvious.

If it's so easy for a scrappy non-profit to attract billions to tinker with AI, where I say are those startups? Where? Q.E.D. The most open thing we have, Llama, came from giant Meta.

Take a good look at HuggingFace Chatbot Arena leaderboard page[1]. Pay attention to the values of different models on different benchmarks. GPT4 is the leader, but not by an unattainable margin. Anthropic, which has spinned off from the very same OpenAI, rapidly catches up, along with other solutions. Even free, open (for commercial usage) models, while being self-hostable, are not an orders of magnitude worse. They are well in range of being practical and useful, including for commercial products. There is no moat[2].

Linux is important, but it's not nearly as expensive to create or maintain.

The problem is you have no idea what you're talking about.

ROFL, okay buddy.

[1] https://huggingface.co/spaces/lmsys/chatbot-arena-leaderboar...

[2] https://www.semianalysis.com/p/google-we-have-no-moat-and-ne...

Oh yeah, I do comprehend how such major technologies of comparable importance are managed in NON-PROFIT organizations, Linux Foundation is for one.

If you're happy to give up total control of tech to one corporation, while the CEO of the company, using the influence of the OpenAI, attracts resources for his personal hardware start-up[1], — our views on how a not-for-profit company should be run are starkly different.

[1] https://www.ft.com/content/4c64ffc1-f57b-4e22-a4a5-f9f90a741...

In this case Microsoft will have zero chance to use IP owned by the OpenAI, right? That's how mutual agreements work?

If not, why? And who's responsible for this 'Laundry Buddy' deal with Microsoft then, isn't it Sam Altman? In this case OpenAI's board did a fair job with their decision.

Financial Times[1] is my primary source of high-quality European and international news. Politico Europe[2] and WSJ[3] come next.

I also recommend Spiegel International[4], Le Monde Diplomatique[5], and Nikkei Asia[6] for the German, French, and Japanese perspectives respectively.

[1] https://ft.com

[2] https://politico.eu

[3] https://wsj.com

[4] https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe

[5] https://mondediplo.com

[6] https://asia.nikkei.com

If there's any reason armed UN/OSCE/NATO forces need to get envolved, there's nothing more important than this. At least closing off air space above all NPPs as a neutral power. (Note, I do realize that NATO intervention is not realistic, I unfortunately agree that it must be avoided to prevent a global war conflict escalation.)

Nice gaslighting, mate. Coming from the #3 among the world's worst surveillance CCTV dystopias[1]. Let alone the exact same persistive narrative regarding encryption[2][3][4][5].

[1] https://www.statista.com/chart/19256/the-most-surveilled-cit...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encryption_ban_proposal_in_the...

[3] https://www.wired.co.uk/article/uk-encryption-facebook-home-...

[4] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/international-sta...

[5] https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/30/uk-tells-messaging-apps-no...